Archive:

Day: April 12, 2016

Why does Basque sound like Spanish despite Spanish being linguistically closer to French, Persian and Hindi?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-12 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

The Greek spoken in Southern Italy sounds like it’s spoken by the Mario brothers. The  Greek spoken in the Ukraine sounds soaked in vodka. And when I’m not in Greece, my dentals become alveolar: I sound like a caricature of “Uncle Nick from America”. Basques live in Spain. The grammar has remained impervious to contact, […]

How does Hungarian sound to someone who doesn’t speak it at all?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-12 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

One of my favourite pastimes when I was younger was to channel-surf to SBS (the multi-cultural broadcaster), and try and guess the language being spoken in the movie I’d landed halfway through. The rule of thumb I’d worked out is, if they sound Turkish and look Swedish, they’re Hungarian. Answered 2016-04-12 · Upvoted by Jácint […]