Wednesday, December 12, 2007

layz-ah-NEE-mah-nyaks...

dear goodness.

my friend shafi sent me this video:


i can understand that one, mostly. but because i'm a bit of a language geek, and because youtube links associated videos, i've spent the last twenty minutes seeing how various countries' tv people have modified the not-so-word "animaniacs" to make it fit their languages. i think my favorite is the russian... sorta "ah-NEE-MAHT-see-ya" - анимашки if anybody can make a better approximation from the cyrillic.

oh, and has anybody else found afghans speaking english to have just a touch of a midwestern twang? i've now finished two audiobooks by afghan authors read by natives... probably not natives with particularly strong accents, of course, but still. i found it fascinating that both had this little touch of it on certain vowels. i don't know enough to be sure whether they were originally pashto speakers or natives of another regional language, but i wonder about the factors that lead to a particular "accent"...

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