[tetris11]

My girlfriend's learning Turkish, and one of the customs that one says after being thanked for cooking a meal is "afiyet olsun". That is, "aff-ee-yet awl-soohn" with the relatively little stress on any particular part.

Her, being Italian, puts all the intonation at the beginning so it becomes "AFF-ee-yet AWL-soohn" and it just sounds like gibberish. Sometimes even if I know what she's trying to say, it still comes across as alien.

It's insane how intonation can completely change a language, and even a well defined language like German, a phonetic language just like Turkish, still sounds really bad if you don't get the intonation right (see: Trey Parkers attempts to speak German in South Park episodes)