teacup Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> premalatha balan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > No. English-speakers have different accent
> (to
> > German) when they speak other languages..
>
> Can you describe the difference... in general?
well, most of the english speakers do not try at all to copy the tone/sound/pronounciation of others... even if they thought they did, they only speak from their language-tongue. which makes them speak from tip of their tongue. to speak tamil one has to bend tongue in several ways... puli (the "li") if said using tip of your tongue, means "tiger". the same puli, if said by bending your tongue to touch the middle of your upper jaw, then it is tamarind. (Tamarind is a fruit used in many recipies, eg. Mulligatawny - see coffee house).. pali, if said using tip of your tongue it means "sacrificial killing".... pali if said by beinding your tongue to touch the inner most upperjaw, it means, "revenge"... vali - tip of the tongue - "pain".. vali-- middle upper jaw -"wipe off"... vali - inner most upper jaw - "path"... all that "va" has to be short... if va is long, then vali with tongue touching the middle upper jaw is "bucket". valippu - long va, middle upper jaw, "shapy"... valippu - short va, tip of your tongue - "fits" (the disease)....
it is because there are three "l"s in tamil.. similarly there are three "n", two "r", there is a "ng" and "gn" (say using nasal)... one has to pay attention to pick up how they say it.. but, it is always not possible to repeat exactly, mainly because how we have been speaking... british-english speakers use their lower part of their throat a lot... and americans use their nasal a lot...
German first of all are used to the idea of speaking other language, atleast english, and have idea that sometimes one has to try the same word differently in order to make it sound closer to its original... their english is different from native-english speakers english. it is that "european accent".. but, before I go more into that, I think I should observe more.. One of my colleague is a german. I will ask him to say tamil words and find out...
> >
> > Isn't English derived from Latin more than
> > Germanic origin?
>
> No, AFAIK languages like Spanish, Italian, French
> are Romance (i.e. Latinate) languages. But, while
> English borrows heavily from Latin its main
> influences are from Northern Europe. (?)
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2005 04:29AM by prema1.