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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re:_TV:_Padomju_d=c5=beinsi?=
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2025 21:23:30 +1300
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On 23/03/2025 12:41 p.m., Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2025-03-22, Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
> 
>> It turns out that the "Latvian" dialogue actually flips back and
>> forth between Latvian and Russian.  Since I know neither language,
>> simply distinguishing the two is already an effort for me.  (Akanye
>> helps.)
> 
> Actually, I think it isn't so much akanye specifically as that
> Russian generally reduces unstressed vowels.  Latvian not so much.
> And now that I look at Wikipedia's "Latvian phonology" page, I see
> that Latvian distinguishes vowel quantity even in unstressed
> syllables.
> 

This reminded me of the first time I had a chance to hear Latvian spoken 
(some distinguished Latvian being interviewed on TV, with subtitles). 
Knowing some Russian, and a very little Finnish, my impression was that 
it sounded like Russian spoken with a Finnish accent. Which, on 
reflection, makes some linguistic sense. And your point about vowel 
reduction was probably an important part of that impression.