Re: CHAT: Multi-Lingos

John Cowan wrote:

> > I think I remember one of Mario Pei's books stating that Danish was very
> > easy to learn to pronounce for an English speaker, but I won't swear to
> > it...and from hearing a Dane at my HS read the names in the Norse
> > creation myth (while the rest of us mangled 'em), I wouldn't bet on it.
> > Actually, philosophy of religion was quite, quite interesting.  We had a
> > Greek who laughed at us trying to pronounce the Greek gods' names, and....
>
> Yeah, well, they mangle them too.  Which is better, an English mangling of
> a reconstructed ancient pronunciation, or an inherited modern pronunciation
> from a descendant language?
You have to be careful, though, about voicing that fact around certain
Greek nationalists:   their "reconstructed ancient pronunciations" sound
uncannily like Modern Greek.  They're wrong, of course, but that doesn't
stop loud arguments from happening.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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