Re: I'm back ...

Already sent a coupla replies earlier today, but I thought I'd send a
proper "I'm back" message too. If nothing else, it means you'll only have to
read a maximum of N-1 on-topic message from me today. I've not been doing any
real conlanging during the week, but thought I'd mention a couple of language-
related incidents I figured may interest someone:

The first was an American guy, resident in Berlin since 1987, who assumed,
from my English accent, that I'm Russian. Now, to my admittedly insider ears a
Swedish and a Russian accent sounds absolutely different - anyone here
finding them even vaguely similar?

The second was trying to imitate a Greek friend's pronunciation of "gamma"; I
thought it was supposed to be [Gama], but what she liked best was [R\ama]
(also tried [Rama] and [gama]). Just a freak result ascribable to idiolects
and suboptimal acoustics, or has gamma generally slid backwards and trillified
in Modern Greek?

(Yes, this means I've finally mastered the uvular trill, sort of. It seems
that having my vocal apparatus a bit out of order helps with acquiring new
sounds - I finally got those pesky pharyngeal frics during an unusually severe
cold, and this time the breakthru occured under the influence of alcohol.
Anyone having similar experiences?)

                                              Andreas