Re: Streaming foreign languages was Re: Maltese Phonology

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Danny Wier <dawier@H...> wrote:

 > I really like the rhythm of the language. Very... Celtic.
 >
 > > - Greek sounds extremely Spanish.  I wasn't aware
 > >    of that.  Very pleasant.
 >
 > Modern [Greek] has a lot of words ending in -o, -a, -os and -as, so
there's
 > its Spanish-like quality. It would sound more like Castillian I would
 > imagine.

Actually, it's the endings that help me distinguish
Greek from Spanish.  Greek has lots of -i and -is
which are rare in Spanish.  For me, it's the many
fricatives and lack of voiced stops that make it
sound Spanish.



 > By the way, Arabic gets too much of a bad rap because of its uvulars and
 > pharyngeals. It's a really nice sounding language when spoken normally. I
 > don't know if I'm hearing Iraqi Arabic or Standard Arabic. Probably
 > Standard.

Then I guess I've never heard it spoken normally.  =P
Emphatic letters (and the wide /a/ bordering on /{/
that goes with them) just sound agressive to my ears.
Even "I love you" probably sounds like a curse in
Arabic.  ;-)



-- Christian Thalmann