What makes some languages sound BEAUTIFUL?

[@RobWords]

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 Web: go.italki.com/robwords App: go.italki.com/robwords

[@danquaylesitsspeltpotatoe8307]

This topic is like asking what the prettiest colour is! POINTLESS, you have people biased by their back ground and their personal standards!

[@TimothySielbeck]

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.

[@maudglazbrooke1287]

I think many Creoles have really lovely rhythms

[@KenFullman]

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.

[@ggarzagarcia]

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. 😅

[@bartmannn6717]

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!".

[@ivanskyttejrgensen7464]

Nacktschnecke! 😉

[@ElinT13]

And I really like the aggressive Krankenwagen. I am still chuckling ...

[@Psychol-Snooper]

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!

[@anders630]

Hah yeah so many who seems to only heard german from ww2 movies.

[@Psychol-Snooper]

@@ElinT13 _Edited to stop the confused replies._

[@SalixTree]

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.

[@fbabarbe430]

​@@ExtraterrestrialEarthlingseen too many holywood war films. That is not a farytale.

[@MagdalenaTheremin]

I also like very much the sound of german 🖤

[@borginburkes1819]

@@ExtraterrestrialEarthlingto me german sounds like your giving a science presentation. Or planning a military campaign

[@jackybraun2705]

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.

[@sieglindesmith9092]

@@ExtraterrestrialEarthling Sorry, Earthling, that sounds stupid. Everyone goes to war, sad to say.

[@jackrowe5571]

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.

[@jgw5491]

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.

[@jackrowe5571]

@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!

[@interestingvideos4me]

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 :)

[@ragnkja]

@@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.

[@professionalboycottservice7872]

It's not a tongue, it's your native communication.

[@stefan5958Q]

As native Dutch speaker, a speaker of English, also someone learning French. I noticed that Latin based languages like French and Italian, a lot of words end with a vowel, which I find sounding pleasant. While Germanic languages like Dutch and German, is not really the case. Most Germanic words end with a consonant.

[@Robinicat]

I have heard Dutch spoken in Holland that sounds very guttural and rough. But at the king's inauguration, he and his mother spoke to the crowd in Dam Square and their Dutch was soft. What gives?

[@ssam6250]

My native language is totally end with a vowel. No consonant ending at all. So when learning other language especially consonant ending word, it's so difficult.

[@Robinicat]

@@ssam6250 Is your language Farsi? When I hear it spoken it sounds very smooth and mellifluous.

[@spedupaudios5225]

French and Spanish are overrated. And to anyone who thinks German is ugly and aggresive, you haven't heard Dutch.

[@Robinicat]

I was in Dam Square for the inauguration of King Willem Alexander a few years ago and he and his mother spoke to the crowd and their accents were soft, not rough at all.

[@andwiel7377]

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.

[@hadronoftheseus8829]

Achtung!!! Granaten!!

[@andwiel7377]

@@hadronoftheseus8829 exactly :-)

[@BigNews2021]

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.

[@sanchellewellyn3478]

German sounds beautiful when Nena sings it . . . Peter Schilling does wonders with it as well.

[@krollpeter]

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.

[@Grobohalic]

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.

[@hah-vj7hc]

They use the gritty records of the old devices and show the slected bits where Ad0lf escalated as much as possible.

[@andersjjensen]

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.

[@TheHoveHeretic]

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!!

[@yesihavereadit]

Arabic.. the call to,prayer sounds like a mn with a cough slowly strangling a cat

[@mesechabe]

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.

[@InquirywithHelena]

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.

[@iorarua3525]

My favourite of all German poems to listen to is 'Abendlied'. I defy anyone to listen to it and then say that German is a harsh language.

[@SilviaViolin]

Listen to Thomas Mann reading his own books. It‘s marvellous!

[@quelodequelo]

As an Italian who learned German for good reasons my favorite sound is "also hier haben wir einen Weizen Bier für sie ..Currywurst mit Pommes dabei, Mahlzeit" 🥹

[@frozenbard]

I think german sounds nice, even when it’s spoken like ‘DER FREITZEN MÄTEN’

[@ansibarius4633]

For me, a Dutchman who speaks a related language, 'angry' and 'authoritarian' are the first associations I have with German (meaning in this case the standard language, High German), but that may indeed stem from ingrained prejudice based on WW II references, later confirmed by popular songs like Falco's 'Jeanny' and Rammstein's 'Du hast' which seem to cultivate that aspect. But aesthetic opinions are always subjective. High German's sch's, pf's and tz's may have been perceived as merely funny rather than aggressive at an earlier point in history. Then again, this angry-sounding harshness, as I perceive it, can sometimes really 'work' on an emotional level, as in said type of songs, more so perhaps than in other languages.

[@shiftyifrit1659]

"So why do people find Italian to be gorgeous?" *finds a gorgeous Italian girl to explain* Ah...I see

[@Rancid-Jane]

LOL - exactly.

[@cargyle6003]

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.

[@Kayenne54]

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...

[@naoko7184]

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😊.

[@dizzydaisy909]

try reading some books or watching some movies that were only ever in German, both to justify it and to brush up :))))

[@Orvect]

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.

[@srikrishnaaiyar5684]

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...

[@parkpatt]

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!

[@lakrids-pibe]

The meme about german being a hard and ugly language is very unfair.

[@FrogeniusW.G.]

Thank you!

[@moos5221]

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.

[@FrogeniusW.G.]

@@moos5221 ♡

[@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038]

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!

[@Psychol-Snooper]

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.

[@LivingDeadEnby]

Have you ever tried to whisper Uhu?

[@ragnkja]

The more commonly recognised “Eule” is also quite pretty. Though then there’s “Kauz”.

[@RobWords]

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.

[@ragnkja]

@@RobWords The crow and the cuckoo are named for their sound in English too.

[@Psychol-Snooper]

@@RobWords An onomatopoeia! I always wondered if I would ever get an opportunity to use 'onomatopoeia.'

[@arien_000]

I speak 4 languages and is also very familiar with Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese and Fukien), Korean and Indian (mostly Hindi) since I've been watching movies in those languages since childhood. Once in a while i also watch some Thai, French, Italian, German movies so I'm also familiar with those languages too. And so one thing I've learned is that each language has its own charm. And indeed familiarity bias is true cuz it's easier to appreciate a language once you've heard it a couple of times already. Like although most people hate Chinese, I really love listening to Mandarin songs. I feel like their words just glide with the notes. It's really pretty.

[@ksp1ify]

Wow, I am really surprised with mandarin being classified as an ugly language. I think it can be half explained by the contact of most part of people outside China with mandarin and another dialects. I had contact since childhood with Chinese merchants (I am Brazilian, but I think it is the same in another countries), and sometimes they are yelling to each other to serve costumers. I agree with you, I love songs in chinese and I think that the language sounds very beautiful in the songs. I hear songs in mandarin almost everyday. I like to watch chinese period dramas and I think it sounds very beautiful too.

[@tabbi888]

You can't tell me their opera sounds nice, it's the most high pitched discordant music I've ever heard, sorry.

[@Buderbukz]

@@tabbi888 Indeed. It sounds terrible, like fingernails down a chalkboard.

[@gerard7817]

I speak Mandarin, Cantonese and French. I find Mandarin the most beautiful by far. You're spot on, the songs are lovely

[@gerard7817]

​@@ksp1ifyI agree I speak Mandarin and think it's the most beautiful, so is Portuguese

[@mokodo_]

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

[@rachelle10]

Oh yes I agree! I know quite a lot of Romanian people and I always love hearing it, it's such an interesting language

[@rachelle10]

@@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???

[@moon_fake]

​@@FrozenMermaid666Dutch?? That language is a literal definition of vomit

[@rachelle10]

@@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.

[@rachelle10]

@@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.

[@jsoliv]

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.

[@fynna8640]

May I ask you which on(s) is/are your mothertongue(s)?

[@lucmanzoni6265]

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.

[@Gonzalez_MX]

​@@fynna8640You can tell he's Brazilian

[@franksellers7858]

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 !"

[@TKZprod]

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

[@mainlander3920]

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.

[@aliveslice]

I dislike French but like German 😎 Dutch... No thanks

[@jacquelinewhite1046]

It is my belief that Hollywood movies depicting Germans/Germany in a particular light may have negatively influenced foreigners' perception of the language.

[@Cinjo6]

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.

[@Ntagati]

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.

[@dutchreagan3676]

French is basically a poorly pronounced Latin dialect.

[@bunnybgood411]

I took Italian in college. It IS beautiful. It's fluid, mellifluous, musical. I don't dislike German and I don't think it's ugly. I haven't heard any language that sounds ugly to me.

[@AlmostEthical]

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.

[@carlosarias4319]

Spot on! 👏

[@reptarhouse]

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

[@asterborealis1417]

​@@reptarhouseby "tonal language", i think he meant languages that use tones on words... You can search what "tonal language" means

[@tams805]

@@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.

[@hah-vj7hc]

That's what I thought as well

[@annekabrimhall1059]

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.

[@judasthepious1499]

be careful.. some snowflake woke might associates you with white supremacists, trump, or other things they allergic of

[@maythesciencebewithyou]

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.

[@prapanthebachelorette6803]

I now think war documentaries play a huge role in how people perceive German language 😂

[@davidparker9676]

Singing Rammstein to the babies?

[@GaviotaSteampunk]

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.

[@thehun1234]

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....

[@luvley2698]

nice of her!

[@CaribouOrange]

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.

[@Nyorane]

Cute :)

[@ldmtag]

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.

[@thehun1234]

@@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.

[@metteholm4833]

German is NOT ugly! All languages can sound ugly, if spoken in an aggressive manner.

[@josepherhardt164]

SCHMETTERLING! (I think there must be a dozen YT vids where the presenter makes fun of German by deliberately exaggerating mundane words in harsh tones. :) :) :) )

[@csbenzo]

Absolutely correct. It’s often not the language but the speaker. For instance: I as a Westerner lived for a while in Hong Kong back in the 1980s to 1994. Cantonese is not thought of as a beautiful language, per se, but one day I was listening to the radio and I thought I was hearing the voice of an angel. The female announcer had me hooked. I was entranced. My young Cantonese friends thought this highly amusing and even offered to set up a meeting. I declined. Simply no image could ever do justice to that voice and I knew that I would be disappointed.

[@biserkasertic1208]

@@josepherhardt164 This "Schmetterling" was so agresively spoken that in the first moment understood "Messerschmitt" 😜😜

[@princecrocodyle]

So true. I read Wilde‘s fairytales in German as an audiobook for my mom and it sounds smooth and melodic.

[@SalvatoriusMyspace]

italian spanish french entering the chat....

[@steventsakiris4439]

Im a greek speaker and I find Portuguese a very beautiful language

[@pschiptunes64]

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

[@valef0rt360]

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.

[@ManassehOzoemena-tf8un]

I agree with sou alla aftous share the idio foni . Sygnomi greeklish mou .

[@stivan81]

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.

[@maximofala4395]

Sou Russo. Gosto de Portuguese! ❤ It sounds like Russian or Ukrainian.

[@lovespringgreen]

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

[@CodexRegius]

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!).

[@Kaneki6386]

This 💯

[@Demurelittledemon]

So basically it's an evolutionary result of prefering to be around healthy people rather than sick people?

[@WangAiHua]

And also forced sounds!--Intonation and length of sounds!

[@LMPV4]

I totally agree. It’s the same with the accents within the same language.

[@Shimmy8]

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.

[@ragnkja]

You spelled “Opa” correctly (how would one even misspell it?), but “Wehrmacht” is misspelled.

[@hassegreiner9675]

Wehrmacht - defense powers

[@Shimmy8]

@@hassegreiner9675 thanks! Of course you are correct. I changed the spelling in my post.

[@Shimmy8]

@@ragnkja thanks!

[@eudaenomic]

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.

[@angelcollina]

I have a real life example. Growing up in suburban/rural southeastern United States, my first exposure to German were historical documentaries about WWII and clips of Hitler’s speeches. And I admit honestly that it did give me a negative bias toward the German language because 1) Hitler = gross and 2) they were forceful, politically charged speeches. (I dislike those kind of speeches… in English!) Fast forward to my college years: I was in the Linguistics program and had 2 just fantastic male, German professors. I was in a shared computer lab doing work and these two professors, in order to not distract us, spoke quietly to each other in German. I was mesmerized! I had never heard the language spoken so beautifully! I found, to my surprise, all of my previous misconceptions melting away. German could in fact be so beautiful! And I cherish that day! Thank you, Doctors Hempelmann and Klein!

[@Laura2025]

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.

[@empress2529]

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 😄)

[@seneca983]

@@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.

[@empress2529]

@@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)

[@bogdiworksV2]

Entschulden sounds quite nice to me. I think familiarity always makes a language sound better.

[@seneca983]

@@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].

[@andrewp1075]

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.

[@ThePlataf]

I speak Mandarin, and to my ears, Cantonese is ghastly.

[@jonathancross3097]

@@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

[@ThePlataf]

@@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.

[@silverchairsg]

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.

[@StillAliveAndKicking_]

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.

[@neilog747]

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.

[@XSR_RUGGER]

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 😂

[@ferretyluv]

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.

[@carolaelsner]

Irish is like a magical language or book made up language except that there are grammar books and you can actually learn it...

[@evefreyasyrenathegoddessev4016]

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!

[@evefreyasyrenathegoddessev4016]

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!

[@Aeraleach]

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.

[@rosellavaughn5394]

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.

[@dsmith5943]

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.

[@saguntum-iberian-greekkons7014]

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

[@anne-ceciletanguy5441]

I do appreciate that German is easy to understand and pronounce!

[@wayIess]

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.

[@susandrydenhenderson6234]

German is a nice sound, and German people seem pretty impressive to me.

[@UltraVega924]

German actually doesn't sound bad at all when you hear regular people speaking it normally. Its actually pretty cool and fun to speak.

[@aerden2]

Exactly. Normal people don't yell it like Hitler. German sounds quite lovely when spoken by ordinary people.

[@sl4983]

It's interesting

[@alexandersean4708]

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.

[@sl4983]

@@alexandersean4708 can that be heard on KZbin? What's the name of it again?

[@alexandersean4708]

@@sl4983 If you search "queen of the night aria" it should come up as the first result.

[@Daniel-wi6sk]

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).

[@fburton8]

Hände hoch! Hände hoch! Schnell!!

[@Daniel-wi6sk]

@@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…”

[@shelbynamels7948]

@@Daniel-wi6sk "Ve hav vays uff making you tok"

[@davidlloyd7597]

​@@Daniel-wi6skor the same in English. "Ve haf vays of making you talk.

[@helgardforche3400]

Ja, das ist die unbewusste Verbindung, die unser Gehirn schafft . Höre Dir schöne Lieder oder Märchen in deutsch an. Dann klingt es vie freundlicher.

[@onioncontrol]

I personally don't think most English speaker actually think German sounds awful they've just been told it is and consume very little German un their life not challenging them on their prejudice

[@MusicalJackknife]

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.

[@ldmtag]

What's Ode to Joy?

[@MusicalJackknife]

@@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..."

[@MusicalJackknife]

You would probably recognize the melody if you look it up

[@ldmtag]

@@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

[@MusicalJackknife]

@@ldmtag I don't know either of those references, but it does have the word Götterfunken in it haha

[@sean..L]

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.

[@joejohnson6327]

You've obviously never been forced to take Latin. 😅

[@corinna007]

Tolkien was also inspired by Finnish, which to me sounds better than Latin. 😅

[@sionjones1026]

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."

[@dodiad]

A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Silívren penna míriel O menel aglar elenath. Na-chaered palandíriel O galadhremmin Ennorath, Fanúilos, le linnathon Nef aear, si nef aearon!

[@jounisyrjanen2226]

@@corinna007 Kiitos!

[@pinguinobc]

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.

[@Santos.Sarmento]

@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.

[@wardachrouaa7281]

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🎉

[@cezar3977]

@@wardachrouaa7281 gucken, ohne Umlaut.

[@vernonfrance2974]

@@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.

[@dagmarbubolz7999]

@@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!

[@ryptoll4801]

I'm a Swede and honestly my top two favorite langages are German and Russian. I think they sound really beautiful! But that probably has a lot to do with my associations to those languages, which is not war and corrupt dictators. My associations with German is music, specifically industrial music. They have a very rich collection in that specific genre (not just Rammstein) as well as a lot in the slightly softer but even darker goth genre. But even then some of my favorite classical composers are German, like Wagner and Bach. And I also love listening to softer, romantic somgs in German, as well as... German schlager. And for Russian my associations are the beautiful culture around architecture and fashion, as well as old Russian mythology. I also love listening to a fair amount of Russian music, especially alternative rock and some indie bands, but also folk music. While my associations with French and Italian is mostly just food and snobby elites, which just doesn't really impress me much. Thing is I generally prefer "harsher" sounds, male and raspy voices, and the darker art forms, be it the alternative fashions like goth and synth, or sad classical music in minor and locrian. And I think because of my love and fashination for the darker art forms, I'm more drawn to languages more closely associated with that. Although I also really like a lot of other languages that don't have those kinda associations, like Japanese, Icelandic and Hindi. However, my associations to those still boil down to: beautiful culture. Also fyi my ex (whom I was with for about a year) was German and heavily into the industrial/goth music secene as well. And he was quite relieved that my main association with his country and language was alt music and not a particular war and it's associated leader. He was quite soft spoken and I really liked the way his German sounded. But when I visited Germany I did notice that most people there really didn't speak at harshly as the language is often portrayed in movies... although that really does depend on the movie. Now that I have a best friend who's Finnish, I've learned that Finnish has a much harder pronounciation than German has, which I really don't think most people would guess!

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

What about English btw? Honestly, what is really special about English is that there isnt a language that sounds particularly very similar to English. Dutch and German sort of come close because of the Germanic connection but they still sound quite different, and the Romance languages to some extent too because English has a lot of Romance/Latin words. English is kinda like the fancy bastard of all Indo-European languages.

[@ryptoll4801]

@@cheerful_crop_circle There are at least a handful languages I'd personally rate above English, but also quite a few I think sound worse, so I'd say for me it falls somewhere in the middle. Imo English has a nice melody and the unique "th" and "wh" sounds are quite nice, but beyond that it's not particularly mesmerizing to me. Probably because a lot of the sounds are actually quite similar to Swedish which makes them sound neutral or uninteresting to me. (Swedish (and the other Scandinavian langages like Norwegian and Danish) also shares roots with English, just a bit further back in history than the Germanic languages do.) I appreciate English mostly just for its rich vocabulary and usefulness, tbh. Although it can be pretty in poetry when you really bring out the gems of the language.

[@colonelweird]

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.

[@forgottensage-o5o]

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.

[@comicus6769]

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.

[@page8301]

@@comicus6769 As a German that joke made me laugh. Well done sir.

[@ViolosD2I]

@@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

[@chevalierdupapillon]

​@@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.

[@BlackAdder665]

Aww, thanks for advocating for our language!

[@sebastienh1100]

I am French and hearing a well educated German read a book shows that you have a beautiful language.

[@LeafHuntress]

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.

[@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038]

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!

[@tomek3633]

@@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 ....

[@wpridgen4853]

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...

[@evelynjones5843]

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.

[@M4TCH3SM4L0N3]

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.

[@simontay4851]

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.

[@AndrewVanDay]

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.

[@tinfoilhomer909]

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.

[@tomobedlam297]

Spanish is a loving tongue, Soft as music, light as spray, Twas a girl I learned it from, Living down Sonora way.❤

[@jerry2357]

Watch the 1974 film of "Murder on the Orient Express", and listen to the scene where Hildegarde Schmidt (played by Rachel Roberts) is reading Goethe to Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (played by Wendy Hiller, the scene is about 1h08 into the film). You must then agree that German is a beautiful language.

[@raderadumilo7899]

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...

[@bob_the_bomb4508]

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… :)

[@raderadumilo7899]

@@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. 😆😆😆

[@frithbarbat]

@@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.

[@raderadumilo7899]

@@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...).

[@stephans9308]

Good day. Indeed, but also we may say same for polish, a language full of consonants. Name: Krzysztof Krawczyk Place of bith: Szczecin Indeed, all languages have funny details... All the best and regards from Brazil

[@haridaspanicker5888]

I was born in Singapore . I was exposed to many languages. My mother tongue is Malayalam, a difficult language for many non native speakers. I actually began speaking Tamil as a toddler because as all my childhood Tamil friends also spoke it. I also learnt formal Tamil in school along with Bahasa Melayu and English. I also picked up spoken market Chinese mainly Guangdonese (Cantonese). I had moved to Tamil Nadu for my Degree and chose to learn French as my "Second language". Later in my job I learnt Hindi,Urdu,Tibetan, Turkish and some Spanish too! I find the Google Translate app very useful to learn other languages. But it does at times gives a garbled up translation. Obviously, every native speaker would love his or her own language and consider it beautiful as they learnt it from their Mother! We now have AI and our Babel of many languages ,accents and dialects would perhaps vanish as we begin to speak some kind of mathematical, digitally created World language!

[@polymath6475]

I'm learning Kannada and would like to learn Malayalam some day. Not very keen on Tamil though

[@gustavosch2017]

Interesting!!! (and admirable). 🙂

[@TizerisT.]

Impressive. I really dont know how you can remember 12 different words for example, a table. My Spanish is at about 20% though, like I can read a page of text and have an idea of what it's saying

[@x22y44]

My native language is Spanish, though I'm fluent in English and Portuguese as well. Some German, which is tough!!! and a little Indonesian, which I certainly find very interesting and beautiful!

[@carolinejames7257]

As a native speaker of (Australian) English, I can assure you that I don't find it an attractive or pleasant-sounding language, either with an Australian accent or otherwise. I don't find it ugly either. It's just kind of 'meh' in terms of its sound.

[@ahorrell]

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!)

[@andrekotz7803]

gross

[@AmazingAmbro1]

​@@andrekotz7803 how

[@drive-channel1834]

Clean and beautiful Me hamamas too 😻

[@prototropo]

German has always been for me a genuinely beautiful language, along with Spanish, Farsi, Korean and Thai. The Semitic languages, of which I'm only familiar with Hebrew and Arabic, go screech on my tympani. As does my own first tongue--English!--but only by half. The Latinate fraction of English sounds gorgeous--determination, umbrella, retrieval, anticipatory, granular, encephalon, volition, imprecision, disrepair, equilibrium, propulsion, amplify, hydrodynamic, elision, demographic, empathy, terrestrial (yes, Hellenophiles will amend my taciturn diffidence in correctly insisting that quite a few of those words were born in Greece, actually, and raised in Rome, before journeying to Angleterre, by way of Paris). In any event, the pithy, sticky, clang of our stodgy, dodgy Churchillian roots? It goes clunk, ouch, cry, dog, die, kill, sick, pig, bake, talk, stop, that, please! For you folks who can't winnow the heroes of history from its villains, I constantly remind you that German is the language of Brahms, Leibniz, Durer, Mozart, Gutenberg, Hegel, Bach (& sons), Euler, Goethe, Mann, Telemann, Kepler, Mendelssohn (Moses, Felix & Fanny!), Bonhoeffer, Husserl, the Humboldt brothers, Schubert, Schumann (Robert & Clara), Kant, Koch, Kollwitz, Henze, Schiller, Mahler, Hirschfeld, Richter and that guy who composed what is now the glorious anthem of the European Union (not Haydn--he composed what became the German national anthem). Did I mention Einstein, Luther, Brecht, Weil, Hildegard von Bingen, Angela Merkel and Sandra Bullock?

[@elim_inator]

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.

[@thecountofgoldmoor1332]

Good luck on your journey or "onnea matkaan"! It can be a nightmare to learn for non-native speakers as I've understood.

[@Georgi_Slavov_Rose_Land]

You choose the most difficult, weird and hilarious of the european languages!

[@MagdalenaTheremin]

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 😅

[@NNokkonen]

I think finnish and german go so well together, love them both ❤

[@dj3us]

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…

[@rosedewittbukater4203]

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.

[@fynna8640]

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.

[@rosedewittbukater4203]

​@@fynna8640 And I love the French accent. I learnt French when I was a child.

[@fynna8640]

@@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" 😁

[@dinkster1729]

@@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.

[@UPalooza]

And we had a beloved German teacher that I will always associate German with.

[@safetyamsv3515]

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 :(

[@tinfoilhomer909]

Belgian Dutch is very smooth, Belgian French is uhhh... not.

[@masonharvath-gerrans832]

Haben Sie das Gedicht? Ich hätte sehr gern es lesen)

[@safetyamsv3515]

@@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)

[@chromaticAberration]

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!

[@scintillam_dei]

But the softest French is softer than the softest German, and the harshest German hits harder than the harshest French.

[@9ine-fd6zc]

I love my native language Nepali because of the use of adverbs because it is very descriptive on what you visually see or hear, that gives a very clear picture of when you are listening to people when they are talking

[@DarkDjinn53]

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.

[@KristenRowenPliske]

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.

[@kydelvetus642]

Russian seems like the ugliest of all languages to me. This is subjective, of course

[@gunngg908]

​@@KristenRowenPliske удачи

[@gklkjuhylpoiuyuiojhjklkjuh9976]

​@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!

[@gunngg908]

@@gklkjuhylpoiuyuiojhjklkjuh9976 that helps with remembering words but you also have the grammar which is gonna be hard if you're an english speaker

[@jakobbauz]

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).

[@MACTEP_CHOB]

Yes, but when you shout in German it sounds much more serious than in any other language haha

[@loopbraider]

That's a beautiful memory!

[@artstocker60]

Languages are a hobby of mine and I have studied several. I like the sound of German and although I read and write French and Spanish better than I do German, I have found German easier to understand and speak in a conversation.

[@shiptj01]

That's a good story. English is my Muttersprache, but I love to listen to German being spoken, as well. I can understand some basics, but when it really gets going, I am lost. I still love the language, however.

[@robynw6307]

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.

[@moogypoog9714]

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 ❤

[@peterbrown6224]

"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.

[@mertanos]

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.

[@TheogRahoomie]

I decided to start learning French when I was 31. It’s not to late start learning German.

[@tygrkhat4087]

@@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.🙄

[@MaryBrite]

I love German. I actually find it very soft and pretty, with just enough "texture" to add character. C: And some of the syntax sounds a lot like archaic forms of English (what with being a long-lost cousin and all), so it's basically a socially acceptable reason to talk like a Tolkien character.

[@pannonia77]

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.

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

Yes

[@iwillnotcomplyistandformyf6642]

Agreed

[@troyrowe7670]

As a language learner who has learned many languages, I think that all languages are beautiful in their own way

[@Tess78uk]

I feel this way about accents too! I love that within most countries, you can hear such diversity in how people sound.

[@stealthis]

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.

[@nagichampa9866]

Same, but no matter how objective one wants to be, no one can pretend to not have favorites!

[@stephenowen6083]

​@@nagichampa9866Even if people have favourites they shouldn't let them influence their judgement and professionalism

[@MithuN-h7m]

including the maori language

[@monicarollo2462]

I'm Italian. I love the sound of British English, Galician and Spanish.

[@JM-gu3tx]

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.

[@Taima]

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.

[@DarkHelixia]

​​​​​@@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' ...

[@Ifeelmylegssubtely]

when you say British your talking about RP which isnt spoken much in modern britain. The uk has many accents

[@marcom9103]

@@Ifeelmylegssubtely 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.

[@GBEZ]

Thank you for being my new binge! I have always love linguistics, but have never found a channel like this. Thank you for your amazing content!

[@JohnSmith-od6kg]

I knew someone who complained how "ugly" German sounded. When told he was actually listening to Dutch he thought it "was not that bad".

[@the_tax_consultant]

Interesting if there was some bias in there

[@meehow72]

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@birdofclay9581]

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.

[@f0urstr1ng]

Dutch, to me, a lingual ignoramus, sounds like German spoken with an English accent.

[@meehow72]

@@f0urstr1ng I can actually see where you are coming from (as someone who studied German and lived in Holland)

[@tizitaro]

I am Italian and I'm learning German because (just like Italian language) it refelects the history of a people, their mentality and everything they went through during the centuries, Very interesting, regardless of wars or anything else...

[@freeshrugs63]

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.

[@docwhogr]

..."he read me a chapter from Mein Kampf"...

[@OtaBengaBokongo]

my grandma who survived the Holocaust wouldn't agree with you at all

[@sharminahamed2814]

The 4th Reich begins 🤣😂​@@docwhogr

[@mangojuicearmychannel9263]

Bro your brother started softly speaking in german instead of helping?, he doesn't care about your arm then.

[@freeshrugs63]

@@mangojuicearmychannel9263 . Ha ha!

[@R.FayeFaye]

I think the bias being influenced by cultural perception is SO true. Growing up, I also made fun of German. However, we had Austrian exchange students at university and I became friends with a lot of them, so after a while I started to like German. I fell in love with it for the second time while watching the sci-fi series "Dark." So, my personal positive experiences making friends with German-speakers also influenced my perception! P.S.: Oachkatzlschwoaf!

[@lynnebattaglia-triggs1042]

So you were easily influenced by feelings rather than the sounds of the language?

[@MrAronRobinson]

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.

[@francescacasini4694]

I am Italian and I have always loved German, it's such a meaningful and precise language!

[@mandelish]

right on..!

[@patmcclure4882]

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

[@chen-zhuqi4594]

​@@patmcclure4882​ Things work as you described as long as foreign learners have not yet reached a certain level in their German studies.

[@SalvatoriusMyspace]

that is a prejudice people put forward in some part has to do with the image that Germans have as a strict, precise people. English or any latin based language in fact is often preciser as you say something in one word while n german is the combination of two or three words together that counts as one word but it isn't.

[@akumayoxiruma]

German, just like English, Spanish and other languages, also has multiple dialects which can affect the pronunciation significantly: Berlinian, Saxonian, Bavarian/Austrian, Alemannic and Coastal German sound very different and can be perceived better or worse depending on preference.

[@ianbeddowes5362]

i agree. Generally I do not like the sound of German but find Swiss German quite sweet.

[@stormfaring]

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.

[@annominous826]

Definitely! What little I've heard of Welsh has been melodious and pleasant, yet still quite clear.

[@affanalam6123]

Absolutely! I love Welsh, its on my bucket list of lamguages to learn.

[@LibraOwl]

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.

[@holyspacemonkey]

To me, Welsh is one of the most beautiful languages! I’m grateful that people fought (and fight) for it. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿👏👏👏

[@tFighterPilot]

Welsh has the CH sound though, like in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch which has it twice!

[@MattTheBandGuy]

Having lived in Finland, I love the rhythmic sound of the Finnish language. I actually was able to learn it quite well while I lived there. While German has a historical stigma, there is also the fact some beautiful music was written in German by Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, and Mendelssohn.

[@yankeecornbread8464]

Some have said that Finnish brings out vocal fry.

[@jonasHM]

That's the first time I've ever heard Finnish described as rhythmic.

[@Jokervision744]

​​@@yankeecornbread8464imi Räikkönen? I think it's just him, and that's why our top comedian, and imo the last one, did bunch of jokes by "imitating" him by doing that. Now it's just fat snot boogers, and Amy Schumer level comedy. Well at least I can't get into what they have for us after our Elvis died, well if not Elvis in general sense, he was my Elvis Presley of comedy shows. Only few guys can get even close, but let's say that when you get there, you just deserve a star named after you. I digress. But I don't think it's so. Edit: well after I said that I looked into it, and saw that it's quite ingrained aspect of the langue, that people feel like you are not fluent with the language, if you lose the fry fully.

[@japanpanda2179]

​@jonasHM Finnish has vowel harmony built into the language so words have to change their vowels to sound better with neighboring words. Finnish songs sound amazing.

@@yankeecornbread8464 The Finnish vowels are relativeley more uncovered than most languages, so one must be careful when attempting to learn it. Besides this, I live in Romania, where there are a lot of Hungarian speakers. The structure of Hungarian is pretty beautiful and I'm learning it, but unfortunately, also it has broken vowels. Their open a's and e's are unsingable and do hurt if you aren't aware of it and just try to imitate their speech. The healthiest languages for the voice are those whose vowels are covered, and have expressive strong consonants, firm but not heavy, so, without any debate, the number one language is Russian, followed by Latvian. Russian has the most advanced choral singing tradition, which is proof of the perfect way in which Russian language is built for professional singing (along other factors, of course). Swedish is also pretty good and, although it has a bit open "a" vowel sometimes, it is protected by its intonation.

[@alainmorin5382]

I love the German language. Rather than the war movies, my first contacts with the german language were through the music of J. S. Bach.

[@stephanpopp6210]

The classical argument for (standard) Italian against (standard) German is that it is hard to write songs in German. German has not many vowels per word, and half of them are Es. It's exactly these Es that are missing in English, e.g. Katze vs. cat, Nase (e pronounced) vs. nose (e silent), befreunden vs. befriend (bai- + extra E vs. bee-). That's why most Germans think that English is easier to sing, and Italian anyway. Most German dialects drop the Es too and sound more melodiously.

[@PJTraill]

@@stephanpopp6210 And yet Bach and Schubert managed gloriously, as did Mozart when he was not using Italian. Even Wagner and Beethoven have their moments, though the singers have to be pretty good not to sound like a load of barking dogs in parts of Beethoven’s 9th. But perhaps something shifts when we get to popular songs, which are closer to normal speech than lieder and opera. Unfortunately I do not listen to all that much popular music, but I have enjoyed various popular German singers/songs, though I find Rammstein OTT even if they are quite clever.

[@stephanpopp6210]

@@PJTraill As you said, the art is in the 'yet'. Being melodious and making sense in German is possible. But it's harder than in English and much harder than in Italian.

[@edigabrieli7864]

Bach uber alles.

[@stephanpopp6210]

@@edigabrieli7864 To a German, this is almost an insult to Bach, quoting the outdated and prohibited first stanza of the German national anthem in one breath with him. I don't think Bach was so chauvinistically German that he'd want half of Belgium, Kaliningrad, South Tyrol and Southern Denmark back for Germany. That's what the "über alles" stanza says, and that's what people mean who sing it: back to the 1830s to build the Reich again. Bach belongs to all mankind. "Über alles"-rhetoric misses him entirely.

[@emilresmann]

I speak Swedish, German & English, and I'm familiar with most European languages plus with Thai and Japanese. I do love German and Japanese!

[@residentialpsycho1075]

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.

[@draigporffor3288]

Do!! Lle mae'r Gymraeg a'r eraill! (This is Welsh btw)

[@astrosci1109]

Gaelic seems so tough to pronounce

[@astrosci1109]

Where can I learn it properly

[@compassroses]

Presumably that's because, other than in Celtic music, we rarely hear its variants. You're right, though, they do sound beautiful.

[@draigporffor3288]

@@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!

[@Lemoncatsf]

There are so many languages with a wide variety of sounds. I grew up in an English speaking home with one native German speaking grandfather (who was also multilingual) and an Italian speaking grandmother. I used to think that Portuguese was the most beautiful sounding language but my mind has opened over the years and after traveling, studying Italian, and exposure. I feel like it often comes down to the individual speaker’s voice and dialect or accent. I actually love hearing German, and Cantonese and Tagalog are amongst languages that I find comforting after living for almost three decades in San Francisco. Tunisian Arabic is unique with its blend of French, Berber, Turkish etc with a Mediterranean accent mixed in. I also have heard indigenous Mexican/ Central American living in LA which is very unique and pleasant sounding.

[@ministryoftruth8499]

Portuguese is definitely one of the most beautiful sounding languages. It's impossible not to fall in love with the language after listening to Teresa Salgueiro from Madredeus singing 'Ao longe o mar' (or any other song for that matter). Her voice is music and her pronunciation is absolutely perfect.

[@CailinRuaAnChead]

I work with lots of Philippinos and could listen to tagalog all day. It's such a gentle sounding language

[@gwynnfarrell1856]

My high school German teacher spoke the language in a very elegant way and I loved listening to her speak conversationally.

[@Jan96106]

German poetry is beautiful. I love it. Even the simplest of poems from Goethe is beautiful. Take, for example, "Ein Gleiches." Or the poem by a psychologist, "Manche Menschen Wissen Nicht." Beautiful sounds and sentiment. Rilke's poetry is beautiful. And as far as prose, Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet even translated into English still sounds beautiful, especially Letter 8: "Perhaps all are dragons in our lives are really only princesses, waiting to see us once beautiful and brave."

[@Nat-oq1bk]

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.

[@davefarnsworth3020]

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.

[@tbarrelier]

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.

[@slippery_slobber]

Yeah Pork’n’cheese sounds gud.

[@davefarnsworth3020]

@@slippery_slobber I had a girlfriend who's father was Portuguese. She used to say that she was half pork n cheese.

[@smergthedargon8974]

Learning Danish? My condolences to your throat.

[@gojewla]

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.

[@janejones7638]

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.

[@jijitters]

I came to the same conclusion when I learned that people tend to really hate vocal fry, but there are languages (Finnish for example) where the natural inclination both linguistically and culturally is to use it, almost as a facet of the language itself, so the people who hate vocal fry are more likely to find Finnish to be an "ugly" language than people who don't mind or don't notice it.

[@nancydupuis8083]

I think so many movies featured Hitler yelling that it created a negative impression of German

[@helgardforche3400]

Genau das! Aber der Typ ist ja nicht repräsentativ.

[@brigidspencer5123]

No doubt American English will sound silly & ugly if one listens to Trump and his Cult.

[@neshwhat702]

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.

[@Judys-Stuff]

@@neshwhat702 What about French? Doesn't it also have a lot of nasal sounds?

[@nancydupuis8083]

I heard a recording of Hitler's normal speaking voice and it was very pleasant and sane, like a regular person.

[@dob0]

I speak Flemish Dutch and from what I’ve heard so far is that the Flemish accents are liked more than the ones from the Netherlands, even by people from the Netherlands. I guess because we use less guttural sounds in ‘ch’, ‘sch’ and ‘g’, and more often use a rolling ‘r’

[@moniquesilverans3842]

C'est exact. Le néerlandais parlé en Belgique est plus doux que quand il est parlé aux Pays-Bas.

[@jsa-z1722]

I absolutely love the sound of the Celtic languages such as Irish and Welsh.

[@robinharwood5044]

I think Welsh sounds beautiful.

[@StuSaville]

There's a brilliant scene that always stuck with me from the movie Empire of the Sun where a very young Christian Bale sings Suo Gân. I always thought the song was Chinese but only recently learned that it's actually Welsh LOL

[@timseytiger9280]

Irish I find to be a mixed bag. The Galway dialect is aweful with clashing syllables, while the Munster dialect flows far better and is far softer

[@eryr_llwyd]

That is why I started learning Welsh some months ago, it sounds so beautiful when sung.

[@roseashkiiii4361]

Same expecially welsh

[@flipshod]

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.

[@aquelpibe]

Spot on. And I would add, languages sound very differently from one country to another and also within each country.

[@ac1455]

Kind of like an instrument. A piano is no less pleasant than a guitar, but it’s the skill of the player which matters.

[@proverbalizer]

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

[@vladimir945]

Apparently those saying German sounds ugly base their conclusion solely on listening to recorded speeches of the Führer.

[@skeletorlikespotatoes7846]

Ah no. That makes up a part of it. But there are legitimate forms

[@pinguinobc]

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.

[@hansm.5261]

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."

[@opinionLeader322]

it was nice from her and understandable. dutch is not a language but a throat disease

[@tomm4073]

@@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.

[@VictorVæsconcelos]

@@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.

[@ooievaar6756]

@@opinionLeader322 Je maakt zo lekker vrienden, paardekop

[@jockmoron]

I really like the sound of German - I don't speak it at all. I don't know the regional accents but certainly there are German speakers with a lovely, actually beautiful, soft accent, but I don't know which part of Germany they may come from, or if it is related to their "class". What I like about it is its phonic consistency, and that you can then put very subtle intonation into what you're speaking - listen to singer in a lieder recital for instance or . reading poetry or literature.

[@j.n.sloane]

I love to listen to Portuguese. I don't speak Portuguese (although I do speak Spanish), and I think it's the familiarity of some words with the added "sh" sounds that are so pleasant to me. I've noticed that Romanian also has a lot of "sh" sounds and for some unknown reason, that sound is attractive to me.

[@jgw5491]

Portuguese is lovely, especially to my ear, the version they speak in Brazil. It sings!

[@Kanukosan]

Portuguese from Portugal is very beautiful!

[@lolaWWEWWFpunk]

I freaking love Portuguese (Brazil). It's absolutely beautiful.

[@Kanukosan]

@@lolaWWEWWFpunk I don't!

[@professionalboycottservice7872]

Spanish sounds hood and low class

[@stevenbosch5497]

I am Dutch myself. And I really love the German language, because German was not only spoken by Nazis. It's also the language of Goethe, Mann, Kafka, Hesse, not to mention Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and all the other Greats Germany and Austria and Switzerland (and German speaking Eastern Europe) have given to the world.

[@diesesphil]

Exactly. Probably bacause english natives can't pronounce german words they see properly and just know german from ww2 movies, they think it sounds agressive and harsh but in reality, it just sounds different. English has some germanic vocabulary but mostly pronounced in a romance way. for Germans, languages like Russian and Hungarian sound agressive. Ik spreek en beetje Nederlands, maar niet veel. Het is een mooie taal.

[@user-ov4wr5yu4r]

Hindemith is my favourite. And he was a Nazi, but no one is perfect. I have to make an exception for him.

[@robert48719]

Liebe Grüße aus Deutschland, mein Freund

[@christopherskipp1525]

Not to mention Dutch sounds worse than German.

[@vernonfrance2974]

@@diesesphil I love Hesse's works but I have only read them in English translation.

[@laurensteen8553]

I'm teaching myself both German and Finnish and absolutely love both, which has also led to a fondness for both countries and cultures.

[@TheSandkastenverbot]

As the 36000th German writing a comment here I want to express my thanks to the Danish people for making German sound pretty in comparison

[@virineto9272]

I grew up without the stereotypes about German being ugly while I was learning it and it was kind of fun (there were tough times, too) so I'm a bit surprised whenever someone says that German is ugly or aggressive - and it always comes from people who either never learnt it or hated learning it for school. Those who never learnt it are usually influenced by other people who also think it is ugly or because of the nazis. Meanwhile, a good portion of people from around here, Balkan region, either works or once worked and lived in Germany so either way it is a useful language to learn, hated it or not.

[@ezgier101]

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!

[@BAn-hy3ts]

French is so overrated, and German + also Dutch are underrated.

[@hah-vj7hc]

Chuten Tach, Dikkah. Sach ma, findes du unsere Sprachä auch ßo groußartich?

[@Shiromochimochi]

I'm Japanese, but I've never heard of the German language being ugly. In Japan, most people think that German language is sound cool. German words are also used in Gundam SEED and GIRLS und PANZER etc. Also, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, dubbed in German, feels like a very good dub for a Japanese person like me. German language words looks especially cool when written in Japanese katakana

[@survey9728]

I love German too

[@CodexRegius]

Yeah, that's why you always name your villains in German. :-)

[@dr.phil.pepper3325]

Yeah, I guess it's because in Japan German is associated with technical terms in Gundam, Neon Genesis Evangelion and so on. Some Japanese people I've talked to also associate it with philosophy or classical music. But things are a little bit different in the US, where people usually know German from the context of WWII films where some degenerated krauts shout some gibberish.

[@narniadan]

Asia is weird, so normal to find German beautiful. Asia also find looking like a ghost beautiful 😂

[@narniadan]

@@ExtraterrestrialEarthling using whitening injections and creams to the point looking like a dead person, scary.

[@UnDeaDCyBorg]

This is probably the third video of yours I've watched, and so far, I've liked all of them. Questions I never knew I had (and now probably won't know for sure in retrospect) answered in a surprisingly scientifically sound way. Thank you for your content. :)

[@MagdaTrendafilovaLappa]

To me, German is the sweetest sounding language I've ever heard. I love how native Germans speak. I wish I could learn German! I don't understand why the German language gets so much hate!

[@QUEfrang]

It's just the stereotypes. Hate-ler spoke loudly and angrily, and he became the most famous german speaker of all time. I do not think this language should be hated because of that one idiot with a terrible moustche.

[@matmagix3845]

Dylan Moran put it best: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f6Cveohog65pbNk but on a serious note I did go there a few years back and it was interesting having to learn a few phrases, which isn't all that hard.

[@corumeach]

@@QUEfrang That's like hating the Chinese language (and Chinese people) because of Mao's speeches. In fact, they all sounded that way back then, due to the lo-fi audio quality and the different way everyone spoke. But who in the Western Hemisphere has ever actually listened to a speech by Stalin or Mao?

[@g.strobl4458]

Do give it a go, if you'd like to. German is a bit daunting at first, because it takes quite a lot of knowledge and attention to string your first sentence together correctly. On the upside, you can always supplement it with English at first. More importantly, though, it gets easier. German is far easier to master so you reach perfection than English. I have been learning/practising English for more than 40 years and am still far from the perfection I strive for.

[@val-schaeffer1117]

You are obviously Germanic

[@__jake.m]

Tagalog is my native language. I like listening to other Austronesian languages, especially Indonesian and other Filipino languages, so the familiarity bias is definitely true for me. Then, I moved to the UK. My first exposure to German was Nazi speeches in GCSE History and that 99 Luftballons song, but the most impactful way I've interacted with the language has been listening to it being spoken by my friends from German-speaking countries. The more I listened to it, the more I started liking it. Some of my best friends now are German speakers. Now I think German is one of the most beautiful languages out there. Once again, that's more to do with familiarity bias and my personal history with the language.

[@kantakouzini]

Tagalog here! honestly i think our languages are sooo beautiful!

[@zsoltontube]

Nena did justice to German tbh. Good music, great voice, and objectively pretty woman.

[@FrozenMermaid666]

I learned Dutch to an advanced, so now I am learning German because it’s so easy now that I know Dutch! 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 then the 6 Celtic languages, and then the true Latin languages, and a few other languages like Hungarian, which are all pretty with mostly pretty words and pretty word endings! German and Icelandic and Danish and Faroese and Swedish (and all other Germanic languages) are all gorgeous languages, the words are so pretty with pretty word endings and great letter combinations - it’s also the same for me, the more pretty words I see / learn in German etc, the more I like it!

[@FrozenMermaid666]

Even though German has lots of TS / Z and U and SH sounds (which aren’t the prettiest sounds, and such sounds make most non-Germanic languages sound bæd because they are used with bæd letter combinations and bæd intonation) etc, somehow they seem to work very well in German words, so they don’t make German words sound bæd because they are usually used with very good letter combinations (combinations of letters that go well 2gether, creating visual / auditive harmonies within the word) and because they are pronounced very softly, which shows how well-constructed German words are, as are most Germanic words - the dude that created and the dude that modified German knew exactly what he was doing as he had a real good eye / ear for prettiness and harmony, and followed the most logical rules qua word construction and pronunciation rules and spelling rules etc, so everything about the German language looks very flow-y and has that perfect harmony!

[@musicalneptunian]

First exposure to German being 99 Luftballoons? That is like first English exposure being Neil from The Young Ones.

[@MosheKiesberg]

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...

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

Lol

[@MithuN-h7m]

it is actually Italian which is soft and musical. Not German

[@cheerful_crop_circle]

@@MithuN-h7m That is obvious

[@MosheKiesberg]

@@MithuN-h7m You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?

[@MithuN-h7m]

what is your exact point@@MosheKiesberg

[@JC-jh4fi]

Albeit not as popular in the international scene , I find Tagalog very beautiful as it is very melodic. A bit similar to Hawaiian , but what makes Tagalog much better is that it is not as wordy and syllabicly lengthy just to express an idea or concept. English , Japanese , Mandarin Chinese , Arabic are also beautiful. French is beautiful but hard to actually speak.

[@gregorymeyer1798]

Im an American who has lived in California my whole life and I had never once thought of German as anything but a beautiful language. And being someone who speaks one language and only conversational Spanish, I absolutely love the sound any other language I’ve heard. I hear beauty.

[@GeneralThargor]

Listen to samba sung by a Portuguese speaker, it flows like honey and is perfect in how it is pronounced. subtle and smooth.

[@sieglindesmith9092]

Or Fado! Amalia Rodriguez' linguistic ability amazes me,

[@99imim99]

Yes 😊

[@Mohammed7411h]

Every language is special, every language has its beauty

[@pavese1379]

Except for Korean of course

[@ragnkja]

In order to cover the full range of subjects and emotions the users of a language might wish to express, every language _needs_ both beautiful and less pleasant parts.

[@nHans]

@@pavese1379 And yet, _Gangnam Style_ became an international hit 🤔

[@camelotenglishtuition6394]

​@pavese1379 seriously?? Korean is a beautiful language.. I'm obsessed with it

[@mariacheraitia1040]

i am fluent in 4 languages , i can understand and speak little bit other 4 languages , and in my opinion fusha arabic language (not the diffrent dialects in each country but the original one and only arabic) is the most beautiful , it feels so breathy so clear i can t explain it by words , not forgetting that it has the hardest letters or voices but when the native speakers say it ,it seems so easy ,I m just in love w this language . by the way shout out to french and japanease too

[@hashimalzarooni9179]

Absolutely.

[@AbbassMo-n1q]

I guess it's personal preference at the end of the day. I have noticed that a lot of people consider Arabic to be beautiful just because they are Muslims.

[@mariacheraitia1040]

@@AbbassMo-n1q yeah it s def a preference issue but ig muslims found arabic beautiful cuz they have been able to discover its beauty (since their holy book is in arabic) and not just judge a book by its cover

[@AbbassMo-n1q]

@@mariacheraitia1040 Yeah they think that it's beautiful for the mere fact that they Muslims and it's something hoy for them. Hindus think that Sanskrit is the most beautiful language that man has ever spoken and I guess I don't need to explain why. So simply your ideology determines what's beautiful and what is not

[@karlseidman7410]

I have never been a fan of German, but am familiar with its Yiddish cousin. Anyhow, yesterday I ran across an art song in German by Schubert--he put a poem to music--called Auf Dem Vasser Zu Singen, and it is just beautiful. The beauty of any language comes out with music. If you look for it or have heard it I think you will enjoy it. I followed the translation in English and it is an amazingly powerful song about beauty, nature, and time.

[@hape3862]

Stop listening to Schubert! Or else you'll find yourself learning German soon!!!! 🤪 Jokes aside: There are many many more composers of German art songs to discover. My favorites are the "Four last Songs" by Richard Strauss sung by Jessye Norman. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rXynZHyXrtChe9k

[@DumblyDorr]

"Im Wunderschönen Monat Mai" (an adaptation of a porm by Heine) from Schubert's Lieder is also very beautiful - you might like it. (Fischer-Dieskau sang it beautifully... my recommendation - but many other are very good as well)

[@SerpentineSeiđr]

I've always loved the German language! I'm English, so naturally a native English speaker, and I think German can sound quite regal sometimes (obviously it has silly-sounding words, but so do all languages). I lived in Germany for a while and became fluent, and both the language and country have a special place in this Engländerin's heart :) As a languages nerd (as many of us are that follow Rob's channel), the most beautiful language for me personally is Finnish. I just love how it sounds, I could listen to it all day. It can sound really fun, too, it has just the best swear words like 'perkele'. My favourite Finnish word so far is 'pyörällä', just the way it sounds and it's quite pleasing to say. Tolkien would probably agree with me about Finnish, since he based his main Elvish language on it :) I think the abundance of vowels and the vowel harmony system make it sound very appealing. As for 'ugly' languages, I probably have some unpopular opinions, because I don't like the sound of French, or Welsh, which are two languages many people find beautiful. I've attempted to learn both languages at various points, but I didn't carry on because I wasn't enjoying it, the sounds grated on me a bit too much. It's personal taste obviously, I think they're both quite phlegm-y, and the nasal quality of French and the sing-song cadence of Welsh weren't things I was a fan of (and I'm sure Tolkien would disagree with me there, since he based his second Elvish language on Welsh!) I have a lot of very dear Welsh friends so I wanted to learn it for them, but it wasn't happening for me. 😅

[@gaborkrisko]

Commenting to add that Hungarian also has vowel harmony

[@danibristol380]

Sorry to completely disagree with you on Welsh, my favourite language - but please look into Estonian. It's the neighbour of Finnish and I bet you will love it. I love both these languages, Welsh and Estonian, for the same reason: They are like music. At least to my ears. Best wishes from Germany and thanks for calling my language "regal", I appreciate this!

[@JenXOfficialEDM]

@@danibristol380 Fy hoff beth ydy Cymraeg hefyd :)

[@ТатьянаГубина-и1и]

I don't like French either.

[@vincentlefebvre9255]

Most sophisticated language ! ​@@ТатьянаГубина-и1и

[@heididewhirst]

I'm English and fluent in French, but my favourite language to listen to is Russian. I only understand the occasional word so I'm more able to simply drift off to the sounds rather than having to take in the content.

[@jwlry6913]

Сука блять брат, наслаждайся)) Ладно, шучу. Держи стих: Август -- астры. Август -- звёзды. Август -- грозди винограда И рябины ржавой. Август. Полновесным благозвучным Яблоком своим имперским Как дитя играешь Август. Как ладонью гладишь сердце. Именем своим имперским. Август. Сердце. Месяц поздних поцелуев, Поздних роз и молний поздних. Ливней звёздных... Август -- месяц ливней звёздных

[@КоляСерафімов-я2у]

Try to listen some classical rhymes or poems, or maybe folk songs. I think you will like it

[@gertrudevanshandy]

It's very popular in the West to call Arabic an ugly language. However, I find it oddly sonorous and beautiful. And yet -- all politics aside, I assure you -- I find Hebrew absolutely disgusting, owing mainly to the pronunciation of R and also the KH sound (which is also present in Arabic, but not as often). In the end, a language is only as beautiful as the mouth speaking it.