Pawel,

[Robert Bolia <rbolia@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pawel,
   Thanks for the interesting question (which has prompted a great
deal of interesting discussion).  I believe the correspondence between
"high" pitch and high-frequency sounds is the same in Finnish as it is
in the Indo-European languages (at least according to my
Finnish-English dictionary; I am not a Finnish-speaker).  I have
dictionaries for several other non-IE languages (Arabic, Chinese,
Estonian), but they are either not very good or only go one way (i.e.,
Arabic-English but not English-Arabic; not particularly helpful since
I don't read Arabic).  Any good technical dictionary should be able to
tell us something.

Bob.


Pawel Kusmierek wrote:

Thank you very much for this information. I am the one who posted
the original "Why high is high" message and caused a huge
discussion that gradually went to topics, which are not very
relevant to my questions.  But now you gave me an interesting
information. Please clarify one matter (I need to be sure):  does
'high'  in Finnish mean a sound of high frequency (like in English,
Polish, etc.) or opposite?

Other people who now other non-Indo-European languages or who
has non-Indo-European-speaking friends: please contribute and tell
us how are sounds described in Chinese, Japanese, Hungarian or
any other language!

Pawel Kusmierek


*************************************

Pawel Kusmierek
Department of Neurophysiology
Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology
3, Pasteur St., 02-093 Warsaw, Poland

tel. (48-22) 659 85 71 ex 379 or 388
fax  (48-22) 822 53 42
E-mail pq@nencki.gov.pl
ICQ 11740175

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