Re: Saakashvili congratulated Alexander Lukashenko for his victory

On Jan 5, 11:06 pm, The Black Monk <ch....@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 5, 5:55 pm, Tadas Blinda <tadas.bli...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Jan 6, 9:29 am, The Black Monk <ch....@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

How does Belarussian sound to Russian ears? My subjective impression
(I know a recent immigrant from Belarus who speaks the language) is
that it sounds distorted in an unpleasant way. I have nothing against
the language and think it tragic that it is dying out - this is simply
how it sounds to my ears.

Question to Balts:

How does Latvian sound to Lithuanians and Lithuanian to Latvians?
Estonian to Finns and vice versa?

Well, I can't tell you how Lithuanian sounds to Latvians.  But to
understand how Latvian sounds to Lithuanians, you would have to
imagine how a resuscitated ancient Roman (i.e. a Latin speaker) would
react on hearing modern Italian.  He would say "What the f...!?  Who
are these people?  What have they done to my language?"

I can't say for sure, but it may be somewhat similar to how Germans
feel when hearing Yiddish. (Talking 2011 here, purely linguistics, no
politics.)

Actually, going back to how Lithuanian sounds to Latvians, logically,
I suppose it must sound to them rather like Latin does to Italians.
Or Classical Arabic (as orated by mullahs or newsreaders) sounds to
speakers of Colloquial Arabic.

Interesting - thanks!

Does it sound different in a pretty or beautiful way or an unpleasant
way? To a Ukrainian-speaker, for example, Polish sounds childlike,
sugary, and whispery, Russian sounds vulgar and harsh, Belarussian
distorted and unpleasant without the harshness of Russian (and it is
the closest to Ukrainian of those three). To a Russian, Ukrainian is
comical at times. To a Pole, Czech is comical. Hmmm....when writing
these impressions, it becomes clear that most perceptions of similar
languages seem to be negative.

I am not trying to provoke an international flamewar, just curious
about the specific nature of the perceived differences.

regards,

BM

I would be curious to know how Americans percieve various groups of
English dialects (Yorkshire, for example)....

In England, American accent, particularly spoken in Southern states
sounds comical.
.

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