Do American boys find the english accent atractive?

Well, no, I'm more like amused by your verbiage above more than anything, and busy wondering about how it at all goes against (rather than actually reinforce) everything else said in here about what many think of Texas and at least some of its militantly-Texan-nationalist inhabitants...

>>I'm more like amused by your verbiage

Likewise.

>>and busy wondering about how it at all goes against (rather than actually reinforce) everything else said in here about what many think of Texas

Wonder away, my good man... glad to help fire those old synapses in your brain!

A lot of those things are _in_ Texas, but not necessarily Texas's.

_If_ Texas were to secede (and we can hope, can't we?), you can bet NASA wouldn't be hanging around, for instance.

Also, a quick Google search revealed that a couple years ago Texas produced about a million barrels of oil a day, while we imported about 12 times that much. So yeah, it would hurt, but we don't actually get most of our oil from Texas.

Plus, the rest of the country has the advantage of being able to distinguish between "pin" and "pen." We'd begin communicating in code that relies heavily on those vowels in order to keep our conversations secret.

Anyway, that list is impressive, but if Texas were to secede then they wouldn't actually have a huge space program and a huge defense program.

To Gabe (from a couple of pages back):

re Russian accents - as you know its a Slavic language and certainly for the Southern Slavic languages, correct speech must be with the tongue and the back of the throat - its a labial language. I'm sure other Slavic languages are like that as well. Hence the throaty and loud accents of a Slavic individual speaking in English. This might also happen with Romanian speakers, although not a Slavic language, may use their mouths in a more Slavic way to pronounce words (I think someone said that).

This should be compared to Western European languages where you speak using the front of your mouth and teeth, hence called a dental language. I notice when I speak my native slavic language that I project my voice to the back of my throat and when I speak English, I move my tongue forward and talk with my teeth. Likewise, a Western language speaker speaking a Slavic language sounds tinny.

As for dropping "a" and "the", I presume Slavic languages in general (certainly Southern Slavic languages) don't have "a" or "the". For example:

Serbian or Croatian: Ti si Englez?
Translated in English might mean "Are you an Englishman?" or "Are you the Englishman?".
You can't say "a chair" or "an apple", you can say "one chair" or "one apple", even though you normally wouldn't unless its in the context of a sentence requesting something

As for "the", it is added on to the end of a word:
For example,
"meso" which is "meat" and "mesoto" which is "the meat"; or;
"stolica" which is "chair" and "stolicata" which is "the chair".
"The" by itself does not exist.

Hence, slavic speakers often drop "the" and "a" because they speak English but think in for example Russian.

Now boys, Texas is neither the pearl nor the scourge of the U.S., so there will be no more talk of secession. Furthermore, let’s keep in mind that Texas is not completely amassed of “militantly-nationalist inhabitants” nor is the rest of the country “bleedin'-heart uber-liberals.” Petty quarrels among fellow countrymen are just that . . . petty.

Frances:

Hm, thanks, very interesting! When I want to think of a Russian accent, I think of the word "philosophy" -- phil-OOSS-so-fee, wherein the "os" part feels like it's getting swallowed. So that's a terrible transcription, but the idea that it's a throaty language exactly matches what I feel when I say "philosophy." Also, I'd never really considered that I speak up at my teeth, but paying attention now it's clear that I do! I find it very interesting that we sound 'tinny' (great word!) speaking Slavic languages. I want to learn one now, just to practice a different way of speaking.

Bubbler:

You're right, I'm being petty. I'll stop now.

Texas still sucks.

Good to hear that I have had an influence on you with a post!! It always helps to learn another language, as my mum says, you learn someone's language, you become their friend. If you do pick up a Slavic language, then you will have some understanding of all slavic languages and it will be easier for you to pick up others.

As for the throaty voice, its funny when I go shopping with my dad and he's making a comment about something he seems to do it a booming, throaty voice that is so loud that I have to tell him to shut up out of embarrassment!

How similar are the Slavic languages to each other, say, compared to the similarilies between Romantic languages or Germanic languages?

Damian,

<<I see both the Glasgows you mentioned are in the South.>>

Glasgow, Virginia, was settled by "Scotch-Irish," and was named for the city in Scotland. However, Glasgow, Kentucky was actually named for Glasgow, Virginia, where many of the Kentucky town's original settlers were from.

<<Notice I didn't use the word "Deep".....>>

You are a quick study!

So Glasgow, KY is a town named after a town named after a town? Weird.

Isn't it, though?

Just to add a note onto the discussion of Romanian:
I know many Romanians and have heard the accent long enough to know it is not quite Russian, but the others above have been right. As my Romanian friends say, Romanian is "Latin spoken in a Slavic tongue". There are many similarities to a Russian accent and to the untrained ear, you could easily associate with that. To me, it sounds like a funny mix of Italian and Russian. Lots of "Da" going on - that's not Latin.

I can understand why you do not want to be associated with Russia though. I've heard the horror stories.

Does Romanian have many Slavic loan words? I know that the Romainian word for eyes, "ochii," is like the Russian word, although that doesn't mean that it was borrowed from Russian.

I realized after I wrote the above that, of course, "ochii" is a Latin-based word (as the Italian "occhi") but happens to be pronounced like the Russian word.