Re: Another Essentialist Explanation

Hi!

Roger Mills writes:
> Henrik Theiling wrote:
> >
> >> 'Greek is essentially encrypted Spanish.'
> >
> That really ought to be "Modern Greek"--
Yepp.  And 'Castilian Spanish'.

> and not too surprising, for as someone pointed out to me many years
> ago, the phonetics of both languages is almost the same, though of
> course the phonemics/phonotactics differ. E.g., [B],[G] phonemic in
> Greek, merely allophonic in Spanish. etc. etc.
It's more than that the mere phonetics, of course that is one part of
the reason.  But also, the melody, pace, and emphasis sound similar.
And endings are similar.  E.g. a lot of words end in -os and -es and
you need to hunt for -is and -on to find our it is not Spanish. :-)

John Quijada:
> Yes.  Being a Spanish speaker and having spent time in Spain, Greek
> definitely sounds like Castilian gibberish to me with a couple of "teaser"
> words thrown in for sudden sparks of familiarity (e.g., "demokratikos").
Haha, very nice description! :-)

**Henrik