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

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
>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).
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! ;-)

>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).
In Swedish school, you can take either French or German as your second
foreign language (English being the first, whether you like it or not). Most
people take German, as it's considered to be the easy choice. I, of course,
took German ...

>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."
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 ... ;-)
>
>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.  :)
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!

                                                     Andreas
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