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

Though not on the subject of blandness I am reminded to why I studied a
semester of Polish. It was originally to get on the good side of my in-laws
as they are both native speakers. It would turn out to be a much greater
gift, however.

My mother-in-law, her mother and her aunt would get together at family
gatherings at which I was a regular. I began to tire of hearing my name or
my wife's name (we weren't married yet) pass by in the midst of all those
words (some of which I understood from my Czech heritage... but not enough).
This of course is a very rude practice particularly as all three spoke
English very well.

One day, they were jabbering away as was the norm, and one told a funny
story. I caught enough of the story to understand it and laughed just at the
same millisecond as they did. There was a sudden dead silence and the three
of them turned and looked at me, astonished. Thereafter they continued their
conversation in English and have never, never spoken in Polish in front of
me again.

I tell you it was a moment that was beyond price!

Scotto

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU]On
> Behalf Of John Cowan
> Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2001 11:26 AM
> To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
> Subject: Blandness (was: Uusisuom's influences)
>
>
> Raymond Brown scripsit:
>
> > Some find Finnish bland, rather than beautiful - others,
> probably most, are
> > indifferent to it.
>
> I haven't heard enough Finnish to comment, but this reminds me of
> the experience
> I had in a doctor's office a few months ago.  I had to wait for
> several hours
> (I was being "squeezed in" to a busy appointment schedule), and for about
> half an hour I was an involuntary listener to a monologue in Polish,
> of which I understood nothing.  A younger woman was speaking to an older
> woman at great length and with much emotion.
>
> I found myself being excruciatingly bored by this monologue, and I began
> to wonder why.  I routinely listen to talk in other languages, and
> I'm usually quite intererested in picking out features even when (as is
> generally the case) I understand nothing.  A memorable case of this
> was a long conversation on a cab radio, which seemed to be in French,
> but clearly contained much non-French phonology -- fascinating!
> (I afterwards found out that it was a language mixture:  French and
> Wolof.)
>
> I finally concluded that the feature that made the monologue
> so boring was the unvarying rhythm.  Polish has uniform penultimate
> stress, and (at least in this case) so-called "syllable-timed" rhythm.
> Spanish, of which I hear a good deal more than Polish, is likewise
> syllable-timed, but the location of the stress does vary considerably.
>
> --
> John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
> One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
>         --Douglas Hofstadter