Re: OT: baloney and cheese

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 3:55 AM
Subject: Re: OT: baloney and cheese


> Quoting Sarah Marie Parker-Allen <lloannna@...>:
>
> > It wasn't until I figured out the politics of the Iran-Contra affair
> > that I
> > was for sure able to tell them apart.  Probably a year or two after the
> > Gulf
> > War (which happened when I was 10-11 years old, so I'm allowed a bit
> > of
> > confusion I think).  I still have trouble with some of the other
> > countries
> > in the area.
> >
> > Question: here (and in most of the places I've lived) there's a
> > difference
> > between the "a" sound in Iran and Iraq.  The first sounds like the a
> > in
> > "all" and the second like the a in "back" (which is why it's not really
> > hard
> > for me now to remember the differences between them; it's not like
> > they
> > really sound very much alike).  I was just thinking that if the two
> > sounds
> > were really the same, it'd be even harder to tell the difference in
> > everyday
> > speech.
>
> In Swedish, they're [i'rA:n] and [i'rA:k] (usually spelt "Irak"), which of
> course makes them even easier to confuse.
>
> I don't know when I learnt to tell them apart, but apparently before the
Gulf
> War (which, according to Iraqi clocks, began on my 9th birthday), because
I, as
> far as I can recall, was in no confusion then.
>
 Hmm...

I learnt it when I was about 6/7. My family being Christian, I learnt it
from the old Biblical empires(ie. Iran=Persia, Iraq=Babylonia).