XPost: alt.english.usage, alt.usage.english, nl.taal   
   From: athel.cb@gmail.com   
      
   Anton Shepelev  posted:   
      
   > Ruud Harmsen (uniqude punctuation amended):   
   >   
   > > As a non-native speaker, can you hear, and make, the   
   > > difference between `We built this city on rock and roll' (not   
   > > one of my favourite songs by the way; donТt know why) and the   
   > > present tense variant `We build this city...'?   
   >   
   > No idea.  99% of English speech I hear is in songs, and I can't   
   > seem to remember a song with the words `build' or `built'.   
   > "There's a leak in this old building" irrelevantly comes to mind   
   > by way of tangential association...   
   >   
   > My general impression of modern English pronunciation is that is   
   > lazy -- dirty and slurry, not sharp and well-articulated,   
      
   It's curious that you say that, because it accurately describes   
   how Russian sounds to me, not at all like Polish, for example.   
      
   >as one   
   > hears movies from the thirties.  "movies from the thirties" will   
   > soon be ambiguous, by the way...   
   >   
      
      
   --   
   athel   
      
   Living in Marseilles for 38 years; mainly in England before that   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)