Ancient Babylonian Music

[celedhring]

IDK if that's accurate.

You can construct some basics of pronunciation of dead languages and "Babylonian" has a fairly close descendant in Assyrian.   

Here's what a Sumerian might have looked like:

Terrence Malick

Can't wait for that musical he's shooting.

[Martinus]

Phonetically knight would probably be spelled nite.

Again, phonetically according to the rules of what language? Certainly not Latin, German or Polish.

Phonetic spelling means you are spelling a word in a manner that, if each letter (or, more specifically, phonem) was read independently of each other, they would give the correct pronounciation of the word in the end.

That does not change the fact that, say, the letter "w" or "j" is pronounced completely differently in English, Polish, Spanish or German (and does not even exist in Latin). So the point is, you cannot deduct pronounciation from phonetic spelling if you do not know what language was used to spell phonetically in the first place.

[celedhring]

Also foreigners don't give a shit about how the word they are borrowing is spelled.

Early Slavic boat is "karabl", from the early Byzantine Greek "karabel."  This means that the Slavs were interacting with Greek speakers who had ships prior to the time the Greeks lost the "b" phoneme and merged it with "v" (Russian "Vasilij" is the Greek name "Basil" because it was introduced later.)

Is that related to the English word "caravel"?

Obviously.  Guessing through the Sicilians or Venetians with Spain as an intermediary, but that's a guess.

To my knowledge, that is true. "Carabela" is a type of small boat in Spanish (the one Columbus used in his first voyage), at the very least.

[Duque de Bragança]

Phonetically knight would probably be spelled niite.

No, it would be /naɪt/
Please use phonetically only with API transcriptions, thank you.

[Norgy]

I bet you could look through 300 other fora and never find this level of geekiness. Ever. Kudos to Psellus for pushing the stakes higher.

[Martinus]

I bet you could look through 300 other fora and never find this level of geekiness. Ever. Kudos to Psellus for pushing the stakes higher.

Well, somethingawful.com had recently a fanfic about Jaime Lannister being gang-raped by Winnie the Pooh, the Piglet and the Tiger...

[Ed Anger]

I just got an erection

[Caliga]

Seriously, it looks like my dad.

My dad looks like John Bolton.

[Martinus]

Seriously, it looks like my dad.

My dad looks like John Bolton.

I guess it's better than Roose Bolton... 

[Caliga]

I have no idea who that is.

[grumbler]

I have no idea who that is.

Character in Game of Thrones.

[Siege]

I have no idea who that is.

[Siege]

[The Larch]

And Spanish and Basque actually do sound somewhat alike.  Basque land is right next to historic Castile. A lot of the early inhabitants of the County or Kingdom of Castile would have been Basque, and a lot of the early great kings are Basque.  Ditto a lot of typically Spanish first and last names.

Say what? Basque and Spanish are nothing alike, and in no conceivable way do they sound alike. Basque sounds like fucking Klingon.

Also, while there was undoubtly some Basque-Castillian mixing early on I don't think that Basque influence was as great as you describe it, and you might be making the relatively common mistake of foreigners to associate the Kingdom of Navarre with Basqueness, which it was not.

[Queequeg]

Say what? Basque and Spanish are nothing alike, and in no conceivable way do they sound alike. Basque sounds like fucking Klingon.

Also, while there was undoubtly some Basque-Castillian mixing early on I don't think that Basque influence was as great as you describe it, and you might be making the relatively common mistake of foreigners to associate the Kingdom of Navarre with Basqueness, which it was not.

You grew up knowing one language and being familiar with the other.  I've heard quite a bit of Basque, and I think the sound inventory sounds vaguely similar to Spanish. The structure very clearly isn't though, which is what you might be hearing.  The vowel system is basically the same.   

And I don't really think so.  Navarre was ethnically mixed, but I think its ethnic core was Basque.  IIRC Castile was settled partially by people from Asturias, and presumably some of the reconquered area would have had some remaining Mozarabic Romance-speaking population.