Re: Harsh vs. Soft Sounds
| From: | Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, August 29, 2003, 19:28 |
|---|
Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
> On Fri, Aug 29, 2003 at 01:45:56PM -0400, Sebastian Adems wrote:
> > Well, for instance, French would be considered soft, where as a more
> > guttural sounding language (can't think of anything right now, maybe LotR
> > Orc tongues?)
>
> You don't have to go that far afield. German is a pretty harsh/guttural
> language. English is somewhere more toward the middle thanks to French
> influence.
I'm still waiting for a proper definition of a "harsh" or "guttural" language.
In some older books I've read, "guttural" seem to refer to back consonants;
velars and uvulars, perhaps also pharyngeals and glottals, but no-one's ever,
to my knowledge, cared to explicitly define it.
And don't tell me about German's [x]'s - French is brimful with [R]! GAK!
As you've probably gathered by now, I hold German to be a more beautiful-
sounding language than French. Apparently a minority opinion ...
Andreas
Replies