zompist bboard

I like the sound of Germanic languages, specifically Scandinavian. I dislike the sound of Turkish, however, as well as many Asian languages. Oddly enough, I find Chinese/Japanese easy to listen to.

Beautiful: Estonian, Arabic, Welsh

Ugly: Germanic languages (except English and Icelandic)

Screw you all and your Eddy obsession! FFS, why do you even STILL pay attention to anything he says?!

Yes, we've had many other such pointless discussions on what languages we find pleasant/ugly to listen to and this won't bring in anything new but why does it have to be polluted with Eddy bullshit?! Just ignore the whiny attention whore, he's so fucking irrelevant.

Languages whose sound I love~like:
1. Greek
2. Hebrew
3. Tirolean German (Standard German is alright, nothing special, however it can also be very pleasant to listen to it for example, if YouLube is being a cunt about the availability of the video just look up U96 War of the Worlds and listen to the first minute of it)
4. Tajik
5. Georgian
6. Armeniani
7. Uzbek

Insult to my ears:
1. French (generally I dislike all Romance languages)
2. Russian (I'm not fond of all Slavic languages except Ukrainian)
3. Chinese (Mandarin)

The ugliest languages I know are legalese and officialese. Here's a famous sample.

"In the nuts (unground) (other than ground-nuts) order, the expression `nuts' shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground-nuts, as would, but for this amending order, not qualify as nuts (unground) (other than ground-nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground)."

Like:
Germanic languages
Quechua
Mayan languages
Mongolian
Sumerian and Akkadian

Dislike:
Spanish. I've been pestered quite a bit about it over the years, but I honestly just don't like it. Mostly just because I don't like the way it sounds... but also partly for being harassed so much over not wanting to learn it. Sheesh. I'd rather learn the Black Speech any day.

Ghostfishe wrote:Dislike:
Spanish. I've been pestered quite a bit about it over the years, but I honestly just don't like it. Mostly just because I don't like the way it sounds... but also partly for being harassed so much over not wanting to learn it. Sheesh. I'd rather learn the Black Speech any day.

yo también te quiero, padre

Like: Icelandic <3, scandinavian languages in general, spanish, finnish

Dislike: french, dutch (actually it's funny, cause it sounds like a german person, who tries to talk while he has a hot potato inside its mouth), slavic languages and Somali (so weird, especially the ping pong sound)

ping pong? wtf?

The retroflexed /d/ I believe, and/or the tones.

I think French, Esperanto and Albanian are pretty ugly, they combine the worst features of Western, Central and Eastern Europe respectively. The orthographies are also sub-par in my opinion. I generally don't like tonal languages or ones with too many vowels or consonants.

I love languages like Proto-Slavic, Tocharian, and Proto-Indo-European, and so on. I bet Proto-Afro-Asiatic's pretty cool too but I've never read anything about it and the sixteen different kinds of "h"s would probably put me off quite a bit.

R.Rusanov wrote:I think French, Esperanto and Albanian are pretty ugly, they combine the worst features of Western, Central and Eastern Europe respectively. The orthographies are also sub-par in my opinion. I generally don't like tonal languages or ones with too many vowels or consonants.

I love languages like Proto-Slavic, Tocharian, and Proto-Indo-European, and so on. I bet Proto-Afro-Asiatic's pretty cool too but I've never read anything about it and the sixteen different kinds of "h"s would probably put me off quite a bit.

So basically, if it's a spoken language, you think it's ugly?

My tastes seem to vary from year to year. I generally dislike the Romance languages; I have never liked the sound of French; but I love Papiamentu. Also a big fan of Japanese. Slightly fond of the Muskogean languages although I rarely get to hear them.

I've dabbled sporadically in Esperanto for several decades; I like the grammar and enjoy coining words on the fly using the numerous affixes, but I can't stand the sound of it.

It would be interesting if somebody would put up a web page where you could hear unlabelled samples of 30 or 40 vastly different sounding languages, rate them for how much you like/dislike the sound, and then found out what languages you had been listening to.

Chibi wrote:

R.Rusanov wrote:I think French, Esperanto and Albanian are pretty ugly, they combine the worst features of Western, Central and Eastern Europe respectively. The orthographies are also sub-par in my opinion. I generally don't like tonal languages or ones with too many vowels or consonants.

I love languages like Proto-Slavic, Tocharian, and Proto-Indo-European, and so on. I bet Proto-Afro-Asiatic's pretty cool too but I've never read anything about it and the sixteen different kinds of "h"s would probably put me off quite a bit.

So basically, if it's a spoken language, you think it's ugly?

Not necessarily; I like proto-languages because they tend to be pretty regular and have cool & interesting features (aspiration, vowel harmony, etc.)... languages like French are so irregular it's silly. I know Turkmeni's regular as hell, so if I went to Turkmenistan I'd probably have a great time.

Proto-languages should not be assumed to have tendencies. The reason they look more regular than modern languages is that the regular features of a long-dead language are way easier to reconstruct than its irregular features. I bet you a hundred bucks if we could ever find out what the real PIE language was like, it'd be irregular as all hell.

I'd raise that bet several orders of magnitude. The kludges for the infinitive ALONE would drive any learner of actual-PIE insane.

Notice how most people who post in this thread now are noobs.

Lock this thread.

Lock Legion to this thread.

In general, I can't stand velar or uvular fricatives. They hurt my ears to listen to, and they hurt my throat to try and say. Thus, I dislike any languages with extensive use of these sounds. Also, I for some reason, don't like any languages with a very phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

I've only created one conlang with velar/uvular fricatives, but scrapped it, as it turned out to be too kitchen-sink like.

Jerian wrote:In general, I can't stand velar or uvular fricatives. They hurt my ears to listen to, and they hurt my throat to try and say. Thus, I dislike any languages with extensive use of these sounds. Also, I for some reason, don't like any languages with a very phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

I've only created one conlang with velar/uvular fricatives, but scrapped it, as it turned out to be too kitchen-sink like.

Also, I for some reason, don't like any languages with a very phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

any languages with a very phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

Jerian wrote:In general, I can't stand velar or uvular fricatives. They hurt my ears to listen to, and they hurt my throat to try and say.

Then you're not making velar or uvular fricatives.

Jerian wrote:In general, I can't stand velar or uvular fricatives. They hurt my ears to listen to, and they hurt my throat to try and say. Thus, I dislike any languages with extensive use of these sounds.

Same here, especially for uvular fricatives although voiced velar fricatives really turn me off too.

You two should listen to this Montana Salish interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gZUGV_Kc-k

I learned some Montana Salish from a coworker at a language revitalization project, who was from the Flathead reservation. It's amazing.

Legion wrote:

Jerian wrote:In general, I can't stand velar or uvular fricatives. They hurt my ears to listen to, and they hurt my throat to try and say. Thus, I dislike any languages with extensive use of these sounds. Also, I for some reason, don't like any languages with a very phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

I've only created one conlang with velar/uvular fricatives, but scrapped it, as it turned out to be too kitchen-sink like.

Also, I for some reason, don't like any languages with a very phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

any languages with a very phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

phonetic alphabet, like spanish, or Turkish.

Yes, in average human English a "phonetic alphabet" refers to a shallow alphabetic orthography. (Don't worry, I find it jarring too, but I won't deny it's a thing...)

I know that of course. But that someone who has already commited 250+ posts on this forum hasn't yet learned that is dishearting.