French swallow consonants, feel full all day!

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 10/16/06, RonButters at aol.com <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
>
> It seems more likely that the constant lip rounding from making all those
> front rounded vowels would cause the French to burn more calories than the
> English or the Russians, though that would still leave any fat Germans
> unexplained.
> The French must, of course, worry that the Academie Police will have them
> arrested for using foreign words, and the energy that is expended thereby is
> something that Germans do not have to put up with.

Don't forget, Germans might also be overeating as a way of coping with
the depression brought on by their "grumpy vowels":

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003372.html


--Ben Zimmer

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