Re: Language Difficulty

I think it depends on the imagery you associate with the language. I learnt
German through Beethoven's ninth(!) and it always sounds OK to me. But if
you associate German, as many older folks do, with the "Ve haf vays off
making you talk!" school of diction, it is going to seem different. I love
the sound of Dutch, I mean, words like "meegerekend" /me:x@re:k@nt/
'included' just roll off the tongue. Breton has lots of terrific words like
"koulskoude" /ku:lsku:de/ 'sometimes', "daoulagad" /daulaga:t/ 'pair of
eyes' and "martese" /marteze:/ 'perhaps', plus lots of others.
Mike



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----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank George Valoczy" <valoczy@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: Language Difficulty


> On Fri, 28 Sep 2001, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
> > En réponse à Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>:
> >
> > > Anyone who doesn't think German is a beautiful language should listen
> > > to
> > > "Mutter der Mann mit dem Koks ist da" by Falco. Ignore Falco - listen
> > > to
> > > the female back up singer.
> > >
> >
> > What a coincidence! I just discovered Falco (with the song "Gini", one
of the
> > most beautiful songs I ever heard) and it made me revise my opinion
about
> > German: it can sometimes sound nice. But I still think that spoken
German
> > sounds absolutely awful (especially the dreaded ich-laut, which makes me
think
> > that when people say "Ich liebe dich", they want to beat their partner
to
> > death!).
>
> Ah, but you see, the dialect I've been most exposed to says, [IS li:b
> dIS], and I think [S] is a nice sound. =)
>
> >
> > On the other hand, I find Dutch a very beautiful language, as strange as
it can
> > be. And it's so nice when well sung. Too bad that Dutch people seem to
be
> > afraid of singing Dutch, except for carnaval songs...
> >
>
> The only Dutch song I've ever heard was the PSV Eindhoven club song, sung
> by many drunk Dutchmen =) It's a great song...voor rood-wit
> gezongen... (I'm a PSV fan, if you can't tell yet!)