Warning: mysqli::__construct(): (HY000/1203): User howardkn already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connections in D:\Inetpub\vhosts\howardknight.net\al.howardknight.net\includes\artfuncs.php on line 21
Failed to connect to MySQL: (1203) User howardkn already has more than 'max_user_connections' active connectionsPath: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Ross Clark Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re:_TV:_Padomju_d=c5=beinsi?= Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2025 21:23:30 +1300 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 21 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: r.clark@auckland.ac.nz MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2025 09:23:40 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="8a1eb52dc6dd1fefdc92f08d892f2ae6"; logging-data="2073995"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX181VcZuTvKQ0mZ7Qn1x0+qwuTimDqMet58=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1 Cancel-Lock: sha1:NEFGU2kBM9x6XsmVVV+qokeomYA= Content-Language: en-GB In-Reply-To: Bytes: 2230 On 23/03/2025 12:41 p.m., Christian Weisgerber wrote: > On 2025-03-22, Christian Weisgerber 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.