|
 |
Beauty in language | ||
Tags: Beauty | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Yvelle Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6314 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Gypsy/Romani | Message 1 of 21 16 August 2007 at 2:54pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Excluding the writing system - does the beauty of language have to do with it's structure as well as the pronounciation?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 21 16 August 2007 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | ||
|
It can, but beauty of anything is in the eye of the beholder. It's all relative.
Some people may find elegance in a sentence from an analytic language (e.g. Mandarin) being translated as one word in a polysynthetic language (e.g. Cherokee). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lloydkirk Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6413 days ago 429 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 21 21 August 2007 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
I find this to be particularly the case amongst languages. I'm personally bewildered that any person could find spoken mandarin or cantonese beautiful, though I do find the written language fascinating. People look at me with the same bewilderment when I declare German the most beautiful language. In the US and UK, french, italian and Spanish are the generally considered the only ear friendly languages. While I could agree with italian, french is too cliche, nasal and unphonetic for my tastes. Spanish sounds like butchered italian to my ears and it rather cliche in the US too. I apologize if this seems like a rant, I'm just awed by the subjectivity in linguistic taste. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6359 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 21 21 August 2007 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | ||
This is likely the truest phrase you'll find in this discussion. EVERYTHING is relative when it comes to language learning, or aesthetics in the field. The environments in which we're raised, the cultural attitudes surrounding us, our exposure as children, perceptions as adolescents, experiences as adults - this all factors in to what we find "beautiful" and "ugly" in a language. There's nothing wrong with relativity. It only becomes a problem when we try to extrapolate relativistic experiences across objective boundaries (X is an ugly language because...). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Crisedan Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6094 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Dutch | Message 5 of 21 27 February 2009 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I find that Dutch is often desribed as an ugly language, however, I love the use of diminutives and the mix of the soft g with rolled r. I really find it a beautiful language. I feel the same but to a lesser extent for afrikaans.
I would say that Scottish Gaelic is much more harmonic than Irish. I find french much more pleasant and attractive than Spanish or Italian, yet I would find Spanish more pleasant than the confusing phonology of portuguese. I do not mean to demean any languages here as I believe all languages to have their own merits, so this is just my personal taste. Edited by Crisedan on 27 February 2009 at 6:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| GibberMeister Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Scotland Joined 5808 days ago 61 posts - 67 votes Speaks: Spanish, Catalan, Lowland Scots*, English*, Portuguese | Message 6 of 21 10 March 2009 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | ||
|
My personal views:
German is fascinating structurally and I quite like the sound too. French I find very plain in both regards. I love the structure and mutations in the Celtic languages - though I find Welsh the most beautiful and sing-songy. I love the Irish accent of English, though find my own Lowland Scots dialect unattractive for sound though rich in nuance and humour. Basque has a fascinating structure, though I find it ugly to look at. As for sounds - it is very very similar to Spanish. Italian irritates me after 5 minutes of listening (no offence to anyone - I have Italian friends, maybe it's them!) Beautiful Sounding Languages of which I understand little or nothing? Finnish. Tibetan. Chinese. Greek. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Calvino Diglot Groupie Sweden sammafllod.wordpress Joined 5966 days ago 65 posts - 66 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: French, Spanish, German | Message 7 of 21 12 March 2009 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I know it makes me a stereotype, but I really find French quite beautiful. My number 1, however, must be Russian. Lots of lovely palatals.
Singy-songy languages, on the other hand, annoy me. Maybe because I speak one myself. Nothing is more horrible than to hear a Swede mangle English by retaining his native prosody. It's like, sweet Christ, can't you keep still? Do you have to swing up and down like you were riding a roller-coaster? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gamma Octoglot Groupie Brazil Joined 6943 days ago 82 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, English, GermanC2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Icelandic, Dutch | Message 8 of 21 13 March 2009 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||
|
I am fallen in love with Icelandic. I listen to it as if it was music.
Simply divine. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
