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

On Wed, 4 Apr 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> David Peterson wrote:
> >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
Hehe three of my favourites =)

> >one person said that Romance languages were the ugliest he'd ever heard.
That would have been me, though I did add "when I was younger". When I was
really young every language that didn't sound like Hungarian (ie. most
languages besides Turkish, Finnish etc.) scared the life out of me, I
don't know why but that's how it was. Later I developed a liking for the
sound of Slavic (during my first early visits to Yugoslavia), so by the
time i was in elementary school in Canada I had built a "tolerance" for
other languages, which probably kept me from going nuts...anyway that's
all beside the point. The point is that over the last decade or so I've
developed a liking for *certain* Romance languages, such as Romanian,
Italian, Spanish, but still not Portuguese and French...like Polish is the
one Slavic language I don't like...its nasals...(see quote! vvvv)


> Where I come from, French is usually considered beautiful but difficult.
> Personally, I find if abhorrent - chiefly due to those detestable nasal
> vowels. No offense is meant to French-speakers, of course. It's not your
> fault you're French! ;-)
>
If you ask Vodicka, the friend of Svejk, he'd say that that's nonsense ;)

[if this is obscure: The good soldier Svejk makes a comment that many a
Hungarian can't help being Hungarian, to which Sapper Vodicka says that's
nonsense, of course he can help it. Vodicka doesn't like Hungarians].

> I can't understand what people find so bad with Dutch - it's like a mix of
> English and German (both langs I like) with alot of nice extra [x]s and [X]s
> added in for good measure! Learn to pronounce "'s-Gravenhage" correctly and
> your halfway to nirvana ... ;-)
Dutch is scary.... =(

> I've not heard Hungarian spoken that I remember, but they do have an
> interesting orthography. How did they end up on {s} for /S/ and {sz} for
> /s/? {zs} for /Z/ is quite cute, tho', and one just have to adore those
> double acute accents!
I don't know how s became [S], but the {z} after it shows it's not [S] but
[s] (think sound of [z], then it makes sense, right?). {zs} makes sense
too if you think, {z} shows that the {s} is voiced...

A dutchman I met in Budapest told me he thinks Hungarian sounds like goats
bleating, but he's Dutch, and lucky I wasn't sozzled. (He didn't know I'm
Hungarian).

-------ferko
Ferenc Gy. Valoczy

Suurt chugunikka peene ahjo suhe et toukka.

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