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

On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, Frank George Valoczy wrote:

> On Mon, 2 Apr 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> > [snip]
> > You may have something there.  I was about to answer that well, English
> > is *my* native tongue and I don't consider it most beautiful (though I do
> > like it, and I don't feel it's quite as ugly as others feel it is)...but
> > Korean, not English, was my *first* tongue.  And Japanese, which really
> > does sound like Korean (not sure about v.v.?) if you're falling asleep
> > and not paying attention, is one of my favourite languages (that I've
> > encountered).
>
> I should have mentioned those as well. I've heard Korean and Japanese
> spoken, and they too, (also Mongolian), sound like the speakers are
> speaking Hungarian but I don't understand. But, I can usually pick out one
> or two words whether I know it or not, I can tell which language it is.
Huh--I must try to find some sample of Hungarian speech and see if it
sounds like Korean or Japanese to me!

Mongolian, from what little I have of it, sounds definitely different
from Korean or Japanese to my ear.  Or maybe it's because the
throat-singing CD I have has the first song starting off with a speech
that starts off with something that sounds a lot like [altaI haNgaI], and
[altaI] just can't, *can't* occur in Korean.

YHL