The World's most beautiful/ugly language ?

[The Imp]

My roommate last year was from Brooklyn and always spoke to his mother in Cantonese on the phone. I dont know if I would say it is hideous sounding, but it is defiantly...interesting.

No... it is a hideous abomination that makes my ears bleed. Hopefully, Mandarin will replace it.

 

[Annex]

The only languages I don't like are whatever it was the Indians were speaking in South America, I have considerable difficulty pronouncing the torturous names of Aztec, Mayan, and Incan cities.

All the Mayan and Aztec names are so cool sounding. And they arent that hard to pronounce.

No... it is a hideous abomination that makes my ears bleed. Hopefully, Mandarin will replace it.

I guess that would be an improvement

 

[Harbringer]

Mexican Spanish is ugly, shortly after followed by chinese and cantonese.

 

[The Imp]

Mexican Spanish is ugly, shortly after followed by chinese and cantonese.

"Chinese and cantonese"? Do you mean Mandarin and Cantonese?

And I am sorry, but Cantonese is the most ugly dialect of a language in the history of man. I will not tolerate dissent on this point

 

[Harvin87]

I agree... they sound like some kind of bird or something...

 

[Smellincoffee]

Arabic sounds pretty when sung, but I don't like it spoken. The same goes for Chinese and Japanese, but I would wager that I find the unfamiliarity jarring. I used to think poorly of German, but having taken four semesters of it, I adore listening to it...especially from Nena.


I love listening to Swahili and French sung.

 

[Narz]

Ugliest : French, Chinese

Most beautiful : Italian (New Jersey Italian-American English not so much )

 

[jono256]

Dutch is one the harshest, Chinese isn't very nice either.
German is meant to be sung.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2ODfuMMyss&feature=related

... generalizations aside, any language is pretty when spoken in soft tones by someone attractive, and ugly when shouted by a fishmonger.

Also danish, lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

 

[The Imp]

Mandarin isn't actually that bad, thus I won't say "Chinese sucks", but will only say "the Cantonese dialect of Chinese" sucks.

I would just say Cantonese, but Civ OT is famous for its nitpickers.

 

[civverguy]

I prefer Italian because of the way it seems to flow when spoken, but I think that all languages can sound nice, depending on the way its spoken.

 

[Marla_Singer]

... generalizations aside, any language is pretty when spoken in soft tones by someone attractive, and ugly when shouted by a fishmonger.

I think this is a good summary.

This being said, Italian is a very loud language but it doesn't make it ugly as obviously the majority of people over here likes it a lot. Personally I'm a bit bored about the way Italians are talking loud to be heard by the people surrounding them. But here I'm falling again into generalizations...

 

[The Imp]

I prefer Italian because of the way it seems to flow when spoken, but I think that all languages can sound nice, depending on the way its spoken.

Except Cantonese. Cantonese can never sound nice. I will fight you if you say otherwise.

 

[aronnax]

Except Cantonese. Cantonese can never sound nice. I will fight you if you say otherwise.

The entity of Cantonese sounds like massive swearing and cursing to Chinese speakers, especially those of other dialect groups.

I suspect the reason why Britain returned Hong Kong was because they couldn't stand ruling a populace that sounded like they were constantly cursing their mother in law.

 

[Mirc]

Here's a perfect example of the crazy throaty sounds of the Dutch language, with a magnificent video to top it off:
(the video was uploaded by a German, so don't mind the German title, the girl there is actually speaking Dutch)
Also contains a healthy does of a drunk American tourist!



Link to video.

 

[Harvin87]

IMHO, the German language is beautiful. The problem is that, its impossible to see it from the outside, once you are inside his universe, you would be amazed by how beautiful it is.

 

[Godwynn]

IMHO, the German language is beautiful. The problem is that, its impossible to see it from the outside, once you are inside his universe, you would be amazed by how beautiful it is.

This is true.

 

[crazyunits]

wow so much Cantonese haters.


Haters gonna hate.

 

[The Imp]

wow so much Cantonese haters.


Haters gonna hate.

If by "Haters gonna hate." you mean "Cantonese sucks", yes.

 

[duckstab]

German can sound harsh when spoken with anger or intensity. But listen to somebody good reading Rilke in the original and its musical qualities become quite evident.

Chinese, on the other hand, sounds unpleasant to me. I think it's because it heavily uses inflections as a syntactic element whereas in most other languages with which I'm familiar they'd be reserved to convey tone or emotion.

 

[Kaffekande]

I guess I'll be following the "Danish Tradition" (I don't say every Dane would have voted for Swedish, so shut up!) when I say I would have voted for Swedish as the ugliest language, (hey hallo, hvis I ikke mener det samme som mig, så lad endelig være med at svare, okay? xD!!) but since it's placed besides Danish, I voted for English, (All kind of English) since I think it'a a too much dominating language (IMO), and because it sounds.. Ugly.. (Don't judge me.. I don't like the language just because I had to learn it..)

.. But I like Japanese and Italian though.. And, sometimes, French! >8)