zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6372 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 17 of 21 30 June 2009 at 4:20am | IP Logged |
For me it's the sound of the language first but I agree with Chung that "beauty is in the
eye of the beholder". The structure of a language is usually 'cool' or 'elegant' to me
but never beautiful.
The way a language sounds is more akin to music because both are auditory. :)
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Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 18 of 21 30 June 2009 at 9:39am | IP Logged |
Sprachbund wrote:
I speak a much poorer Italian than Spanish, but find Italian more beautiful (just the opposite of Hencke's point in the previous post). |
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Same thing for me with Italian, which I did study just a little many years ago.
I think the key issue here is that you do speak some Italian, and you have built up a certain level of familiarity with it. As I said, I have found that the effect I mentioned wears off very quickly with increased familiarity and growing interest in the subject.
For languages that we don't know anything about at all, other factors will determine whether we like them or not.
I have no idea why, but I seem to have some kind of instinctive aversion to the way Turkish sounds. If I started digging into it and trying to learn it, I am sure I would very quickly start finding it beautiful.
Chinese used to sound unpleasant to me until I started studying it, when lo and behold, the hidden beauty was suddenly revealed.
Edited by Hencke on 30 June 2009 at 9:49am
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Draemr72 Newbie Ireland Joined 5664 days ago 7 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German
| Message 19 of 21 30 June 2009 at 6:04pm | IP Logged |
I love my own native Donegal dialect of Irish but then again, I'm biased :-D.
I think Norwegian is a beautiful language. I absolutely adore English spoken in a French accent. I also love the sound of Swahili and the Maori language.
I wonder, how many people think their own first language sounds beautiful?
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legasp Newbie Ireland Joined 5673 days ago 23 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Greek, Ancient Greek
| Message 20 of 21 30 June 2009 at 6:19pm | IP Logged |
Draemr72 I find my native language English beautiful, and I'm an Irishman ;-).
It is a complicated game, but I do think urban modern German sounds pretty with its occasional English borrowings and lilting sounds...
Older, more formal German is full of stratified elegant phrases. I'm quite fond of the 's' as z sound and the harsh ch as in nach.
Greek looks like the language of the Gods with intimations of a higher wisdom hidden on the surface of its letters.
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Ocean Soul Triglot Newbie Croatia Joined 5630 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 21 of 21 01 July 2009 at 6:29pm | IP Logged |
If I omit my native language which is the most beautiful one for me, here's my top 5
Russian: I've fallen in love with this language few years ago and now I study it in the university, it sounds so beautiful, I just can't describe, as if somebody speaks soft croatian xD so tender, soft and just beautiful
Italian: the 2nd language I study in the university... I think in the case of this language people either love it sooo much or just can't stand it. And I'm one of those who adores Italian.
Spanish: Well, besides English let's say I've been learning Spanish since I was kid through mexican soaps, later through music... and thanks to that now I can speak this beautiful language.
Finnish: So melodic and so beautiful, when they talk it seems as if they're singing... Gorgeous. I hope I'll have time to learn it in the future.
Hebrew: I just loooove how it sounds, and their writing looks beautiful
I also like romanian, hungarian, portuguesse, japanese.
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