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[gusl]

Patel, Daniele - An empirical comparison of rhythm in language and music

I didn't know you could neatly classify languages based on the rhythm. According to them, English is stress-timed while French is syllable-timed (this seems to generalize to Germanic / Romance). Also, there is a correlation between being stress-timed and a high degree of vowel reduction.


via the Music, Mind, Meaning reading group

Comments

[malinkaya.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting. When I was learning French my professor would always clap his hands to a certain rhythm before asking us to read a text. I guess the point of it was so we could speak not only with the correct grammar and accent, but with the right inflections as well.

Makes sense, actually.