Re: Liking German

Thomas Wier wrote:
>Quoting Heather Rice <florarroz@...>:
>
> > Is there such a thing as a sound being especially full
> > of a certain language, seemingly to hold all the
> > essence of that language?
>
>Not acoustically, but certain sounds certainly are associated
>within some cultures with certain languages.  German always gets
>singled out for having /x/, but it's rarely realized that /C/ is
>used at least as often, and perhaps much more so, than /x/.  German
>is nowhere near as "gutteral" (to use a fairly linguistically empty
>term) as, say, Atkan Aleut or Central Siberian Yupik. Those languages
>have ungodly numbers of uvular stops and fricatives.
If I were to complain about German (I too like it - it'd be interesting to
know why conlangers seem to like it much better than the average non-German
westerner!), I'd call it "ishy" - all those [S] and [C]s! Tschechisches
Schloss! ("Czech castle")

                                                   Andreas


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