It's all greek to me

[Óttar]

I've never heard Sanskrit spoken

One must hear a proper Vedic chant. There is a thing called candas, "chund' us' with short 'u' sound" which is the proper intonation of a Sanskrit chant which is with a particular metre such as the gayatri. This is to be distinguished from the rather crude and infantile tunes of the common Indian folk song.

Listen to the Gayatri mantra with proper intonation and gayatri metre:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDjYdpOmV1s[/YOUTUBE]

Hear also a Tantrik chant called Sri Chakra using a proper metre.

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmKo72JSLac[/YOUTUBE]

[Frigga]

To me, it sounds like a cross between Spanish and Russian.

[Phlegethon]

Sounds all Greek to me. Like all Mediterranean languages it is usually spoken at a speed and with so many regional aberrations that it is impossible to comprehend. As I am basically a book person I am much better in reading foreign newspapers, with a basic knowlege of about half a dozen modern European languages, literacy in three others and more than just basic knowledge of two dead ones.

[Angantyr]

Greek does not stand out from Indo-European nor is it more distinct than any other language. True, it is a branch of Indo-European that has only one member, Greek. But the same can be said of Armenian and Albanian. And Baltic currently only has two surviving languages.

That being said, there are some distinguishing characteristics of Greek that can help one in identifying the language when spoken, even if you do not understand the words.

Greek has the [θ] sound, like English "th" in thin. This is found in a limited number of languages in Europe...English, Albanian, Greek, Welsh, Castilian Spanish and several others.

About 40% of all Greek spoken vowels are [i] due to the historical convergence of η, ι, υ, ει, οι, υι. The five other vowels sounds comprise the remaining 60%. This is a very lopsided representation of vowels.

Greek [s] σ and [z] ζ are lamino-alveolar and are articulated approximately as [ɕ] and [ʑ], which to many will sound like English "sh" and "zh".

Listen to the recordings agains and you will clearly notice these features.

[jerney]

It sounds like a mix of Slavic and Romance words/sound to me.

[Óttar]

Does Sanskrit 'sound' more like Greek than German 'sounds' like Greek?

I would have to say Sanskrit sounds more like Greek as vowels are very clearly a large component of the "sound" of both languages. They are both not as guttural as German.

German: (thou) art, am, he/she is, they are = (du) bist, (ich) bin, er/sie ist, sie sind.

Sanskrit: mother, father is amba/mata, pita

Greek is Meter which is similar to German Mutter, but Greek retains a /p/ word for father, like Sanskrit pita whereas German is Vater, which has an /f/ phoneme. Meter also sounds like mata, so Greek is IMO closer to Sanskrit on all fronts.

However, both Sanskrit and German mash adjectives and nouns together to form new words, which can be rather long.

[Útrám]

To my unfamiliar ears, Greek sounds mostly Gallo-Iberian with a modicum of west-Slavic. It does remind me a bit of Portuguese, a romance language which coincidentally sounds slavic.

[Tabiti]

For me Greek sounds ...Greek.
Maybe a distant similarity with Roman languages, but still quite different.

[Absinthe]

Haha, all those guesses are so interesting. And I love it when people look at me funny when I am abroad and I pick up my cell phone

[Will]

To me it sounds like my cousins.