Re: CHAT: Lg prefs (was: Re: Blandness)

At 4/5/01 09:37 AM -0600, you wrote:
>Hey.
>
>Regarding language preferences. You all don't know what you're
>missing by not having heard clean, crisp Comanche or the soft
>gentle murmur of Shoshoni. Absolutely delightful. Get out of
>Europe and explore the world!
I second this sentiment. There is a reason I don't work on European
languages: they are DULL DULL DULL. Pima, like Shoshoni, has a gentle
murmur to it; and Pima stories are a pleasure to listen to even when you
can't follow the whole thing. (Of course, my consultant is a very talented
story-teller). Chickasaw always has a sense of excitement to it (rising
pitch over the course of the sentence). And nobody has heard interesting
vowels until they've listened to Zapotec, with its four tones (high, low,
raising, falling) and four phonation types (plain, breathy, creaky,
post-glottalized), maximum of four vowels (with different phonations) per
syllable.




Marcus Smith

"Sit down before fact as a little child,
be prepared to give up every preconceived notion,
follow humbly wherever and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads,
or you shall learn nothing."
                -- Thomas Huxley

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