Any time up until three years and a day ago, if I'd heard a person on the Elizabeth line talk on the phone in Hebrew about material engineering, I'd complain about loud Israelis.
But now, I just noted that he was living in London judging by what he said and felt safe speaking Hebrew on the train.
Oct 8, 2026, 10:44 AM@Alon I'd still complain about being loud on the train, but I don't discriminate, I'm a bitch regardless of the language they speak
@ramona I was just listening in on the conversation, it was fascinating about how to use dimensional analysis as a first pass in materials science.
Oct 8, 2026, 11:37 AM@Alon can non-speakers differentiate between Hebrew, Arabic and Turkish? To me they melt into a continuum of languages with prominent “h” sounds.
@acb Yes, very easily. Some Arabs have taken to calling Hebrew Arabic spoken in a German accent. The phoneme inventory of Hebrew, if not the rest of the phonology, is quite Europeanized, and when I tried affecting a Hebrew accent in English at D&D I was asked if I was affecting a French accent.
Turkish has a totally different phonology, including both phoneme inventory and phonotactics, from both Hebrew and Arabic. Very easy to distinguish the two for the discerning German racist.
Oct 8, 2026, 4:08 PM@Alon Many years ago, I found an Accents For Actors tape/booklet. It had a number of accents (of varying degrees of verisimilitude; the Australian one was somewhat risible). In the notes on the Israeli accent, the booklet mentioned that it gets confused with a French accent.