zompist bboard

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Asahi wrote:What are the natlangs you think sound best

Japanese
Russian
Finnish

and the ones that don't sound as good?

If by that, you mean the ones I find unappealing, then:

French
Dutch
Arabic

Good:
Icelandic
Dutch
Mongolian

Bad:
Spanish
Mandarin
Russian

There's something about front rounded vowels and preaspiration that does it for me, apparently. Actually I'm rather ambivalent about most languages and there aren't really any that I explicitly dislike; it's more one specific characteristic feature of those three that I dislike the sound of (obstruent softening, rhotacisation, palatalisation respectively), and as for the first three, Icelandic is the main one I like the sound of, probably mostly because of Sigur Rós i'll admit, Dutch is very satisfying if you can pronounce it properly (lots of [χ] and I think I must be one of the few that actually quite enjoys the ui sound), and Mongolian is my wildcard answer because I hardly know anything about it. I should maybe get onto that. And actually make a conlang with front rounded vowels and preaspiration, yes.

I like the sound of Japanese, Catalan, and Romanian. The Polynesian languages just sound kind of silly.

I don't like Spanish, or Arabic, or Irish.

It's too hard to decide which three I like, so I'm only posting three I dislike:

French
French
French

Good:
Finnish
Georgian
Hungarian

Bad:
Danish
Vietnamese
French

Georgian actually flows very well, despite all of the tqsvd stuff that appears in the writing.

Good:
Zulu
Navajo
Malayalam

Bad:
French
German
English

Good:
Nahuatl
German
Lithuanian

Bad:
English
French
Kashubian

Good:
Arabic
Amharic
Portuguese

Bad:
English
French
Greek

Why all the hate for Arabic, by the way? I think it's a very beautiful language I love the 'pharyngealized' (or whatever) sounds, as well as qaaf /q/ (properly pronounced, of course).

Good:

Swedish
Br. English (yes I know about the different varieties, but then, other langs have that too)
Portuguese

Not so good:
French
Russian
Italian

In fact I think there would be better answers, but I can't think of them. And of course, tomorrow the list will be different from this one. And the day after tomorrow...

Good ones:
Greek
French
Polish

Not so good ones:
German(sounds like a person chewing an aluminium foil)
Maltese(its pharyngeal fricative sounds evil)
English(too much vowels)

Putrid wrote:Good ones:
Greek
French
Polish

Not so good ones:
German(sounds like a person chewing an aluminium foil)
Maltese(its pharyngeal fricative sounds evil)
English(too much vowels)

French is far more ripe with vowels than English.
It even has phonemic stress: /ˈu/ <Aout> vs. /u/ <ou>

I don't think there's any language I really hate the sound of. All languages are fun to pronounce if you can do it right.

Interesting:
Semitic languages (emphatics, gutturals)
Mayan languages (ejectives)
Xhosa/Zulu (clicks, "smoothness")

Boring/Ugly:
Swedish
Hindi
French

finlay wrote: There's something about front rounded vowels and preaspiration that does it for me, apparently.

Dutch doesn't have preaspiration I think (or it must be some purely phonetic feature that I never realized as a native speaker), but still it's neat you like it

Asahi wrote:What are the natlangs you think sound best

1) Hindi
2) Thai
3) Scottish Gaelic

Asahi wrote:and the ones that don't sound as good?

1) Polish
2) Russian
3) Mandarin

The things I generally like it seems are breathy voice, taps, laterals and retroflexes. And either tone or doing something interesting with stress so it's more heteregenous.

And for English and French it very much depends on the dialect or accent.

Putrid wrote: Not so good ones:
English(too much vowels)

that is one of the things that depends on the dialect.

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Good:
1. Finnish
2. German
3. Korean

Bad:
1. French (especially whatever African dialect it is that half of one of my classes spoke when I was in community college... sounded like they were flossing their nostrils with live centipedes)
2. Thai (I'm fairly certain that I could not recognize this as a human language if I saw it out of context)
3. Hungarian (too much /E/)

Nortaneous wrote:Good:
Bad:
1. French (especially whatever African dialect it is that half of one of my classes spoke when I was in community college... sounded like they were flossing their nostrils with live centipedes)

I love African French accents!

Like:
French, but I think this is because I speak it and I hear /ʁ/ and the nasals as meaningful, rather than growly honking. I like written French particularly, though.
Spanish as spoken in Spain sounds sexy.
Southern USA accents. I'll be in my bunk.

Dislike:
Polish. "Yukshemidgeyshetismisgde"
Russian. There's something about the way Russian is intoned that just sounds bizarre, it's like they are all telling bad news to slow children.
"Thick" South African English just sounds like frogs ribbetting to me.

Like:
Finnish
Estonian
Romanian

Dislike:
Russian
Greek
Dutch

And Polynesian languages I agree with as well. I like music best if it's sung in Finnish, Estonian or Romanian. It must be the vowels or diphthongs that soothe me.

Gulliver wrote: Polish. "Yukshemidgeyshetismisgde"

I think you mean "shchshshshxshshfsje"

Asahi wrote: What are the natlangs you think sound best

1) Finnish
2) Xhosa
3) Mandarin (standard, don't have much experience with other dialects of Mandarin)
(also German, Portuguese, and Italian, but not as much as the above 3. Marathi is also rather pleasant-sounding, and I do kind of like Indian English accents...must be the retroflexes)

Asahi wrote:and the ones that don't sound as good?

1) Spanish
2) French
3) Dutch (Afrikaans sounds marginally better, to me, but still too much throat-clearing for my liking)
(with Cantonese as a runner-up)

Languages that sound weird, but not necessarily bad: Hebrew (if they ditched the uvular R, it might be better, I think), Sotho (same reason), Thai, Russian (used to think it sounded beautiful, now the palatalization/plain contrast sounds weird), Korean (it seriously does make me hungry because it always sounds like they are eating when they speak, but there is something pleasing about the sound)

Darkgamma wrote: It even has phonemic stress: /ˈu/ <Aout> vs. /u/ <ou>

That is not what phonemic stress means. French doesn't have phonemic stress, nobody can tell two words appart when they're pronounced in isolation on the sole basis that one is a stressed word and the other isn't.

(And unless you're Canadian, <août> is pronounced /ut/).

I'm gonna go against the flow:

Like
Mandarin
Arabic
Maltese

Dislike
French (not really, it's just because I can't find anything else and I hate how weird its pronunciation is)
Finnish (again, not really, I just don't like the way it sounds and I think it's overrated)
Australian English (least hated of these three; I hate American English more but I have to appreciate it for its weirdness and Australian English just had plain strange pronunciations)

Yes
Catalan
Icelandic
Georgian

No
Russian
Vietnamese
American English (those George Bush-like varieties)

Avo wrote: No

American English (those George Bush-like varieties)

Aye, has yew heerd ebout them yeenkeyes who beem heeting eour speech