"chewing gum" effect

It's all right, to me, if he wants to write in French...

But personally, I'd want to hear what the gentleman has to say--it could be important to the matter at hand. Writing in French makes this impossible.

>><Remember that the original poster said that a German make the chewing gum remark...

Now think of how a German or German speaking person sounds to us (Arnold Schwarzenegger for example)...

Germans speak with the words being formed very forward in their mouths. .it DOES sound (at least to *their* ears) that we are "swallowing" out words. It has nothing to do with diphthongs...>

Guest, I don't think I can agree with this. To ME, anyway, German sounds gutteral, not labial-- Swiss dialects in particular. Admittedly, this is a subjective perception, filtered through the sounds of my native tongue.<<

In more linguistic terms, the matter is that German tends to have pure rounded back vowels such as [ɔ oː ʊ uː], whereas English dialects tend to front and incompletely round their back vowels, as well as some of the dorsal fricatives [ç x χ], which most English dialects lack outside [ç] commonly showing up on a limited basis. This is what makes German seem "gutteral" and as being "swallowed". However, the perceived labialness of German is likely both because of its full rounding of its rounded back vowels such as [ɔ oː ʊ uː], compared to the incomplete rounding of such in most English dialects, and because of the use of rounded front vowels such as [œ øː ʏ yː] in most German dialects, while most English dialects lack any rounded front vowels (even though central rounded vowels are common in English dialects).

Okay, how about this as a compromise on greg? If greg knows someone doesn't know French, perhaps greg can refrain from addressing that person directly in French (Kef or other poster), but he can continue posting general messages in French for those who don't mind his French.

I'm not trying to be a moderator.

Cher 'Guest' : c'est avec plaisir que j'écris en allemand ou en castillan. Mais je ne peux deviner laquelle de ces langues te conviendrait. Je dis ça car, contrairement à ce qui est affirmé ici et là, j'écris en plusieurs langues.

I'd use Castillan with Kef, then. With monolingual people or "semis", I guess they will just miss out on your interesting insights in French, Spanish or German

I'd use English in the English forum.

what is te diferce between monopthong and dipthong

A monothong is a single simple vowel sound, like ah, ee, or oh.

A diphthong is a compination of two vowel sounds into one, such as ow (actually ah and oh in quick succession). English is full of diphthongs.