Re: CHAT: Blandness (was: Uusisuom's influences)

In a message dated 4/4/01 11:00:52 AM, and_yo@HOTMAIL.COM writes:

<< I'll throw in some other beautiful languages from my point of view: I
>like Icelandic very much as it is spoken >>
You know, I find this very interesting.  There have been several mentions of
how beautiful Icelandic, Finnish, Hungarian, and so forth are, and at least
one person said that Romance languages were the ugliest he'd ever heard.
That could not be more opposite to myself and most Westerners, I think (the
ones I know).  Everybody wants to learn either Spanish, French or Italian,
claiming it to be the most beautiful language on the planet (for me, it's
French, and I know someone was dogging French earlier).  People who take
German are made fun of, let alone anyone who so much has heard of any other
language from any country surrounding Germany, or near it (France/Belgium
excluded, of course).  My second Arabic teacher (born in New York City; no
Arab blood in him whatsoever) once said, "I was at a Linguistics conference
once, and the whole thing was in Dutch.  Dutch is the ugliest, most awful
sounding language on the planet.  Everybody thinks their own language is
beautiful, even the Dutch, but they're wrong; it's awful."

Now, to avoid a hornets' nest, I myself am not advocating such a view (I
really like Hungarian), but just so you know that there are other ones out
there.  :)

-David

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