There are 3 messages in this issue. Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful? From: C. Brickner 1b. Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful? From: David McCann 2a. Re: Observations on verbal periphrastic constructions From: Wm Annis Messages ________________________________________________________________________ 1a. Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful? Posted by: "C. Brickner" tepeyach...@embarqmail.com Date: Tue May 28, 2013 7:16 am ((PDT)) Certainly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder or, in this case, the ear of the hearer. Perhaps French and Italian are considered beautiful because of the prominence of vowels. I find the following (of the languages with which I am familiar) beautiful, some in special circumstances: 1. European Portuguese. 2. Modern Greek. 3. German sung by a boys' choir. 4. Japanese spoken by a woman. 5. Swahili. 6. Turkish (front rounded vowels). 7. Hawaiian, Maori, Samoan, etc. Talk about a prominence of vowels! Charlie ----- Original Message ----- What makes a language be considered beautiful? Why is Italian (and sometimes French) considered the most beautiful language by so many people? Até mais! Leonardo Messages in this topic (8) ________________________________________________________________________ 1b. Re: THEORY: How to be beautiful? Posted by: "David McCann" da...@polymathy.plus.com Date: Tue May 28, 2013 8:15 am ((PDT)) On Tue, 28 May 2013 08:11:41 -0300 Leonardo Castro <leolucas1...@gmail.com> wrote: > What makes a language be considered beautiful? > > Why is Italian (and sometimes French) considered the most beautiful > language by so many people? > Normally I'd argue for an objective aesthetics, but when it comes to the sound of language I think it's going to be subjective. I love Italian (opera?) and Brazilian Portuguese (Gal Costa, Astrud Gilberto!) but hate French (years of fruitless study at school?). Americans often say Bostonians "sound British", but to me it's one of the worst of their accents, while Californians and Floridians sound least "foreign". Messages in this topic (8) ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 2a. Re: Observations on verbal periphrastic constructions Posted by: "Wm Annis" wm.an...@gmail.com Date: Tue May 28, 2013 7:46 am ((PDT)) A similar sort of periphrases for asking reasons is "what BE SUBJ doing GERUND" as in "what is Bob doing walking the dog?" On second thought, this is less an actual question than an expression to note something unexpected, with a strong suggestion that the event is not merely unexpected but that there's some good reason for it *not* to happen. -- wm Messages in this topic (2) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/ <*> Your email settings: Digest Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: conlang-nor...@yahoogroups.com conlang-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: conlang-unsubscr...@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------