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"Essiness, Ishiness, Veeiness, Aitchiness & /X/" (was: none)

From:M.E.S. <suomenkieli@...>
Date:Friday, March 8, 2002, 11:29
--- "Douglas Koller, Latin & French"
<latinfrench@...> wrote:
> Clint wrote: > > >Ihekwike J Y S Czhang: > > > >(And, hehe, you thought English was a "hissing > >tongue"...eh?) > > > >I remember the kids in Honduras saying "shu shu shu > >shu" to imitate the sound of English, like American > >kids might do to Chinese, "ching chang chong." Is > it > >because English has some sort of "hissing" quality > >that others pick up on but not native speakers? > > I read once something somewhere eons ago where a > writer (linguist?), > presumably a native speaker of English, complained > about the essiness > of English, what with plurals and the third person > singular et al. It > never bothered me, but I'm a native. When I took an > adult ed. class > at the local high school, Portuguese initially > struck me with its > ishiness (lots of /S/ goin' on), but it's *really* > beginning to grow > on me; can watch hours of mind-numbing melodrama on > the local > Portuguese cable channel without a clue as to what's > going on (I draw > the line at variety shows). Having lived in China, I > continue to > wince when Americans (and it ain't just kids) launch > into the "hip > choy ching yang yang mwong" schtick, though Mandarin > speakers have > been known to do the same thing about Cantonese.
/LOL, tears in eyes/ Highly agree with Kou about the "mind-numbing" effect of the beautiful Portuguese ishiness (but, AFAIK, that ishiness is from Brazilian P and less common in Portugal - can anyone confirm?). I find both P's ishiness and E's essiness as very stylish sounds, and both these sounds I made sure to include in Vyh -- although Vyh. is turning out to be built more upon its "veeiness" [v] and "aitchiness" [h] than anything else (*o*), although I'm contemplating to incorporate more of the /X/ [as in Dutch g or Spanish j]. BTW, /X/ is called a fricative - right? (Get that confused with affricative) M.E.S. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! http://mail.yahoo.com/

Replies

Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>