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Beauty in language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Satoshi Diglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5823 days ago 215 posts - 224 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: German, Japanese | Message 9 of 21 20 March 2009 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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As a Portuguese speaker, I find Spanish ugly. It just sounds like Portuguese spoken by someone who just bit their tongue.
French is annoying. Italian is just too stereotypical. I find the Scottish and Irish accents of English beautiful. I also think Finnish is very beautiful a language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Taka Diglot Groupie China Joined 6092 days ago 47 posts - 48 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Swedish, Portuguese | Message 10 of 21 24 March 2009 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I also think that Portuguese is a very beautiful language. Not that Spanish is ugly,
but to me Portuguese just sounds nicer especially singing Portuguese. I fall in love with the Portuguese 'd' between vowels and those nasal sounds. I must learn it. I found Swedish fascinating too, with its 'sing-song' tone of course. But I've been listening to SR radio this week. I don't like the hosts' accents though, maybe it is because of they wanted to sound funny in the program. I can't tell many different languages so it is hard to comment on the others. But as I know, I think Chinese mandarin is more beautiful than other dialects in China. Edited by Taka on 24 March 2009 at 5:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| couragepiece93 Groupie United States Joined 5768 days ago 77 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin | Message 11 of 21 01 April 2009 at 1:52am | IP Logged | ||
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I go to a boarding school for dozens of countries, and listen to other languages all the time. I hate listening to Chinese and Spanish, because they sound sort of annoying, and are rough on the ears. I love russian and French when I hear them spoken, as well as Japanese and Korean, which both sound very unique.
Outside of school, I think Norwegian and Swedish are particularly beautiful. 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 12 of 21 01 April 2009 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Of the Romance languages, I do like the written forms of all of them, but I find the most beautiful sounding spoken ones are Galician and Sardinian.
I find Argentinian and Mexican Spanish very pleasant, although in Spain it is the extremeño and western Andalusian accents I find the nicest. The part of Spain where I live, although humorous, I find the accent the ugliest of all. As for Portuguese, I like how it looks but not how it sounds, apart from some Brazilian accents it sounds like it's been chopped up a bit. I also think many of the Bantu languages have a power in their sound that I find appealing. I also love the way Irish people, Canadians and the Dutch speak English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 13 of 21 25 June 2009 at 7:38am | IP Logged | ||
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At the moment, my top five favorite languages in beauty are (in no particular order) Arabic, Greek (modern), Portuguese (either dialect; I love both), Japanese, and Russian.
Arabic - A lot of people say they don't like the sound of it, but I absolutely adore it. I love all of the interesting sounds that are found in few other languages. I like the abjad too... Arabic is next in line on my list. Greek - Yay! Greek is a really beautiful language in general, especially when it's paired with the Greek culture, history, and Greece itself! Portuguese - I love Portuguese. I call it the perfect combination of "soft" and "sharp." I think Spanish is too "sharp" and French is too "soft" (I still like French and I sort-of like Spanish still, but my "approval rating" for it dropped after beginning Portuguese). Japanese - Oh, so nice! And with that lovey culture and history and the beautiful writing system! Russian - I love all of the sounds of Russian. I don't think it is "harsh" at all, but just one of the most beautiful languages of the world. I think that the Cyrillic alphabet is delightful as is its complex and interesting grammar. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 21 29 June 2009 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it is a general rule that it's harder to like a language that is too close to your own, or to one you know well.
For instance with Spanish and Portuguese, it's the same thing with me: Being very familiar with one of them, Spanish in my case, I too have a hard time finding any beauty or anything to like about the other one of the two. It's probably just because they are so close that the other one instinctively feels like just a poor and failed attempt at pronouncing the first one. This effect is likely to disappear very quickly the moment you start digging into the other one a little deeper and trying to learn it. I have felt the same kind of effects between Swedish and Norwegian, and Swedish and Danish, though I actually grew to like Danish after some more exposure. Edited by Hencke on 29 June 2009 at 2:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachbund Octoglot Newbie Denmark Joined 5632 days ago 15 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, German, Spanish, French, Dutch Studies: Italian, Latin, Arabic (classical), Russian | Message 15 of 21 29 June 2009 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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A language can be perceived as beautiful because one knows it well, because one finds the structure deeply interesting, because it just sounds pleasing or fascinating, and all of these are very individual tastes. Swedish may sounds absurdly sing-song to some, I like the language because I know it very well. German sounds harsh to some, I find the long, convoluted sentences of German literary style thoroughly beautiful. I speak a much poorer Italian than Spanish, but find Italian more beautiful (just the opposite of Hencke's point in the previous post). Some languages, like Sami, or Tamazight Berber, are completely incomprehensible to me, but sound great, each in their very different way.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6372 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 21 30 June 2009 at 4:18am | IP Logged | ||
Tell me about it! lol 1 person has voted this message useful |
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