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Which language(s) appeal(s) the most to you phonetically?

Devil Flamingo

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Not sure if this goes here, lol.

In terms of how it/they sound(s), which language(s) (and/or dialect, variant, etc.) appeal(s) the most to you? Why is that? :3


My answer is going to sound nonsensical to those of you without knowledge of linguistics; sorry if I don't make sense. I've been into the stuff for so long I no longer have the ability to talk about why I don't like this or that language's sounds without getting into the phonetics/phonology of it, oop.

Anyways...

My first lang is Spanish, specifically the Eastern Cuban variant of the Caribbean Spanish dialect. I like it well enough; it sometimes reminds me of Polynesian languages, the way it flip-flops r/l and avoids codas with s and d. I think it's developing long vowels, or at least the vowels seem longer than usual since it's losing s in some places. So qué es lo que es? ("what's up") sounds like kē lo kē. So yeah, I like it. I do not, however, like Castilian Spanish variants. Their snobbery doesn't help their case, but the god-awful litthhping everywhere sounds like Parseltongue. For some reason th and dh work well enough for English and Icelandic, but in Spanish it just sounds horrible. *sprays with repellant*

Second lang is English. Don't like it. Doesn't sound very nice, and the vowels are fucking all over the place. The native speakers can't agree on how many they've got and the dialects keep switching them, and most of them unstress it and reduce it to schwa. Very nasty stuff. The consonants are nice enough, although I really don't care for the aspirated vs. non-aspirated pot, top, cock vs. spot, stock, scott (I know those aren't real minimal pairs). Oz's English seems to have worked out something for it, tho. It sounds much nicer than the dialects of North America and the motherland. And some of the Scottish or Irish variants are mildly pleasant to the ear, I suppose.

Third lang is French. Hate Québec's laxing of /i/, /y/, /u/, but like their dialects otherwise. At times it's a bit too nasal and crazy, but there's some aspects of it that I really, really, really like, such as the affrication of t,d before the high front vowels. Not that fond of France's dialects, 'cept the Southern ones. IIRC Marseille retains the word-final schwa, which is cool. Overall, however, I love French. Good number of consonants, and there's a bit too many vowels for my taste, but nothing batshit crazy, lol.

These aside, I like Finnish best of all. The sounds roll off the tongue with ease, and the vowel harmony keeps them in check which is nice. I'd like Estonian, but the short vs. long vs. superlong vowel distinction (a =/= aa =/= aaa) is slightly disturbing. Its cousin Hungarian is also nice, but something about it puts me off, I can't quite put my finger on it. I'll figure it out some day. But yes, Finnish is the best. I wish I coulda met Tolkien so I could bro-fist the dude and we can fangirl over it. What's not to love about Finnish? Awesome vowels, good consonants, long vowels AND long consonants, vowel harmony (!!!), and lots of unvoiced unaspirated plosives everywhere. :yay:

...There's more where that came from but I'm listening to "Part of your world" (from The Little Mermaid) in Polish (shoutout to Polish speakers: I FUCKING LOVE YOUR LANGUAGE :heart: ) and I'm having an orgasm so I'll be back later. :bye:
 

Lexicon

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Icelandic, Finnish, German, Ukranian.

They have a sort of clean/musical/powerful sound, to my ear.

Any language where words sound mushed together/slurred is unappealing to me. It just has this gross, sloppy quality.
 

Tyrinth

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I don't know the reasons for any of this, and I can't quite get into the level of detail you did, but here goes...

English: Currently my only language. I don't really like how it sounds.

Japanese: I'm learning. I absolutely love how it sounds, but I don't know why. How it sounds is actually part of why I decided to try to learn it.

Russian: I like the sound of this as well, and would probably rate it second, just behind Japanese.

I can't decide what language I like the sound of the least.
 

Devil Flamingo

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data defect... input NOT accepted. :nono:

try again :newwink:

EDIT:

besides there's no such thing as "sign language". there's sign languages. tho ofc they still don't apply.


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Icelandic, Finnish, German, Ukranian.

They have a sort of clean/musical/powerful sound, to my ear.

Any language where words sound mushed together/slurred is unappealing to me. It just has this gross, sloppy quality.

I highly approve of these choices! <3 I assume by German you mean standard-ish High German?

also, why Ukrainian over Russian? o.o why do you like it better? I know why I do, I just wanna know why you do. ;)


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I don't know the reasons for any of this, and I can't quite get into the level of detail you did, but here goes...

English: Currently my only language. I don't really like how it sounds.

Japanese: I'm learning. I absolutely love how it sounds, but I don't know why. How it sounds is actually part of why I decided to try to learn it.

Russian: I like the sound of this as well, and would probably rate it second, just behind Japanese.

I can't decide what language I like the sound of the least.

No1 liek Englysshe. At least, no-one with a good ear for languages/music. :newwink:

I know what you mean about Japanese. It's fucking awesome. Now there's a language with a well-put together arrangement of consonants and vowels. I especially like the way it palatalizes stuff before /i/. LOVE IT!

And don't worry, I'm not expecting great detail. Actually, I kind of like hearing what people which don't have a background in linguistics have to say about why they like the way X or Y or Z sounds. It's very interesting. :yes:
 

Lexicon

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data defect... input NOT accepted. :nono:

try again :newwink:

EDIT:

besides there's no such thing as "sign language". there's sign languages. tho ofc they still don't apply.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I highly approve of these choices! <3 I assume by German you mean standard-ish High German?

also, why Ukrainian over Russian? o.o why do you like it better? I know why I do, I just wanna know why you do. ;)


Actually I like them both. Russian sometimes has a messier sound, but perhaps it depends on the individual's diction. I'm not sure.
Blame Gogol Bordello, perhaps.




:: edit :: It's been brought to my uneducated attention that I was still listening to Russian, either way. So I retract my statement. Russian it is!
 
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sprinkles

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Japanese. Stuff sounds how it is. No exceptions (almost)
Now if I could only be literate in it...

German. You can hear it. Simple.
 

xisnotx

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Lugha yenye hunibabaika nikiiskiza lazima iwe lugha hii.
Ama ni lugha "hili"?
Hii lugha huanga ngumu kuitumia kuandika, na kuiongea pia ni kazi.
Lakini nikijiamua kuitumia sidhani kama kuna mtu yeyote ataeza kuniishindia.

Ubaya wa lugha hili...lazima iwe hili, kwasababu neno hii haifwatani vizuri...ambalo ninalitumia hunichanganyisha muda nyingi kwa vile linaezwatumiwa kwa manjia mengi na usipojishikilia ile njia yenye linatumiwa, maana yanaeza kakuhatia mbaya.

Lakini, maoni wangu ni, ukiskiza sauti za hii lugha, pia we utajiamua kwamba hakuna lugha lingine linaeza kuliishindia kiusauti.

There are like 90 mistakes in that...such a shame...

English is much simpler. One word means one thing...adding on qualifiers doesn't change the word much...as opposed to always having to be thinking about tense, quantity, verb-noun relation, flow, perspective shifts etc etc
 
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Cimarron

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I like the English "R" sound that seems to be so rare in other languages... :huh: Spanish, for example, sounds too "clean" with consonants and vowels all neatly chopped, and vowels almost monotone, compared to English.

I just can't tolerate accents the way I used to... :( Every language seems to have something "wrong" or "grating" about its sound.

Italian and Greek sound pretty good, but they're in danger of that same problem as Spanish (Italian is, at least).
 

Devil Flamingo

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[MENTION=11238]xisnotx[/MENTION]: English isn't simpler, it's just isolating. Ofc it's lost cases, genders, and a lot of verbal inflection, but it's not really "simpler". I know exactly what you mean, however. :p and I admit it, I had to look that up to find out it was Swahili. Should have guessed, but I'm not very familiar with any of Africa's thousands and thousands of languages, lol. I'm not really a fan of Africa's linguistic families. Lots of them are interesting, but not more so than Austronesian or I-E as far as I'm concerned. Plus I figure I'm never gonna spend any significant amount of time anywhere in there (well, I don't plan to) so no need to bother. As opposed to Polynesia's languages, which I'd love to go to N.Z./Hawai'i/Tahiti/etc. and study. :]

[MENTION=4883]Cimarron[/MENTION]: Oh, gross, I hate /ɹ/. It's rather lame. :C But I know what you mean about Spanish. It's boring in that it's too straightforward. That's why I at least somewhat like my own dialect slightly better, since it does interesting stuff. In that regard, Brazilian Portuguese is wayyy more interesting, as it has more vowels and some really interesting stuff, like t,d becoming ch,j before i which makes otherwise boring "presidente" into "prezidentchi". Brazilian Portuguese also has interesting stuff going on with its R's and L's. I love how "Brasil" sounds like "braziw", for example. :3
 
F

FigerPuppet

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While Dutch is undoubtedly the ugliest language in the World, Danish is of course the most beautiful:


;_;

I also appreciate strong Irish and Scottish dialects.
 
F

FigerPuppet

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They both sound as if they were invented by toddlers.

Better a language of naivete and purity than one of hatred and making Jews fit in matchboxes.

u38NL5w.gif
 

Coriolis

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Judging only by how they sound, and considering only those languages I know enough about to comment on:

Best: German, then Norwegian then ecclesiastical Latin
Worst: French, then Spanish, then English

I have heard some Sanskrit and Hindi from Indian friends. They sound very intriguing, but that's not the same as aesthetic appeal.
 

Edgar

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I like Japanese because it is easy to pronounce. I have already mastered my angry samurai annunciation
 

Rasofy

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In that regard, Brazilian Portuguese is wayyy more interesting, as it has more vowels and some really interesting stuff, like t,d becoming ch,j before i which makes otherwise boring "presidente" into "prezidentchi".
Wow, you seem to know a lot about languages. I laughed when I read that because it's so second nature to me that I hadn't stop to think about it. ''Prezidentchi'' sounds much more fluid than president, I believe... I think Portuguese is generally more smooth than English.

Brazilian Portuguese also has interesting stuff going on with its R's and L's. I love how "Brasil" sounds like "braziw", for example. :3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN9OuiR_OU0
:D

I only speak English and Portuguese, which makes my Portuguese bias huge. I like how we can make words with ''inho'', which serves as a diminutive (e.g. Ronaldinho = ''little'' Ronaldo). We indeed use a lot of vowels, which makes the speaking more pleasant, I believe.

English
A pretty efficient language, but phonetically I don't like.

Spanish
I don't know much about Spanish but cussing in Spanish sounds really amazing.
 

chickpea

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honestly I am shocked by how many people said German, lol. what an ugly language. I like Spanish and Italian.
 

Redbone

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Italian, Icelandic, coastal southern English (my native language and dialect...I miss hearing it), and French. Cambodian because I used to listen to a lady speak this quite often and liked it. Thai from listening to my aunt, uncle, and a friend speak it. I'm sure there's more but I can't think of anything else right now.
 

Viridian

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I'm not very well-versed in languages boyond watching foreign films and whatnot, but I'm not too fond of my own (Braz. Portuguese). At times it just sounds like the poor man's Portuguese Portuguese. Or the very poor man's sweatshop-made Spanish knockoff.

I like Spanish, Japanese and French. There's more of a melody there, I think. I also like English, despite its confusing aspects. Any language where the word "whereupon" exists can't be that unpleasant to hear. :D
 
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