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Ugliest Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 81 of 120 21 December 2010 at 2:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm going to draw a line in the sand and say enough is enough. This sort of thread has to be one of the silliest--I'm tempted to say ugliest--ideas here at HTLAL. Who cares if you think language X is ugly? Some people may like it. More important, however, is the fact that it is the native tongue of some people. I recognize that some of us don't like certain languages for various very valid reasons. But that's no justification for calling a language ugly. Just like the previous thread of similar ilk, this one is just a rather unpleasant display of prejudice, ignorance and plain crap. Edited by s_allard on 21 December 2010 at 1:53pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5430 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese | Message 82 of 120 21 December 2010 at 10:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm greatly amused by all the ruffled feathers coming from this topic. People spend so
much time saying why they like certain languages, why not talk about the ones they don't like? And perhaps without the 'this is just my opinion, please don't be offended' pre- and post- content apology. The first post clearly stated that this is not meant to offend and only means the views of individual posters. The exit topic buttons on your browser are many. I really don't like the way Portuguese sounds. But like..seriously. I think this may just be Brazilian Portuguese, from these movies I kept seeing at one point, not sure. But the cadence and the way the voice undulates are just unbearable. Especially because I can semi-recognize a portion of the words, so they come off as feeling 'wrong' somehow- like a distorted version of what I know. Yet interestingly enough, its not the same with Italian, a good deal of which sounds familiar to me... Besides that though, even Chinese, which I thought sounded really ugly a while back, has somehow grown on me 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 83 of 120 21 December 2010 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
And that's the heart of the matter. "Ugliness" is generally the result of a slight diversion from a given norm. A crooked nose, a squint mouth and a droopy eye is "ugly". Yet pugs (I type of dog with a screwed-up face) are "cute", even though they're even more different from us than ugly humans. So finding languages ugly is natural -- they hit your ear wrong and sound like a distortion of what you expect speech to be. The more languages you learn, the less any language sounds ugly, because the sounds you hear become less unexpected. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5430 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese | Message 84 of 120 21 December 2010 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
So what's the problem? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 85 of 120 21 December 2010 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I beg to differ. I don't think so-called ugliness of languages has to do with diversion or deviation from a given norm. The reason I find this kind of debate dreadful, if one can call this spectacle a debate, is that people are confusing their personal dislikes ("I don't like the sounds of French") with an objective judgment ("French is ugly"). Brazilian Portuguese may sound unpleasant to you, but that does not make it ugly. I happen to like the sounds of Brazilian Portuguese. This may look like I'm splitting hairs, but the main point is that we're not talking about ugliness. We're talking about personal dislikes. This doesn't interest me, but I think that it may interest other people. So let's call the thread "Personal dislikes in languages". I would have no problem with such a thread. As a matter of fact, I think it would be quite interesting to find out why people have negative opinions about languages. Actually, I'm much more interested in seeing how people have come to be interested in their languages of study. This is usually related to some personal experience at an early age or through travel. This may already have been done. This is where I disagree with Cainntear. I don't think learning lots of languages has anything to do with perception of the beauty of sounds. I think it's more about perception of people and culture of the language. Edited by s_allard on 21 December 2010 at 2:37pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5430 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese | Message 86 of 120 21 December 2010 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ugly isn't an objective judgement.
You're splitting hairs, and the wrong ones at that. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6555 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 87 of 120 21 December 2010 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree that it's time to close this thread, since calling someone's language ugly can hurt their feelings.
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5435 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 88 of 120 21 December 2010 at 9:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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After reading much of the drivel here, I come to the conclusion that any given language is probably disliked by some people. When asked why, the typical answer is along the lines of "I don't like the sounds." I don't understand why people take the time to tell us that they dislike a certain language. Are there people out there who really are interested to find out that French, Portuguese, Thai, Turkish, Arabic, etc. turn some people off?
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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