What makes some languages sound BEAUTIFUL?
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- čas přidán 17. 05. 2024
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Is 🇮🇹Italian delightful and 🇩🇪German disgusting? Is 🇨🇳Mandarin a melodic mess? In this episode, Rob meets the linguists who've tried to work out which are the world's prettiest and ugliest languages. The results are sure to surprise you.
==LINKS==
Niklas and the team's study: www.researchgate.net/publicat...
Daya: www.italki.com/en/teacher/241...
Bank: www.italki.com/en/teacher/747...
Klingon Style: • KLINGON STYLE (Star Tr...
Jesus Film: www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus...
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==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
0:34 Good and bad reputations
2:30 ITALIAN - The most beautiful?
3:40 italki
4:50 GERMAN - The ugliest?
6:09 EXPERIMENT
7:32 RESULTS
8:07 Disliked languages
9:45 THAI - A tonal language
11:05 Languages we like
11:36 MOST BEAUTIFUL familiar languages
12:30 TOK PISIN - A popular Creole
13:44 How German did
14:28 SIDE EFFECTS
15:23 The ideal voice
16:38 CONCLUSION
Edited with Gling AI: bit.ly/46bGeYv
#languages #linguistics #breakthrough
Let me know what you make of the findings. And remember, you can learn 150+ languages (each with its own charm) with quality native-speaking teachers on italki🎉. Buy $10 get $5 for free for your first lesson using my code ROBWORDS
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This topic is like asking what the prettiest colour is! POINTLESS, you have people biased by their back ground and their personal standards!
I don't think you can overcome peoples biases to get an objective answer on this question. I give you myself as an example. I am fascinated by all languages. It amazes me that the human species has so many different ways to communicate. That said I find that any language spoken to me by an attractive woman to be a beautiful thing whether or not I can understand the language being spoken.
I think many Creoles have really lovely rhythms
Back in the 60s I had some pretty close Irish friends that were living over here in SE England. I also had friends and family members killed by the IRA. Imagine my sense of betrayal when I found out that this circle of friends I had were actually an active IRA cell. To this day I find the Irish accent raises my hackles and I automatically associate it with violence and callousness. That is, unless it's spoken by a female voice. Then I find it beautiful. So to me the Irish accent is both the most ugly and the most beautiful, dependent on the voice.
Most beautiful language is ALWAYS subjective, depending on how you grew up and with so many socioeconomic and environmental factors.
For me, Spanish is more beautiful than English to me. Perhaps it’s the ranchera music and other traditional Mexican genres I listen to. Then I think Italian and then German actually are beautiful. French, whether Parisian or other French, I don’t find pretty but not ugly either (awesome language, btw! Just the pronunciation is more difficult and y’all are very strict on us non native French speakers!)
As for my worst hearing languages, yes, Chechen, Arabic (sorry!), some Chinese languages (not mandarin! I love it!), and Turkic languages
It’s just different how we perceive it. Well, I’ll speak at least for myself. 😅
As a German living abroad, I always speak as calm and nice and soft as possible, when people want to hear some German - just to see their surprised faces. What they were expecting what German has to sound like was (literally) "FRITZEN! FRATZEN! FROTZEN!".
Nacktschnecke! 😉
And I really like the aggressive Krankenwagen. I am still chuckling ...
Tone and manner make such a difference.
Japanese is a nice language, but if you've ever heard Japanese people being formal/polite it's soothing!
Hah yeah so many who seems to only heard german from ww2 movies.
@@ElinT13 _Edited to stop the confused replies._
German actually doesn't sound bad at all when you hear regular people speaking it normally. Its actually pretty cool and fun to speak.
Exactly. Normal people don't yell it like Hitler. German sounds quite lovely when spoken by ordinary people.
It's interesting
Might I remind you that one of the most famous operatic arias of all time is in German, that being Der Hölle Rache Kocht in Meinem Herzen, and most people don't know it's a villain song because of how pretty the song is.
@@alexandersean4708 can that be heard on CZcams? What's the name of it again?
@@sl4983 If you search "queen of the night aria" it should come up as the first result.
I think so many movies featured Hitler yelling that it created a negative impression of German
Genau das! Aber der Typ ist ja nicht repräsentativ.
No doubt American English will sound silly & ugly if one listens to Trump and his Cult.
Ironically, he
German doesn’t sound bad to me. It’s Thai, Vietnamese and Southern American accents that I don’t like. Anything with nasal tone turns me off.
@@neshwhat702 What about French? Doesn't it also have a lot of nasal sounds?
I was prejudiced against the sound of German and then one day I heard German poetry spoken in a soft masculine voice and I was completely bowled over.
I was born in Germany to a German mother .. she used to read fairytales to me in German. (I have since moved to Ireland, so I speak English mostly) But to me, when I hear German language spoken, it always feels like a fairytale language, soft, sweet and innocent.
@@ExtraterrestrialEarthlingseen too many holywood war films. That is not a farytale.
I also like very much the sound of german 🖤
@@ExtraterrestrialEarthlingto me german sounds like your giving a science presentation. Or planning a military campaign
I married a German many years ago and speak it fluently in the meantime. When they visited us, my parents were always surprised that German sounded so soft and natural.
@@ExtraterrestrialEarthling Sorry, Earthling, that sounds stupid. Everyone goes to war, sad to say.
My parents were deaf. Sign language was my native "tongue ". It can be beautiful in its artistic movements. It can also be awful when crudely or clumsily done. I think this is true of all of the languages I've studied.
I *love* ASL! I'm not deaf but when some official makes a speech on TV and they have an ASL translator, the way the translator expresses the info is so much more attractive than the English speaker.
@jgw5491 Yes, it can be expressive, both in a good way and a bad way. In general when not "speaking " to a larger group, the larger and more emphatic the gestures, the angrier the "speaker". When very large and choppy, you're being yelled at and that's not so pretty!
Thanks for this great comment! I have one question if you don't mind me asking: when you see someone from a place where they speak a different language using sign language, can you have an idea of what they are saying? Is it as difficult to understand a foreign sign language as it can be to understand a foreign spoken language sometimes? (I hope you don't mid my silly question)Thank you for your nice comment - and all the best to you wherever you are :)
@@interestingvideos4me
Sign languages are as diverse as spoken languages, and there is no universal sign language that’s used everywhere, not even as a “lingua Franca”. Depending on how widely you apply the term “Anglosphere”, it overlaps with at least two and possibly five or more sign language families. Some signs are a lot easier to understand across language families, mostly signs that are highly iconic. For example, you’d probably understand the sign “hammer” from most sign languages, whereas “vegetable” is likely to be a lot less obvious.
It's not a tongue, it's your native communication.
A famous Serbian singer and song author commented: You read someone's info from ID card in Italy and you already have a song:
name: Anna Maria, father's name: Giancarlo, place of birth: Madonna di Piave... And in Serbia you might have a girl named Grozda, from town of Čurug, father: Gradimir... Forget it...
That's funny.
My former Croatian girlfriend (herself a language teacher) said that Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian was a language where two shepherds on opposite hills could have a shouted conversation without taking their cigarettes out of their mouths… :)
@@bob_the_bomb4508 Serbo-Croat is a language that can have up to five (or more) hard consonants next to one another. Examples: PASTRMKA (trout), OSTRVSKI (adjective derived from word for an island). If your mouth and tongue survive that, you are good to go.
On your comment: There was a commercial for mobile phones, some 30 years ago, in Montenegro that starts with two guys on opposite hills.
In Serbia, when someone speaks loudly he might get a comment:
Hey, you are not speaking to an opposite hill. 😆😆😆
@@raderadumilo7899 Currently living in Montenegro and trying to learn the language, despite not liking how it sounds. I am surprised by how much my bad attitude is affecting my motivation. FWIW I speak Japanese too, and love the way it sounds.
@@frithbarbat Try Croatian. Maybe different accent would do the trick for you. Personally I prefer Croatian accent to Montenegrin or Bosnian.
The difference between these versions of Serbo-Croat is like between different versions of English (UK, US, AU, CA...).
As a French I was growing with the WW2 movies and I found German ugly like most of the French...until I see the movie "Wings of desire" from Wim Wenders. In the beginning of the movie the narrator or an angel (I don't remember) recites a poem with a beautiful scansion and voice, so I discover this day that German, if it's not screaming by a nazi, is a gorgeous language.
I am a German native speaker and live abroad. I often hear that my German sounds surprisingly smooth and nice, even beautiful, not at all what German sounds like. I then ask where else they hear German. Then they say: in movies. It often turns out that they sometimes only know German from stereotypical shouting of soldiers in WWII movies and have actually never heard normal German.
Achtung!!! Granaten!!
@@hadronoftheseus8829 exactly :-)
I don't find German particularly ugly, in some cases it sounds rather nice. Probably I'm biased because I had a German girlfriend who often spoke German to me in a soft voice. And for people who say they don't like German because of its supposedly harsh sounds, just wait until they hear Dutch.
German sounds beautiful when Nena sings it . . . Peter Schilling does wonders with it as well.
A major impact stems from those Anglo-Saxon comedies, with German's being made to war idiot. Not that I find German to be a particular beautiful language, it's not. But terrible it's also not.
To me Spanish is music. All tonal languages, in particular those which are more nasal, to me sound schrecklich.
I speak Portuguese, English, Spanish and French, once you've been exposed to a language, this feeling of beauty vs ugly vanishes. I've been learning German and Italian and both of the sound beautiful to me.
May I ask you which on(s) is/are your mothertongue(s)?
I don't agree... the feeling does fade, but it does not vanish completely for me. I still feel that some languages sound better than others...In fact, I started to appreciate more my own mother tongue (Italian) since I became fluent in Spanish and English.
@@fynna8640You can tell he's Brazilian
I agree to some extent because once you start learning a language and using it on a daily basis, it just becomes what all languages are--a utilitarian verbal code we use to communicate, and that's it. Each language has its own rhythm and cadence, but that's usually lost on native speakers because, they biased, they can't hear their own language as a foreigner does. Italian is beautiful, but German is not. Sorry. I don't think it's a particularly ugly language (any language can sound ugly when someone is angrily shouting, even Italian), but I don't think it's any worse than Dutch or Danish (Norwegian and Swedish have a more lilt). But that's just my opinion and everyone is entitled to their own without criticism. To quote a Frenchman in love with a beautiful German woman screaming in outrage in her native language in some movie I saw on TV in France decades ago, "Ah, quelle jolie langue !"
I speak the same languages as you! And I agree, I love the sound of all languages personnaly. Maybe brazilian Portuguese is my favorite, but Cantonese, Serbian, Italian... All sound nice really
After my first couple of days in Brazil I wondered what made my stay so relaxant. It took a while to realize : It was the total absence of the english language that has occupied Germanys everyday life so much.
what non-german speakers usually have in mind is just a carricature of german. The german in movies and in pop-culture is mostly not how german normally sounds. Dialects also differ how well it sounds to the ear.
The cultural bias against German due to WWII undoubtedly plays a huge role. German does have a lot of strong gutural sounds, but so do many other languages, more distinctly than German even, like Dutch and Hebrew. And even French, which is usually considered beautiful, like mentioned in the video.
I dislike French but like German 😎
Dutch... No thanks
It is my belief that Hollywood movies depicting Germans/Germany in a particular light may have negatively influenced foreigners' perception of the language.
The French Rs are softer and liaisons exist in order for words to gently flow and prevent harsh sounds. Sounding pretty is literally a major thing for the French. German, Hebrew and Arabic gutural sounds are more forceful. Dutch gutural sounds appear rarer and sounds like English in reverse to me. Languages with more vowels and consonants like S, L, M, N make them less harsh. Old English sounded uglier before more S sounds added with the Norman Conquest.
You're so right about the widespread guttural nature of many languages. I was amazed to find that Gaeilge, the original Irish language, has plenty of guttural sounds.
French is basically a poorly pronounced Latin dialect.
I had a problem with German, even though I took it in school... but then I found out their word for an owl was "uhu," and forgave it all its faults.
Have you ever tried to whisper Uhu?
The more commonly recognised “Eule” is also quite pretty. Though then there’s “Kauz”.
Funnily enough, one of the words that Bank is teaching me in the video ("gaaaa") is Thai for crow! Like "uhu", it's named for the sound.
@@RobWords
The crow and the cuckoo are named for their sound in English too.
@@RobWords An onomatopoeia! I always wondered if I would ever get an opportunity to use 'onomatopoeia.'
I'm from the USA. My brother lives in Germany and is fluent. When I broke my arm he came to my bedside and read to me in German in his sweet, soft voice. It was lovely.
I used to think German sounded harsh and unattractive. Then I took a vacation to Germany. Now I find German to be quite beautiful.
you are confusing your personal holiday impressions with the phonetics of the language... a language dominated by coughing, farting, blowing and spitting sounds will never sound beautiful... yes, some people with a beautiful voice and personal charm can correct the situation, but only in a special case.
@@mozartwa1 The fact that you believe German is made up of coughing, farting, blowing, and spitting speaks volumes.
@@seantodd8875 the fact that you are unable to understand metaphors and generalizations at the level of abstractions says even more)) you wouldn’t argue that the Chinese language is not meowing?
I don't think the sound of a piano is as beautiful as the Scottish bagpipes...or are you a fan of creaky carts?
anyone, even the most hopeless idiot, can choose between the singing of a canary and a March cat
you confused ethics with aesthetics - a typical mistake of technocrats
I find Arabic harsh and gutteral. Visiting Egypt and Dubai didn't change my mind 😂
I always thought German was ugly. Then I traveled to Germany and Austria. I distinctly remember sitting in a restaurant and hearing a group of native speakers at a table near me, and I was instantly smitten with the sound of it. They were laughing and talking, and just doing what one does in a restaurant. I pondered why it sounded so warm and welcoming now when I had always found it so ugly and angry. I then realized that pretty much the only times i had heard German being spoken before were in movies and documentaries about WWII. Any language is going to sound hideous if it's being used to shout hateful rhetoric.
They use the gritty records of the old devices and show the slected bits where Ad0lf escalated as much as possible.
And English doesn't sound particularly nice when the drill sergeant is barking orders either. I mean, the phrase itself, to be barking orders, describes how it sounds.
Odd - or perhaps not - that the discussion kept clear of regional accents. Plattdeutsch sounds as different from, say, what will be heard in an hotel in Huttwil as does RP English from broadest Potteries (let alone Scots, arguably more a sister language to, than dialect of English). A Parisian friend of mine identified where I learned French to within a very few km and I challenge any non-native moderately fluent speaker Castilian Spanish to so much identify rapid Mexican speech as remotely the same language!!
Arabic.. the call to,prayer sounds like a mn with a cough slowly strangling a cat
I had a similar experience when I was in Germany, some years ago, when I listened to a group of elderly women, talking among themselves. It was like the withering of birds, I fought, and that impression has never left me.
I took German in high school, mostly to be rebellious. Everyone and their dog was taking Spanish, and I didn't want to take French because I thought it sounded too "fluffy." But once I started learning German, it opened my eyes. My first teacher was a native German who was extremely mild-mannered, the opposite of what I thought he would be. Learning German taught me so much about looking past cultural stereotypes, finding common ground, and seeing people as individuals. I also learned so much about language in general. I loved it so much that I ended up taking 4 years of German, instead of just the 2 years of language study that were required. Looking back, this language choice seems very impractical, since I never have the opportunity to use it. But it will always have a special place in my heart.
Apparently German (and English) are the languages of choice if one gets into a technical field, like Architect, Engineering, Electrical Engineering and more recently AI and robotics. Though Japanese would be useful too, if you were into the last two fields of interest. I find Japanese very...abrupt and sometimes exclamative! It's not a language that flows...
I did this, too! I loved German - took 4 years in high school and another one in college. Unfortunately, in the US there isn’t any place to use it, so when I finally got a chance 20 years later I’d forgotten almost everything. I hope to be able to pick it back up again now that I’m nearing retirement. I was able to muddle through last year in Luxembourg, though, so that was fun😊.
try reading some books or watching some movies that were only ever in German, both to justify it and to brush up :))))
Well you could switch to an angry toned German but saying nice things to them anytime you want to make people skedaddle away, that's pretty cool.
The older you get the most effective it become I think.
Not quite a requirement... I studied a semester of German... most basic course at the GI... I enjoyed it so thoroughly [which was helped by free runs at the music section of the library with a friendly Tante Bibliothekarin]... one of our teachers is a dear old German Oma... I'm still in touch with her after 23 years...
& German itself, I speak it when I have a chance... including with this Oma... It goes well with all those German Musiker I enjoy so much...
Mi hamamas lo harim Tok Pisin lo channel blong yu!
(I'm happy to hear Tok Pisin on the channel belonging to you (your channel))!
Tenkyu tru, Rob. Yu boi stret!
(Thank you truly, Rob. You're the man!)
As the simpsons once said "a person who speaks german can't be bad"
Im a greek speaker and I find Portuguese a very beautiful language
Greek is such a beautiful language, one with such rich history. I love it - and I'd also love to check out Greece as a whole eventually
As a brazilian, greek is the most beautiful language to me, it sounds like a perfect language. Brazilian portuguese is my second favorite language, although maybe I'm biased about that, and Russian ranks third for me.
I agree with sou alla aftous share the idio foni . Sygnomi greeklish mou .
Funny... I have more than once confused Greek for Portuguese and vice versa. And I'm Bulgarian so the sound of Greek should not be all that distant to me.
Sou Russo. Gosto de Portuguese! ❤ It sounds like Russian or Ukrainian.
Once, on a trans-Atlantic flight, I got to hear flight attendants speaking in German and it completely changed my mind about the beauty of the language. It was wonderful!
The meme about german being a hard and ugly language is very unfair.
Thank you!
I completely understand why people think German doesn't sound nice and it's mostly because all Nazis spoke German and are speaking German in movies (although most often they are actually not native German speakers and their German is often totally mispronounced. I assume there are some tones in German which are also not well liked, but like it was pointed out in the video, the bias is likely mostly because of the 3rd Reich. As a native German speaker I really like my language, not because I think it sounds well, but because it is so rich that you can perfectly describe everything with many nuances, unlike some other languages that are very plain and only have a fraction of the word count of German. But obviously I'm also biased, so I'm perfectly fine with everyone who does not agree.
@@moos5221
♡
Germanic languages are the superior languages that all should be learning, with Dutch & English & Norwegian being the best / prettiest and most refined languages ever that have the most pretty / poetic words and the best pronunciation rules with the prettiest and most distinctive sounds ever (they should be the universal languages) etc, and all other Germanic languages are also gorgeous, including Icelandic and German and the others, and then the 6 Celtic languages, namely Welsh / Breton / Cornish / Manx / Irish / Scottish Gaelic, and then the true Latin languages, namely Portuguese / Gallo / French / Aranese / Galician / Catalan / Guernsey / Esperanto / Spanish / Occitan / Latin / Italian & the other Italian-based languages and the language spoken in Wallonia / Belgium and the other French-based languages and other languages based on these languages that may exist that are referred to as dialects, and a few other languages like Hungarian, which are all pretty with mostly pretty words and pretty word endings! the German CH is basically an H sound - nada harsh or throaty about H, it’s also in English and most other languages, and even the CH pronounced the other way like in Welsh and Dutch, is still very soft, not really that throaty, one cannot even tell the difference between that sound and a breathy H sound, and most younger speakers use the normal H version, which is the same as in the English word held! Spanish & Italian are also pretty, but not as pretty / refined as Germanic languages, and the Rs in Spanish and French are way harsher than the Rs in any Germanic languages, as Germanic languages have the softest Rs ever, and it’s a hard R that can make a language sound harsh, and it can also be the voice of the speaker, because not every speaker has a soft voice, so it’s not the language itself!
As a Bulgarian I'm finding German to be soft, pleasant and (because of my synesthesia) the most delicious language out there. 🤪😍🪶
And which languages do you find ugly, harsh and disgusting?
@@cheerful_crop_circle there is no language that is ugly and disgusting
As a young German man, I was living and studying in the south-west of France for some time. For a couple of weeks, my girlfriend at the time would visit me and we would sit in the kitchen of the flat I shared with three wild, long-haired, French socialists. We would sit there and chat; often times we would read literature to each other, aloud - and in German.
We were very much in love, so obviously our way of speaking and even reading probably reflected that in some way. I imagine that we were speaking quite kindly, softly to each other; and even the books we were reading might have done their part, as they are considered being beautiful literature, generally.
Anyway. So one day in the afternoon, after the reading session of my girlfriend and I was already over, one of my French flatmates (who was studying French literature, incidentally) took me aside to talk to me, quite seriously. He told me that he was astonished and even shook, in a way. He had always imagined German as being extremely ugly and harsh and agressive; yet listening to us two young lovers chat and read, he actually had loved to hear the language and had, as he now confessed, even lingered a little on the stairs outside the kitchen, just to listen to these sounds (he didn't understand at all).
I don't know. I always like to remember this moment (not only because it reminds me of summer and youth and love).
Yes, but when you shout in German it sounds much more serious than in any other language haha
That's a beautiful memory!
I studied in Germany. I raised my children in small town in Arizona where they never heard German except in war documentaries. I would sing to my babies in German and people were shocked how beautiful it sounded.
be careful..
some snowflake woke might associates you with white supremacists, trump, or other things they allergic of
all languages sound nice, when you sing them. Musims for example will almost always say that Arabic is the most beautiful language, but mainly because of they are Muslims and the Koran is written in Arabic and when they read it, they read it in a singing voice.
I now think war documentaries play a huge role in how people perceive German language 😂
Singing Rammstein to the babies?
I grew up listening to my father sing in German to me almost every night (neither of us are native speakers) and I never understood the bias against German. My brother lives in Germany now, so dad's singing definitely left a good impression overall.
My favorite way to combat the anti-German bias is to start harshly chanting the lyrics to "Ode to Joy," then have them guess what it was before showing them how it sounds when sung.
What's Ode to Joy?
@@ldmtag it's the poem Beethoven used in the choral section of his 9th symphony. It's called "An Die Freude" and the English translation starts "Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee..."
You would probably recognize the melody if you look it up
@@MusicalJackknife isn't it the one a woman sang at the moloko serving caffe in Clockwork Orange? The same one borrowed by Tanzwut for their song Götterfunken
@@ldmtag I don't know either of those references, but it does have the word Götterfunken in it haha
As an Italian who has been living in the UK for over 20 years, I absolutely love the German language!
Appunto
I think the issue with tonal languages is that they are akin to playing random musical notes. With atonal languages, a person can effectively choose the melody of their inflections or stick to one-note.
Spot on! 👏
There is no such thing as an atonal language. A language like Thai or Chinese uses tone on words. A language like English or French uses tone across a sentence. Italian forms a question by raising the pitch at the end. You aren’t free to change the tones Willy nilly
@@reptarhouseby "tonal language", i think he meant languages that use tones on words... You can search what "tonal language" means
@@reptarhouse The 'atonal' here they are talking about is in reference to meaning.
All languages do use tone to impart meaning in some form, but for 'tonal' ones it is necessary and compulsory to use tones to be understood.
That's what I thought as well
As a language learner who has learned many languages, I think that all languages are beautiful in their own way
I feel this way about accents too! I love that within most countries, you can hear such diversity in how people sound.
Yes, I hate how everybody wants sound like proper English ie British/American. I love how accents add some color to it.
It's such a shame that people perceive accents in a business context with less professionalism or success, but maybe with all the evil deeds that America is committing we can roll back the status of how we sound.
Same, but no matter how objective one wants to be, no one can pretend to not have favorites!
@@nagichampa9866Even if people have favourites they shouldn't let them influence their judgement and professionalism
including the maori language
I always felt like the popular opinion of German as a harsh and ugly language comes from people only knowing it from passionate speeches of a certain 20th century dictator and viral videos deliberately showing it to be harsh and ugly
I remember thinking german was aggressive until I had to take a fourth language in high school so I chose german and I was really surprised because I found it to be melodic and beautiful and just soothing but maybe thet's just me because I speak arabic and french so i'm kinda used to throaty sounds
Well if Elvish is a 'lovely' language, then Welsh is a beautiful language, no? I think we deserve the beautiful label. God knows we've fought hard enough for our language.
Definitely! What little I've heard of Welsh has been melodious and pleasant, yet still quite clear.
Absolutely! I love Welsh, its on my bucket list of lamguages to learn.
Welsh is indeed beautiful! My (US) family named one of our cats "Llewellyn", and always made a point of saying her name the Welsh way.
To me, Welsh is one of the most beautiful languages! I’m grateful that people fought (and fight) for it. 🏴👏👏👏
Welsh has the CH sound though, like in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch which has it twice!
I always thought Romanian was a very underrated language. A romance language, with heavy slavic and turkish influence, really unique. Plus they have letters with little hats, like â & Î
Oh yes I agree! I know quite a lot of Romanian people and I always love hearing it, it's such an interesting language
@@FrozenMermaid666 What you're saying makes no sense. Every language is unique. The most beautiful thing is that there are so many languages. You're saying one of those should be the universal language? That would be horrible! We'd lose so much beauty and richness of language. And that's nothing against those languages you say you like, Dutch is my native language. And if you've seen the video then you know that you can't objectively call a language "bad" or say that it has "horrible word endings" and sounds and whatever else. And no one is forcing any languages upon anyone lmao, we're just nerding about language under a video about language, what did you expect???
@@FrozenMermaid666Dutch?? That language is a literal definition of vomit
@@FrozenMermaid666 Literally everything you said in that comment is subjective. "Good", "bad", "pretty", "embarrassing", those are all subjective things. You're talking about people with a "good eye" but what defines that? One person's opinion is not worth more than another's. And again, if you saw the video then you know that everything you're saying is bullshit.
@@FrozenMermaid666 You sound very passionate about this, maybe you should become a linguist and do a study to see if you're right, I'm sure the guy in the video would be interested. Feel free to send me a link when you get published.
Durch den lauen Sommerabend geh' ich Wege, wo mein Fuß auf Gras und spitze Ähren tritt. Träumend wird zu Füßen mir die Kühle rege und mein Haupthaar netzt im Wind sich mit. Und ich rede nichts und ich gedenke keiner - in die Seele steigt unendlich mir die Liebe nur. Und ich wand're weit, sehr weit wie ein Zigeuner . Glücklich wie mit einer Frau - durch die Natur.
Das ist zwar im Orininal von Artur Rimbaud, aber ich liebe die Worte des deutschen Textes.
My father was upset when I spoke very rough sounding German, He said where did you learn that? I said watching WW2 movies!
In the 70s I was working in South Africa. I was living with my British girlfriend and after a while, she got used to me talking on the phone to other Hungarians. I found a record in the local library with samples of dozens of different languages. I think it was the Lord's Prayer read by male and female native speakers. I made a tape with about ten samples from French to Mandarin. One weekend we had a barbeque, (known locally as braai) and had several different nationalities as guests. I created a voting sheet asking them to rate the different languages from 1 to 10. I did not name the languages, just numbered them, but of course, they recognised some of them. As far as I can remember, the French got an average close to 10, the Italian followed it very closely, then the Spanish. German got a much higher rating from the locals than from expat Brits, maybe because all the locals could speak Afrikaans which is very close to Dutch and German. Vietnamese and Mandarin were at the bottom of the list. My language, Hungarian was in the middle, except for one person who gave it 10, but it turned out to be my girlfriend, so it did not count....
nice of her!
Hungarian is extremely sexy.
The first time I heard my male friend speaking it, I fell off my chair.
I am a native French speaker for reference.
Cute :)
French was close to 10? Weird! I've always thought it sounds super cringe and artificial. The autistic failure one among roman language siblings. And for those who likes to take things personally, I rate my native language Russian just as low as French. It sounds super cringe too. Any good music becomes unlistenable garbage if it's sung in Russian. Best sounding languages to me are Brazilian Portuguese and Swedish. English and Korean are in the middle. Spoken German is closer to the bottom, sung German is closer to the top.
@@ldmtag To most English speakers French and English with a French accent sounds very sexy. If you want to pick up English girls learn to speak with a French accent. Once a French-speaking Belgian colleague phoned me and my girlfriend picked up the phone. She immediately demanded that I invite this guy for dinner because his accent was so fantastic. I told her that he was an old and very ugly guy, but she would not believe me. She got the shock of her life when it turned out that I was not lying.
Re German: For many foreigners, our first exposure to German was in war movies. When all you hear are Nazis shouting orders or railing against Jews, you get the impression that it's a harsh language. I lived in Austria for four years and once I began hearing German spoken in normal tones, I came to appreciate its beauty.
I also lived in Italy, and I heard several Italians trash German as an "ugly language." Speakers of Romance languages LOVE to promote their own language as the most beautiful, and love to perpetuate the myth of German as the least pleasant.
@pinguinobc, I agree and share your two views. It is a fact that the association of the language with the historical brutality in the Nazi period publicized by American cinema works as prejudiced propaganda, and it is also a fact that speakers of Romance languages tend to overvalue everything that is theirs, including the language.
German, Arabic and Russian all agree with you😂. We're always the bad guy in the movies.
I also used to dislike German, but hearing Angela Merkel was for me an absolute eyeopener. I LOVED her pronounciation, and it made me study German. Und jetzt liebe ich die Sprache soviel, das ich die Nachrichten immer in Deutsch gücke❤. Danke, Frau Merkel🎉
@@wardachrouaa7281 gucken, ohne Umlaut.
@@Santos.Sarmento Romance languages ARE more beautiful sounding than Germanic languages IMO. I say this even though English is my native language and it is also a Germanic language.
@@wardachrouaa7281 hey super! Wäre nicht auf die Idee gekommen, dass Frau Merkel zum Lernen von Deutsch motivieren kann. Alles Gute für Sie beim weiteren Lernen!
This is totally subjective, I don't understand german, and it's not ugly to my ears, for me it's a beautiful language. it's inapropriate to rank languages, each language is a treasure for its speakers.
I’ll never forget the time a choir of German school children came into the pub (yes, a PUB!) I was sitting in just before Xmas and gave us all a rendition of ‘silent night’ in the original German. ‘Here we go’… I thought. ‘A hackneyed old hymn sung by a bunch of kids… in German. Great. Hope they get it over with quickly’. My mind soon changed. It was stunningly beautiful.
I am a native Spanish speaker and retired opera singer. The sweetest and most favorable languages for singing are those that have fewer consonants per syllable. Czech and Polish are examples of languages with more consonants per syllable difficult to sing. Italian, on the other hand, lends itself to singing because of the number of open vowels. Russian is a very apt language to be sung because of the large number of diphthongs it has, which makes it very melodic.
Indeed! that's the secret: more vowels, less consonants
German does, the opposite
Entschulden = 7 consonants 3 vowels!
In Italian : Scusa
(while also: the s sound is nice)
Also, Italian uses lot of s and i which sounds amazing
as in 1 of my most personal loved men chorus in opera:
Squilli, ercheggi! ( I know Anvil Coro di Zingari is most famous 😄)
@@empress2529 "Entschulden = 7 consonants 3 vowels!"
Actually, that's only 5 consonants and 3 vowels. The trigraph "sch" represents a single consonant sound (voiceless postalveolar (sibilant) fricative [ʃ]). That it's written with a trigraph rather than a single letter doesn't matter here because this video deals with the perceived beauty of *spoken* language, not written language. I don't think German is a particularly consonant heavy language. Also, your example of "Scusa" only has a slightly higher percentage of vowel sounds. In it 40% of the phonemes are vowels whereas in "Entschulden" it's 37.5% vowels, barely a difference.
@@seneca983 "only" 5 consonants & 3 vowels. I try to find a word in spanish w such balance between consonants and vowels:
maravilloso: 5 consonants 5 vowels.
Frambuesa: 5 consonants 4 vowels
some short words in Spanish have more consonants than vowels:
con (with), don (Mr, also a "gift")
Los ("the" in male plural)
Spanish & Italian: Transcendente
German: Transzendent
9 consonants 4 & 3 vowels (in german)
as Italian and Spanish LOVE vowels, the words have more vowels (and they are all pronounced, unlike English or French)
Entschulden sounds quite nice to me. I think familiarity always makes a language sound better.
@@empress2529 The Spanish word "sorpresa" has 5 consonants and 3 vowels. You might still be right about Italian and Spanish being more vowel-heavy but I still wouldn't call German all that consonant-heavy. Btw, I would count the German word "Transzendent" as having 10 consonants because 'z' is pronounced as [ts].
Its encouraging to see so many positive comments about German here 😭🥰❤ seriously. As a native speaker, bilingual with german and English, I didn't think German was nice as a child, but after having left for years and returned, I really appreciate the quirky humor within the language, the interesting ways to say things. I'm glad I get to know it intimately now.
I grew up hearing people say "German is an ugly language". I never really thought about it. Then I somehow stumbled upon Juju, and shortly after Lotte. It didn't take long for my music library to get taken over by German and German speaking music artist. Now about 90% or more of the music I listen to is German. It's a beautiful language without a doubt.
I love German, so much litterature and science, its like the classical language of the late 19th century early 20th century. For me German is Epic
I do appreciate that German is easy to understand and pronounce!
Whenever I hear native German speakers in the US, I actually find it's spoken so fluidly that it flows beautifully like how Italian sounds.
I took beginner courses in highschool to get in touch with my heritage, so I might be bias however. I got exposed to it as a kid.
German is a nice sound, and German people seem pretty impressive to me.
All languages can be beautiful or ugly; this depends on who you are talking to.
👌
I think the sounds that we find unattractive are sounds made in the throat or nose. So sounds that resemble coughing, clearing ones throat, choking, having a cold :) While we like open sounds that have a clear tone. We also like words that have a lot of vowels. Words with many consonants stuck together sound harsh and are more difficult to pronounce. There are big differences between languages in this sense
I don't know. My impression is that Turkish sounds ugly because it applies so many closed vowels like U, Ü (up to six in a single word!).
This 💯
So basically it's an evolutionary result of prefering to be around healthy people rather than sick people?
And also forced sounds!--Intonation and length of sounds!
I totally agree. It’s the same with the accents within the same language.
I think the voice, pronunciation and dialect are key to whether a language sounds appealing or not. I've heard Mandarin Chinese spoken by a gruff mechanic and it sounded terrible, but spoken by a lady on a radio announcement it sounded so delicate and beautiful. I've had similar experiences with German.
I speak Mandarin, and to my ears, Cantonese is ghastly.
@@ThePlataf i think it really just comes down to exposure. I used to think cantonese sounds really funky but after hearing it more i grew to really enjoy how it sounds lol
@@jonathancross3097 Actually, we Mandarin speakers are rather snobbish, tbh.
Exposure? Ummm, well, I did work in restaurants where only Cantonese was spoken amongst the staff, and honestly, it made my ears bleed after 16 hour shifts!
They have too many tones, and waaaay too much weird slang, lol.
Agree. I'm Singaporean and the Hokkien (a Chinese dialect spoken in Fujian, where many Singaporeans' ancestors hail from, and Taiwan) spoken by many of our older folk sounds more harsh and uncouth, but when the Taiwanese speak it it sounds way more elegant and refined. It's the exact same dialect but the accent/pronounciation makes a lot of difference.
I think you are right. In my last job a German director would visit the office. He was huge, and spoke good English in a very very loud and very very deep voice. After an hour I had a massive headache. And yet a German friend from 40 years ago had lovely English with a soft German influence. German can be quite harsh and bombastic, but it can be gentle and melodic.
Thank you both for your interesting analysis! I also like your humour!
And thank you, Rob, for being so charming about German! Of course, I do love it, as it is my mother tongue and I love to express myself in it as a writer and speaker. It has also been used by a lot of poets - the romantics and others - and their poems have been turned into thousands of songs. And then, there are so many varieties of it: the dialects, they differ a lot. Some of them are very melodic (like Rhinelandish), some smooth (not using the hard "r" sound), like Bavarian. So thank you for your way of saying "Schmetterling" as softly as in a morning sunrise 🦋🦋🦋to make a point there!
But then, I think there is no ugly language. Once you dive into it, every language is a wonderful means of expression and gives us a glimpse into the soul and mind of its speaker(s).
Still I have two favourites, or let's call it three: English because it's so rich and playful - and I love the Scottish version as well for being so melodic. And then my new love is Ukrainian. I started it for practical reasons and found out I like it so much - hearing it as well as its taste in the mouth when pronuncing it. ... I got addicted and there is no morning without my obligatory lesson. (And there the familiarity bias doesn't get in!) Whatever it is, it has won a special place in my soul.
I'm glad I found your podcast, it's interesting and charming. Keep going! Thanks again!
Danke schön and dyakuyu.
Christiane from Munich, Germany
Nice to see the defense of German. There's a lot of bias and ignorance that plays into dislike of it. Too many people have only heard snippets of Hitler's bizarre-sounding, declamatory, hyper-theatrical rants or barked orders in war movies. To my ears, German is pleasant and certainly intellectually stimulating to learn, as well as being one the great languages of literature and classical music.
I knew someone who complained how "ugly" German sounded. When told he was actually listening to Dutch he thought it "was not that bad".
Interesting if there was some bias in there
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
To be fair, Dutch sounds similar to some Northern German dialects ("Plattdeutsch"). And personally I´m not a fan of either, but it allows me to read Dutch decently well.
Dutch, to me, a lingual ignoramus, sounds like German spoken with an English accent.
@@f0urstr1ng I can actually see where you are coming from (as someone who studied German and lived in Holland)
Im surprised they didnt bring up any African languages, especially when talking about the musicality of languages and tonality. A lot of african languages have a rhythm to them and distinct consonant sounds that when spoken by a native speaker are very very pleasing to the ear, imo
My husband is Ghanaian, I can listen to him speaking Twi forever! It's so beautiful
Ugh, nada ‘pleasant’ about them - they have the most randomly constructed words that follow no logical patterns, with repetitions of the same syllable in the same word, which is a sign of very poorly-constructed words! Germanic languages are the superior languages that follow the most logical patterns and that have the most pretty words, so Germanic languages should be the languages that are mostly included in videos, and also the 6 true Celtic languages, and the true Latin languages, and other pretty languages like Hungarian etc! Only pretty languages should be taught and spoken, why would someone want to speak a non-pretty language with mostly non-pretty words and words that sound embarrassingly funny is beyond me - most ppl are a wėird type of ænìmaI!
The misused big terms my and husband and beautiful must be edited out, and ppl cannot be in a ‘reIationship’ and there must be a distance between all ppl at all time, to prevent all future śìnńing - I am THE only Possessor / Owner / Leader etc and the only wf / gf / bride etc aka the only lovable / loved beings and the superior being, and reIationships are only meant for us pure beings (me & the pure protectors aka the alphas) who were blessed with a pure body that doesn’t gx one out and that has a good smėII / no smėIIs aka an enjoyable presence, and were never meant for ppl aka śínńerz!
@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038 cool story 😆
Sadly, despite having more linguistic, cultural, and genetic diversity than any other continent, Africa is frequently missed in academic research in the English speaking world.
German is not ugly; it is very pleasant to listen to.
Sadly, most Brits see German only through a succession of bad war films and comedy shows. It's actually a very beautiful language.
German here: I do appreciate the comedy, tho, especially Monty Python ❤ 😊
Same here in Italy
As a Frenchman, some of my earlier memories of hearing German language was in movies about the French resistance when a guy in German uniform would bark "Aufmachen, Polizei !", which was usually bad news for the people behind the door... Barking "Papieren bitte" was also pretty widespread. Fortunately, years later I learned that German language was used not only by the Gestapo, but also by Hölderlin and Rilke (and a few others).
Hände hoch! Hände hoch! Schnell!!
@@fburton8 And how about the German accent when the Gestapo guys tried to speak French…? So thick it became a caricature… “Nous safon lé moyens dé fou faire barlé…”
@@Daniel-wi6sk "Ve hav vays uff making you tok"
@@Daniel-wi6skor the same in English. "Ve haf vays of making you talk.
Ja, das ist die unbewusste Verbindung, die unser Gehirn schafft . Höre Dir schöne Lieder oder Märchen in deutsch an. Dann klingt es vie freundlicher.
Once when I was traveling in the Netherlands, a Dutch woman apologized to me for "our ugly language." She seemed sincerely sorry that visitors had to be subjected to hearing Dutch. And I had not said anything or made any kind of face to prompt or provoke her apology; in fact, I had the impression that she had said this to other foreigners.
A couple of years ago, I was on a train ride abroad, reading a children's book to my four year old daughter on my knee. She was tired and had been in a whining mood, so I did my best to speak with a comforting and relaxing voice. When we were done, another passenger, who had been observing us, commented:
"I didn't understand a word, but that was so lovely! What language was that?"
"Thanks, that was Dutch."
"Oh really? I had no idea Dutch sounded so nice."
it was nice from her and understandable. dutch is not a language but a throat disease
@@opinionLeader322 No, it is not. It depends very much on how the language is spoken, as in the example by @hansm.5261. Germans tend to find the Dutch language cute.
@@tomm4073 I have only ever heard Germans make fun of Dutch, saying it's "Drunk German" (which is kinda funny since there is one additional great consonant shift that German went through making consonants harder, e.g., en "day", de "Tag", nl "Dag".). But it's clearly just healthy, friendly banter.
@@opinionLeader322 Je maakt zo lekker vrienden, paardekop
I've listened to way too much Bach, Schubert and German opera to not find German beautiful-sounding. Unfortunately my German is intermediate at best, but I'm working on it.
I was first exposed to German at 4 years old in 1988. My father was in the army and stationed in Bamburg. Later Giessen.
We attended a church where a German woman was married to an American. She ended up babysitting me and my little sister. She would speak and sing in German to us.
I always loved the language. At almost 40 I have revisited trying to learn German again. It feels like home even though I haven’t lived there since 1995. 🥹
And it is in my top 3 of most beautiful languages spoken ❤
Hindi is a very beautiful and easy to learn language. I am actually a Tamilian from south India and can speak 8 languages. Also lived and studied in Germany for 10 years. Hence like German language. French & Italian no doubt are gorgeous. Korean and Japanese surprisingly sound like some south indian language to me.
I once met an elderly Englishman in London, he asked me to recite German poems what I did. He enjoyed it very much. He said he loved the German language, he could listen forever.
I'm French and I love the sound of German too! And the German accent on both French and English sounds nice too. I wish people were less prejudiced against it.
@@fynna8640 And I love the French accent. I learnt French when I was a child.
@@rosedewittbukater4203 Ich lernte German aber ich habe alles vergessen. Ich often gehe zu Berlin aber mein Schule Deutsche ist... useless 🤭 Also when you (try to) speak their language to Germans in Germany, I noticed they often reply in English... or even in French. I call that "being germanized" 😁
@@fynna8640 Not Englishized? A Cuban friend who learned his French in our very English city, but he spoke it very well finally went with his family to Montreal. When he tried to speak French in Montreal, everyone he spoke to replied to him in English!! even though his mother tongue was, of course, Spanish. "Next time, I'm going to say that I don't speak English." "Good luck with that one!" I replied. Montrealized? Montreal is a very bilingual city.
And we had a beloved German teacher that I will always associate German with.
I’m an American, who was born in Germany. I only lived there for two years, but my parents rented a house from an elderly German couple. I called them Oma and Opa, and they spoke both English and German. Opa(sp?) was a colonel in the Wehrmacht in ww2 and both were lovely people. Anyhoo, I digress, they would only speak to me in German. I’ve retained very little, it was almost exactly 40 years ago now, but whenever I hear German I like to sit and listen. Sometimes I’ll just watch the movie Downfall for hours. To me German is one of the most beautiful languages. It’s true there are some hard sounds, but when I hear German, I hear beauty.
You spelled “Opa” correctly (how would one even misspell it?), but “Wehrmacht” is misspelled.
Wehrmacht - defense powers
@@hassegreiner9675 thanks! Of course you are correct. I changed the spelling in my post.
@@ragnkja thanks!
German sounds like wretching and vomiting some times. However French has more of the gluteal gargling your bile sound which I like even less. Any woman can make any language sounds attractive and beautiful if spoken softly by her.
One of the most beautiful church choirs I had the privilege to watch was in Vienna, and it was in German.
Are you kidding? German is the most beautiful sounding language.
When I spoke German to a German friend in London, my Japanese friends thought we were talking French to each other, because it sounded so soft and musical...
Lol
it is actually Italian which is soft and musical. Not German
@@user-hi8py3hq5s That is obvious
@@user-hi8py3hq5s You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?
what is your exact point@@user-xw9el5bj1w
I actually don’t think any language sounds ugly, but that they all have their own unique verbal patterns and sounds.
Have you heard of Danish? 😆
@@celeluwhenunfortunately!
Hungarian, afrikaans.
Have you heard two Moroccans arguing?
I actually DO think German sounds ugly. Sorry, guys.
It's guttural, heavy, the words are too long, the grammar is convoluted. As for the "melody", atrocious and non-existent.
German should be outright cancelled. Even Danish sounds better, so Germany should just abandon it altogether, and switch to either English, French or some Scandinavian dialect.
To me, there is something very pleasing about German. I can't quite put my finger on why. Even one verb always going in the second position and any other being pushed to the end of the sentence somehow sounds pleasing to me. I think it gives it an interesting rhythm. Anyway, I like the sound of German.
I had interesting experiences with Italian and German (I'm a French-Dutch bilingual). I found German unfriendly until I saw films from Werner Herzog or Wim Wenders, where some of the dialogs are pure poetry... This made me want to learn German, but my (mostly Flemish) teachers tended to make me associate German with Nazis again. Until I actually lived in Germany and enjoyed the subtleties of the language very much.
Italian always sounded like music to my ears until I watched a popular game on a commercial broadcaster. And it sounded extremely vulgar to me.
It's all a matter of perception and associations. Watch movies in original version... you will find out any language sounds sweet when a woman talks to her children
Ad a kid I remember seeing Donna Summer interviewed, maybe by Johnny Carson or someone like that. Summer was a fluent German speaker. So he asked her about the supposed ugliness of German. She responded by giving him an example of how beautiful German was - in a very breathy, feminine, erotic voice. It instantly cured me of any lingering prejudice I might have had against German.
Plus it was Donna Summer, a five star singing voice. Personally I've never taken issue with German, though I do not speak it at all.
This whole discussion about German reminds me of an old joke (There are other versions). The former Holy Roman Emperor (Charles the 5th) would speak French with diplomats while addressing his wife in Spanish and mistress in Italian. He conversed with his servants in English and he only spoke German when he yelled at his horse.
@@comicus6769 As a German that joke made me laugh. Well done sir.
@@comicus6769 No too far-fetched actually.
I find it quite likely that whenever he was swearing, his native dialect came out. French was the posh thing to speak at court, and as for the (spanish political marriage?) wife and (international?) servants that could have been what worked best.
Now the mistress... it may have been so his wife would not understand. ;D
@@ViolosD2I Two things though: 1° the anecdote is completely made up, as can be seen from reading any good biography of Charles V, and more interestingly, 2° German was not, as you call it, "his native dialect" - in fact, he never learnt to speak it properly. His 'native ' language was actually French (he grew up, as had his father, in present-day Belgium and was raised exclusively by French-speaking courtiers with barely any input from his parents, whereas the fact that his Habsburg grandfather - whom he never ever met - Emperor Maximilian I was Austrian had zero effect on his language learning), and though one would assume they taught him all the other languages of the lands he was bound to inherit, strangely enough they didn't, so that when he came to his Spanish kingdoms in 1516, he still couldn't properly speak Castilian. This, however (in conctrast to German) he did learn properly within a relatively short time (probably aided by having learned some Latin before, by the linguistic relation between C. and his original language French, & of course by immersion in a Castilian-speaking environment).
So the only thing that would appear to be true about the original claim is that he did in all likelihood speak Spanish/Castilian with his Portuguese wife Isabella, whose mother had been a Spanish infanta, and the sister of Charles's mother. As for claiming he would have spoken English with anyone (let alone with his servants, who weren't English & would have been less likely to know many foreign languages than the élite), that is so absurd it is funny - plus of course a nice illustration of how present-day anglophones cannot imagine a world like Early Modern Europe, where until at least 1750 virtually nobody outside the British Isles (at most a small number of merchants and close neighbours) would have bothered to learn English at all.
Okay, and for the sake of completeness - his mistresses (with whom he was was 1° before marriage, 2° when he was in another country than his wife, or 3° during his long widowerhood) were all, as far as I remember, either Spanish or (in one case) German, so Italian wouldn't have been the logical language to use with them. That said, he almost certainly understood it, given his knowledge of Spanish and at least some Latin.
To me, it matters whether the language is spoken or sung. I find Spanish beautiful when sung, and French beautiful when spoken. I live in an area that is a “melting pot “ so I’ve heard many different languages.
I've never really understood why French has been considered lovely or romantic (apart from being a Romance language) - I've always found it too nasally. I'm quite fond of how Arabic and Vietnamese (for dramatically different reasons, each) sound.
I don't like French. It is arrogant and pretentious. Some words are spelt similarly to English but they pronounce them differently (wrongly) on purpose.
I've heard it said that when the French talk it is like they are singing. But that means when they actually sing it sounds like they are talking, which is why I don't like French songs.
I literally can't stand Spanish, from the moment I arrived in Argentina I wanted to leave. It's the way they approximate cononants, reminds me of alcoholics here in the English speaking world.
Spanish is a loving tongue,
Soft as music, light as spray,
Twas a girl I learned it from,
Living down Sonora way.❤
To me it's the voice plus the actual 'poetry' of what they are speaking. I studied Mandarin Chinese in secondary school and for a year in college. I loved it and really enjoyed learning how to make the sounds fluently and certainly didn't consider the language to sound ugly, though in the beginning it sounded strange and very fun to start to figure out! But I also didn't hear my language lab exercises as 'beautiful' until in my university class we finally got up to the level of reading an essay by Lu Xun and I got to listen to a recording of that essay read by the TA in the class (she was a native Mandarin speaker who was actually studying English literature, and she had a very pretty voice). Omg it sounded so beautiful! She was an amazing reader. The beauty was a combo of her particular voice, the Mandarin Chinese sounds, and the poetry of the writing along with her skill as a reader. Wish I could listen to it now!
Ich denke, die Leute erwarten bei der deutschen Sprache einen harten Klang, weil es da vor einigen Jahrzehnten einen Österreicher gab, der keine sanfte Aussprache hatte. Aber hört man sich deutsche Romantiker an, so klingt die deutsche Sprache sehr harmonisch.
One of the reasons isn’t always the language itself, but the tone of voice in which it is spoken. People from different countries tend to used their voice differently.
I agree so much. I find Arabic to be a lovely language when spoken by a female in soft tones (I'm a female so they'd felt comfortable speaking around me). But when I hear it spoken by men in a loud, fast, rough manner it's down right scary to me. But it could be that I'm from the American South where we speak English more slowly than other English speakers.
Irish, aka Gaeilge is a beautiful sounding tongue. English when spoken by South Welsh people sounds great too which suggests its not just the language but the people speaking it. And of course its all subjective.
I agree. I began teaching myself Scots Gaelic and loved the way it sounded but I had no one to talk to so I stopped learning it as all I was doing was talking to my self 😂
Irish sounds wonderful and fluent when spoken by a native speaker. When someone is trying to read it or is a non-native speaker, it sounds meh. It has a lovely rhythm.
Irish is like a magical language or book made up language except that there are grammar books and you can actually learn it...
It’s very objective, not subjective, and, just like the beauty of certain songs / melodies and beauty of certain well-written lyrics and beauty in nature and good smėIIs vs non-good smėIIs etc, pretty words and pretty languages are also a fact, however, the sound itself is created by the voice of the speaker, so one must always look at the words in their written form, before judging a language! Very few have a good ear / eye and an objective and logical mind, and true linguists are selected based on some of them, so they know a pretty language when they see it, and pretty languages are kinda rare, considering the total number of languages that exist, because less than 100 languages are pretty with mostly pretty words! The number of pretty words determines if a language is pretty, so a language with mostly pretty words is a pretty language, and some pretty languages have prettier words than other pretty languages, which is determined by the word-construction patterns that each pretty language follows and their preferred vowels / consonants etc, and I have seen many hundreds, if not thousands of languages, and I discovered less than 100 pretty languages!
Dutch & English & Norwegian are the best / prettiest and most refined languages ever that have the most pretty / poetic words and the best pronunciation rules with the prettiest and most distinctive sounds ever and the best letter combinations ever and are also the easiest to read / type / learn because they have a very relaxing aspect that naturally relaxes one’s eye, which also makes them a great option for new learners that find it more difficult to start language learning with languages that are a bit harder to read etc (they should be the universal languages, 2gether with English) etc, and all other Germanic languages are also gorgeous, including Icelandic and German and the others, and then the 6 Celtic languages, namely Welsh / Breton / Cornish / Manx / Irish / Scottish Gaelic, and then the true Latin languages, namely Portuguese / Gallo / French / Aranese / Galician / Catalan / Guernsey / Esperanto / Spanish / Occitan / Latin / Italian & the other Italian-based languages and the language spoken in Wallonia / Belgium and the other French-based languages and other languages based on these languages that may exist that are referred to as dialects, and a few other languages like Hungarian, which are all pretty with mostly pretty words and pretty word endings!
I am a Filipino whose native languages are American English and Spanish (blend of Castilian and Mexican) aside from Tagalog. I always liked the sound of British English and thought it was so elegant. Of course, I thought Spanish sounded beautiful, along with other related languages (Italian and French especially, but also Portuguese, Catalan and various Italian dialects, modern Greek as well): all just sounded perfect for singing. The ancestral tongue Latin sounded beautiful for praying. Lastly, I liked the sounds of the languages of the Malay Archipelago (Bahasa Indonesia especially) as they reminded me very much of Philippine languages. All non-tonal unlike languages from other parts of southeast Asia.
So it is true that a lot of your impression of languages is based on familiarity. While I did not think that German was a nice-sounding language at first, subsequently I got to hear real German (not "World War II German") spoken and sung, and realized how very pleasant and charming it could sound. And as a lover of classical music, I noted this: if German were really so harsh or ugly, then why were most of the greatest classical composers native German speakers? Why so many beautiful lieder or German-language operas or operettas? Even folk and schlager music sounds very nice.
I also know that German speakers (like Dutch speakers) tend to learn foreign languages very well if they study them, and I have met some Germans who sounded completely like Englishmen or Frenchmen when they spoke English or French. Those who speak Italian (opera singers especially) are also very good in it. Very far from the stereotype of this German or Austrian with a very strong, quaint accent.
In the end, all languages have their own unique beauty.
J'ai appris l 'allemand en première langue au collège et j' étais bien plus à l'aise qu 'avec l' anglais si difficile à prononcer pour un français, j'aimais bien les cours d'allemand avec la famille Neuman qui roulait en Mercedes et la famille Schmidt en Volkswagen beetle 😊
My ex boss (a French Belgian) once demonstrated how nice German can sound and how guttural French could be by reciting a short poem, about birds, in both languages. The German version sounded so "romantic" while the French version sounded so coarse!! Wish I could remember the two :(
Belgian Dutch is very smooth, Belgian French is uhhh... not.
Haben Sie das Gedicht? Ich hätte sehr gern es lesen)
@@masonharvath-gerrans832 Sorry I don't but wish I did. I lost contact with my ex boss so don't think I'll ever find the poem (sadly)
I think I know this joke, but I don't remember the exact words either... It was about birds chirping in trees. You would say "Die Vögel zwitschern in den Bäumen" in a romantic tone and then "Les oiseaux gazouillent dans les arbres" with a heavy mock German accent (I'm a French speaker BTW). My grandfather, who fought in WWII, loved telling this joke!
But the softest French is softer than the softest German, and the harshest German hits harder than the harshest French.
Im a native spanish speaker and my favourite is brazilian portuguese, probably because its easy to understand but also more melodic and upbeat than mine. Im currently learning danish and this has made me realize how much more beautiful german is.
I'm a native American English speaker, with an understanding of much of Mexican Spanish. I've been learning Brazilian Portuguese since the beginning of this year. Although I love Spanish, I find myself falling in love with Brazilaro.
I'm a native English speaker who has studied more than one language and I find Portuguese to be the most beautiful-sounding of them all.
Yeah Pork’n’cheese sounds gud.
@@Crocsinthegym I had a girlfriend who's father was Portuguese. She used to say that she was half pork n cheese.
Learning Danish? My condolences to your throat.
If you’d ever heard German poems being read, you would appreciate the beauty of the German language.
There is no such thing as an "ugly language" - there are graceless people who give the wrong impression about it, but in the mouth of a faithful believer the language takes colour and beauty.... Now, there's the discussion as to what makes up for "beauty" and here, these days, the opinion is sharply divided, because, what's good for the ears and eyes of some, is bad for the ears and eyes of another, and the opposite, GOD will be the last to judge!!!!..... ✝️
I am Italian and I have always loved German, it's such a meaningful and precise language!
right on..!
It's like Latin, a "Chinese box" language, where you have to match the beginning, subject forms with the predicate/verb forms at the end, so that because you plan out your whole statement in advance you sound more definite and certain and logical
@@patmcclure4882
Things work as you described as long as foreign learners have not yet reached a certain level in their German studies.
Aww, thanks for advocating for our language!
I am French and hearing a well educated German read a book shows that you have a beautiful language.
Chechen & Avar also had those g/ch sounds one finds in Dutch & Arabic. It sounded quite Arabic to my ear, even though you have Farsi, Turkish & a whole lot of mountains in the way.
German is a gorgeous language, and only the soft Rs should be used, and a soft intonation and a neutral accent without stressed consonants or vowels and without try to change the voice, and simply pronouncing the words normally in a neutral way - the only reason why a Germanic language can sound ‘harsh’ sometimes is because some speakers use harder Rs and a harsh accent / way of speaking / intonation, and sometimes because some speakers have a naturally harsh / rough voice with a darker / lower sound, because the voice of the speaker creates the actual sound, however, when it’s because of the R or the accent / intonation, it can easily be avoided by simply using a normal soft R (like, barely tōuching the R, never ‘gurgling’ it and never rolling / thrilling it) and by using a normal intonation and neutral accents, not a harsh accent / intonation!
@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038 well, depending on which region of Germany you hear to, the R is spoken very differently. The hard R (rolled in front of the mouth like in spanish) is more a Bavaria thing (at least southern Germany). The rest uses the soft R (formed in the throat), which can sound like a cat purr ....
I like German, I also really enjoy American English with a German accent. Though I think it helps that I've met German speakers, otherwise my main experience would be based on propaganda cartoons from the fourties and war movies...
I like the last scenario in this video. There are factors like: The type of voice, how the voice is used, the volume, how smoothly the language is spoken and the speed in which the voice is speaking. I always loved listening to the French language, but spoken softly, slowly, smoothly, usually by young women. But that's my preference. But in many cases, almost any language can sound as pleasant to my ears when spoken with the same characteristics.
35-42 on a scale to 100? That's such a narrow range that it is unusual whatever one asked about. So this "research" (who is paying them for this?) hasn't gone anywhere yet.
Australian here, and my neighbour was born in Germany. His mother used to come out and visit him each summer until she passed. I used to love listening to them chatting away in their native tongue. I don't think German is any more ugly a language than any other. As with any language, it's how it is said - the love or anger behind it - that makes it seem a particular way. As a teen I wanted to learn German but sadly my school didn't teach it.
Suppose with five minutes a day on one of these language learning apps like duolingo, or indeed italki you could get conversational pretty quick! Agreed, its gorgeous and I think Rob expressed it’s quaint playful “mooshy” sound when he pronounced schmetterling. Currently learning other languages for university, but have many German friends and would love to learn it too ❤
"As a teen I wanted to learn German but sadly my school didn't teach it."
You probably wouldn't learn how to understand it very well, anyway. There's such a wild variation in spoken German, and the *way* that it's spoken, that you will struggle to get there by HSC level.
I didn't like the sound of German until I learned enough to be able to read Faust, then I decided it was quite majestic. Not pretty like Italian (although there's Italian and Italian - try listening to a Napolitanian and you'll change your views) but elegant.
I decided to start learning French when I was 31. It’s not to late start learning German.
@@TheogRahoomie I studied German for many years in high school and college, and then I took one semester of French. My teacher said I spoke French like a German. I don't think she said it as a compliment.🙄
It's not the language. It's the speaker. A melodic voice with the intention to soothe or seduce or amuse can make anything sound wonderful.
Spot on. And I would add, languages sound very differently from one country to another and also within each country.
Kind of like an instrument. A piano is no less pleasant than a guitar, but it’s the skill of the player which matters.
Hmmm, definitely the language matters because it's impossible to speak Yoruba without it being melodic, if not. You will just be mumbling rubbish that people can't understand because it's a tonal language where the meaning depends on the melody
Apparently those saying German sounds ugly base their conclusion solely on listening to recorded speeches of the Führer.
Ah no. That makes up a part of it. But there are legitimate forms
As a German teacher, I would like to keep this strictly on the level of what something sounds like. To me, a language is music on its own. The reason for taking up a language could be quite simple: one would like to be able to pronounce the same sounds/words/sentences they hear or merely to sing their favourite songs.
I prefer Spanish to Italian, which could be a matter of one's temper and the 'rhythm' of a language. I even find Portuguese more beautiful than Italian. People could find a language attractive because of its real or supposed similarity to their favourite one(s).
Never learn a language because it is easy to learn. You should have a 'spark' that will drive you all the way, preventing you from giving up. That's the case with Danish, which turned up in my life by accident and through music. 😊 The language is completely useless, i.e. I do not have an opportunity to speak it or make any use of it but I enjoy it. That is what I call love. 😊 Please give Finnish or Estonian a chance, or at least listen to a song in those languages.
This is why I have been watching the Eurosong Contest for about forty years: because of the unique chance to hear how so many languages sounded (unfortunately, almost everyone sings in English today). Yeah, Iceland had a great hit two years ago - I was singing along and loved how the lyrics sounded without even knowing what they meant. 😂
After learning and living in Italy i realized that one of the main reasons, for italian to sound so nice, is the fact that plural is made with a different vowel instead of adding one "s" after. I'm Portuguese by the way.
The Slavic languages are kinda like this too. They change or add a vowel to make the word plural instead of adding "s" or other consonants to make plural forms like in Portuguese, Spanish and English
When reading the Elvish in The Lord Of The Rings I can tell Tolkien really tried to make it beautiful and graceful. Names like Lórien and phrases like "Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo" are beautiful to me not because they are familiar (although they do remind me of latin) its the way it rolls off the tongue. The words flow like music and there aren't a lot of abrupt sounds.
You've obviously never been forced to take Latin. 😅
Tolkien was also inspired by Finnish, which to me sounds better than Latin. 😅
Tolkien did speak Welsh, he really loved the language and based his elvish language, Sidarin, on it. "Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful."
A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
Silívren penna míriel
O menel aglar elenath.
Na-chaered palandíriel
O galadhremmin Ennorath,
Fanúilos, le linnathon
Nef aear, si nef aearon!
@@corinna007 Kiitos!
I'm surprised Gaelic wasn't mentioned. There are so many beautiful languages in the world that focusing on the more mainstream ones feels like I'm missing out.
Do!! Lle mae'r Gymraeg a'r eraill! (This is Welsh btw)
Gaelic seems so tough to pronounce
Where can I learn it properly
Presumably that's because, other than in Celtic music, we rarely hear its variants. You're right, though, they do sound beautiful.
@@compassroses Welsh (from Wales) was just taken off the endangered language list because so many people speak it daily now in Wales! We have Welsh speaking schools too!
I've always liked the sound of German, and particularly their practice of creating compound words by adding shorter words together in such a way as to create a specialized word from sipler elements, thereby making the meaning quite clear without having to invent an altogether arbitrary word which means nothing by itself.
5:04 German is very beautiful, we have so many poets and wonderful literature! I once knew an old Englishman (more than 30 years ago) who asked me to recite German poems to him because he found the language very beautiful. However, he didn't understand a word. I had to recite again and again.
I'm German and my favorite language at the moment is Finnish. I love the range of the vowels and the softness of the consonants (compared to German, English, French, and other languages my ears are more used to). I kind of fell in love with Finnish hip-hop music after this year's Eurovision Song Contest and started learning it, too. I wouldn't have thought that I would like the language as much before I actually started learning it, when I only knew it from written words, which look really intimidating because they can get pretty long, but it's an amazing experience because the grammar works quite differently from the languages I already knew, so it's not just learning new words for things, but also new ways to conceptualize what I'm trying to communicate.
Good luck on your journey or "onnea matkaan"! It can be a nightmare to learn for non-native speakers as I've understood.
You choose the most difficult, weird and hilarious of the european languages!
I like the sound of finnish, but.... it is extremely difficult language to learn. Suprisingly is finnish language quiet easy to pronounce for polish people - I mean, only to pronounce 😅
I think finnish and german go so well together, love them both ❤
I’m Ukrainian and I just madly love how Finnish and Estonian sound ❤
Nice to see someone who agrees, ‘cause usually people are very surprized when I tell them…
Practically no Italian word ends on a consonant, the few that do end on nasals or liquids (n, r, or l). It doesn't have many consonant clusters (consonant clusters of Latin - ct, pt - have become double consonants - tt - in other clusters with l - cl, pl - the "l" has become a semivowel (the English y). Unstressed vowels are not reduced, and stressed vowels in open syllables become long, thus creating a nice alternation of long and short vowels. I think these are the primary reasons why so many people find Italian nice to listen to.
Yes
Agreed
I have always liked German. That is why I became fluent in German.
I learned german in germany on a visit in 1969 & decided to move there. Bavarian is a beautiful language.
Mir gefaelt die deutsche sprache.
I like the german language.
My trip to Germany has completely changed my perception of German, I attended a concert with an outstanding opera singer singing in German, and since then, German sounds totally different to me😀
I am proficient but not native in German, and I live in Germany. It sounds just "normal"... As you fairly pointed out, it depends on how you use the words, whether you yell angrily "SCHMETTERLING" or use your calm, friendly, sweet voice... And of course, the impact of ww2 movies on the reputation of the German language is immense!
French is so overrated, and German + also Dutch are underrated.
Chuten Tach, Dikkah. Sach ma, findes du unsere Sprachä auch ßo groußartich?
I found a closet full of Russian books in my high school Spanish class and asked my teacher why they were there, he said they had been used before when they were our allies - this was during the Cold War - I remember thinking it would be useful to teach it, because more people could become diplomats (or spies) if they were fluent in Russian. I've always loved the sound of Slavic languages.
My dad learned a little bit of Russian while working for NASA because they had a lot of the Russian cosmonaut come for training. He never got fluent, but he was able to speak a little bit. I tried it in college, after doing well with Spanish and French, and I was blown away by how different it was. at the time I thought it was very difficult. Now I want to try it again.
Russian seems like the ugliest of all languages to me. This is subjective, of course
@@KristenRowenPliske удачи
@KristenRowenPliske Russian is not as difficult as some people think. Common Indo-European roots do the trick.
I hope you'll have fun learning it!
@@gklkjuhylpoiuyuiojhjklkjuh9976 that helps with remembering words but you also have the grammar which is gonna be hard if you're an english speaker
I love German language, this language is as gorgeous as arabic,persian,chinese,french,Japanese...
German is not ugly at all. It’s not always melodic as consonants like D and T tend to be hard when spoken at the end of words, which might give a more robotic feel to it, with those hard stops. But it’s not that hard in comparison with other indo-European languages.
Apart from that, I personally can’t really think of phonemes in German that are particularly harsh to hear.
I think the reason why a tonal language may be less melodic is probably because you have little to no freedom in how to say a sentence in terms of tones. If you try, you will find it almost impossible to say it without changing the meaning. With that in mind, you will probably find poetry in Chinese to be more appealing than normal daily Chinese because one important aspect of Chinese poetry is the fluidity of tones.
Christian hymns suffer for this reason. The melody of the song can make the lyrics into nonsense.
That makes a lot of sense.
@@stevekerp1the lyrics were nonsense to start with.
@@kellydalstok8900 Why be a jerk?
I think the problem is also with how rapid the pitch changes are. In tonal languages, you change pitch constantly, often even within a syllable, sometimes even twice.
On the other hand, Japanese is apparently well liked. It's not tonal, but it is pitch accented. You still have little freedom with how you change pitch, but the changes are much rarer. Here we go from 0-2 changes per syllable to 0-2 changes per word.
I'm Italian. I love the sound of British English, Galician and Spanish.
That's because the British pay attention to pronunciation, tone and breathiness when they speak-- at leas the educated ones who speak SRP that is.
I find it interesting when one prefers British English vs American English or vice versa. I'm a little biased as an American, but I think in terms of efficiency and usefulness that ours is better. We also improved the spelling of some words, like dropping unnecessary Us from words like colour and armour. British people also seem to have a tendency to pronounce the names of foreign things more inaccurately than Americans do. I'm losing my mind trying to think of some examples on the spot but with some effort I got a couple: Brits say "fillet" like "skillet" when it should rhyme with "valet" (-ay sound). They say "taco" like "tack-o" vs "tah-co" and "pasta" with the "pa" in "pat" and so on.
Also maybe this guy in the video just sucks at trying to make foreign sounds but with the Thai dude, it felt like he didn't know how to get out of his accent to imitate the sound whereas it's closer to American English, though that's a bit of a different thing.
@@TaimaWhat was the name of that Dutch post-impressionist who cut off his ear? Van Go? No, "khokh"!
Regarding fillet/filet, it depends in British English. The older form (fillet), brought in with the Normans, has been anglicised with the 't'. However, more recent introductions due to globalisation such as particular food, e.g. filet mignon is pronounced in British English without the 't' (at least amongst the more knowledgeable).
I think it's a bit of British elitism, reflecting our class system. 'Posh' foreign things, occasionally named, tend to keep the native pronunciation to show off cultural knowledge and customs (just look at, e.g. wine, clothing and other fine things), whereas foreign words regularly used in day to day conversation tend to become bastardised due to difficulty in pronouncing, ignorance, laziness etc.
Just take 'bolognese'. No-one says 'boh-loe-gnee-see' without looking pretentious, or 'Pah-ri' ...
when you say British your talking about RP which isnt spoken much in modern britain. The uk has many accents
@@inhabitantwaps3qs803 indeed the diversity of spoken English within the UK is far far larger than the diversity of Spoken English in all other English speaking countries combined. The interesting thing about English, which has perhaps helped it to become the 'world language' is that written English has always been standardised regardless of the part of the UK you're in. If this never happened, the English spoken in say, Yorkshire, Scotland or Cornwall reflected how it was written, it could easily be classed as multiple languages rather than a single language. A good example of this is the difference between Catalan and Spanish.
The familiarity factor is interesting but is perhaps odd, given that German, Dutch, English are much closer to each other than English, French and and Spanish.