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USAGE: English, Masculine, Feminine

From:Emily Zilch <emily0@...>
Date:Monday, June 14, 2004, 19:41
{ 20040612,0840 | Philippe Caquant }

"What I meant is that when I listen so some English
people (not all of them, clearly), I feel a sheer
pleasure, just when listening to music or attending a
theatre play. It is both very expressive and very
rich, it is ART. Here I'm just talking about the
melody and the pronunciation, not about the message.
This I seldom feel when listening to Americans, but I
could also compare it to the music of French language,
which is also usually very motononous and hardly
exciting. I don't mean that every English speaker
should talk this way, I just enjoy some way of
speaking that seems to me typically English of

"If you take the name "Holmes", for ex, it can be a piece of art in
itself, just like a painting or a small piece of music. [ snip... ] (I
don't know how Americans pronounce it and I'd better no ask, as I'll
get thirty-two different answers; the only thing is to listen to it)."

emily says [ ho:mz ]. I have one of those interesting speech registers
that notes all three vowels in Mary, Marry & Merry (which Pacific Coast
speakers hear & say as an even [ E ] instead) but which cannot
distinguish [ o ] - I have a monosyllabic diphthong for orange [ Ar\nj
] and no l in salmon [ s&mn= ], palm [ pA:m ], holmes [ ho:mz ].

"True, I also sometimes heard melody in English spoken by Americans,
especially by women, but that was very different. I remember I saw a TV
report about female American scientists trying to talk to bonobo
monkeys (in Virginia, I believe ?). I was frightened. I can't figure
how many octaves they used and how high they got, but it was terrible.
It made you gnash your teeth."

Or, if you are quarter troll like me, your tusks. Gnashing tusks are
better imagery. Also it's easier to eat the babies with them.

"I think that the music of languages is something really interesting. I
love listening to Spanish or Russian for ex: I read somewhere that
these are "male" languages, while English would be "female" (can't
remember what is French: maybe androgyne, or asexuated?)"

It's that old axiom about the masculine feel of consonant-final
languages (Spanish) v. the feminine sweetness of vowel-final ones



Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>
Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>