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From: Peter Bromfield <peter@ren.er.usgs.gov>
Subject: Re: Languages: Hard, Harder, Hardest
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Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 13:25:03 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:58082 sci.lang.translation:7937

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:
> 
> Peter Bromfield <peter> wrote:
> 
> [on the difficulty of Arab:]
>[cut]
> I very much doubt this is a question of race.  `ayin and Haa are
> common sounds in some languages of the Caucasus (the speakers of which
> are caucasians, linguistically as well as racially).  The Arabs
> themselves are of course caucasians racially.

In northern Iraq and Syria yes, but the further south you go no. In fact
most Arab historians say that The Arabs originated in the center of
Arabia, not in the Caucasus. Some even say that the original Arabs
resembled Ethiopians and actually came from Ethiopia. Modern Arabs can
not be put into one racial type like Chinese and Japenese people.

> 
> What is often seen is that the phonological (and sometimes also the
> morphological or syntactical) systems of neighbouring languages are
> similar, even when the languages belong to different genetic groups,
> and the people to different races.  Such characteristics are known as
> "areal" and the languages included are said to form a "Sprachbund".
> 
> Some examples are: Khoisan and Nguni (Xhosa, Zulu) [clicks];
> Basque
> and Spanish [apical /s/ and 5-vowel system]; Dravidian, Munda and
> Indo-Aryan [retroflex stops]; Georgian, Armenian, Ossetic and North
> Caucasian [ejective stops]; Sino-Tibetan, Thai, Vietnamese [tones],
> etc.
> 
> The first example (Khoisan-Nguni) is telling: until the Bantu reached
> Southern Africa, only people of the Khoisan (i.e. Bushman-Hottentot)
> race used clicks phonologically (Europeans use clicks too, but as
> interjections only, e.g. /|/ (*tsk*) to denote disapproval).

Yes, but still it isn't part of the lettering. We have things done on
extremes of emotion like sighing, yuckh!, ugh! which closely resembles
letters in other languages. The aspirated *sigh* sounds similar to the
Arabic Haa', the kh in yuckh! sounds like khaa' and gh in some
situations sounds like ghayn. There are several more I could probably
come up with.

>  The
> adoption of clicks into Xhosa and Zulu proves that even clicks are not
> bound to a specific race.

I think German is fairly guttoral, but I don't know if a German would
find it easier to articulate Arabic guttorals than an African language
speaker.

Because of migration and settlement into different countries, ofcourse
most sounds are not bound to a certain race. However, I think the closer
you get to the original speakers, the more you will see differences in
the sounds which correspond to the different racial types.?

-Peter

> 
> ==
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal                     ~ ~
> Amsterdam                   _____________  ~ ~
> mcv@pi.net                 |_____________|||
> 
> ========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
