Top 5 best-sounding world and semi-world languages

[Gurubashi]

Which three of these do you find to be the nicest sounding languages? Note that I put "nicest" sounding, as distinct from elegant-sounding (in which case almost everybody would pick French, not that French is a bad sounding language). My top 3 are:

1. English. Come on, name anyone who doesn't love English? Even new learners of the language quickly fall in love with the language's smooth-flowing, classy-sounding words and adjectives that make it easy to pick up foreign women and be able to impress a lot of people in online forum discussions just by having and properly applying its wide vocabulary. Bonus points for being a very good language to put to music, as well.
2. German/Deutsch. An elegant language in addition to being nice-sounding that has some of the nicest, coolest sounding words for scientific and military concepts. Also a very good "music" language. Try listening to "A Whole New World" in German, I'll be amazed if you're not spellbound. A very solid and well-deserved number two in my book.
3. Arabic. I personally like to think of this as the 'adjective' language for its plethora of beautiful-sounding adjectives. There is also something really sexy about its tonal system. The sometimes very jarring difference in tone from word to word in a sentence gives it a pronounced, masculine feel and harsh beauty. A very solid number three.
EDIT: Sorry for typo in title. I meant to put in top three best sounding world languages. Please vote for just three for better accuracy.

 

[bombshoo]

I voted my favorite five. Your thread's title question is different from your poll.

 

[mayor]

I am strongly against the fact that you have Dutch and Afrikaans listed as the same language.
It's true that Afrikaans as his origins in Dutch but now a days it is a complete different language.
It had a lot of influence from English and African languages. It contains words that don't exist in Dutch.
If I would speak to someone who speaks Afrikaans I wouldn't be able to understand half of it.

And more important to this thread. They sound completely different. The same words are said differently, the tone/sounds are different, the "flow" of a sentence is different etc.

EDIT:
votes

Deutsch(German): It's a beautiful language, what Gurubashi said. but also listen to Das Ring der Nibelungen van Wagner. But besides being elegant it is also a language that can be extremely angry, listen to speeches of Hitler for instance. It's a language that can do everything.

English: I do like, but it depends on who speaks it. I tend to use it more than Dutch with friends

Russian: I only know this language directly since last June and don't understand one word of it, but my is it beautiful

 

[Gurubashi]

I am strongly against the fact that you have Dutch and Afrikaans listed as the same language.
It's true that Afrikaans as his origins in Dutch but now a days it is a complete different language.
It had a lot of influence from English and African languages. It contains words that don't exist in Dutch.
If I would speak to someone who speaks Afrikaans I wouldn't be able to understand half of it.

And more important to this thread. They sound completely different. The same words are said differently, the tone/sounds are different, the "flow" of a sentence is different etc.

Sorry, no offense intended to your language or its derivative Afrikaans. I just thought that Dutch by itself would not constitute a "world" language but wanted to put it in, somehow.

 

[Lillefix]

I am strongly against the fact that you have Dutch and Afrikaans listed as the same language.
It's true that Afrikaans as his origins in Dutch but now a days it is a complete different language.
It had a lot of influence from English and African languages. It contains words that don't exist in Dutch.
If I would speak to someone who speaks Afrikaans I wouldn't be able to understand half of it.

But they sound very similar for someone who don't speak the languages, don't they? That's what's relevant in the poll.

I vote Italian, Russian and French.

 

[NickyJ]

French, Italian, and Spanish. All of them seem to have a good "flow" to them. I would have liked to have voted for German, but it's just too "rough". English? Meh. I speak it, I like it, but I wouldn't say it's among the best sounding.

 

[Ajidica]

Probably Russian, French, and Italian. Perhaps it is being a native speaker, but English holds no real allure for me.

 

[Huayna Capac357]

Portuguese, Russian, and Swahili, of those on the list.

 

[Gurubashi]

Probably Russian, French, and Italian. Perhaps it is being a native speaker, but English holds no real allure for me.

I like its earthiness and easy flow. Foreign women seem to find it attractive

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Deutsch(German): It's a beautiful language, what Gurubashi said. but also listen to Der Ring der Nibelungen van Wagner. But besides being elegant it is also a language that can be extremely angry, listen to speeches of Hitler for instance. It's a language that can do everything.

Ring is male. Don't ask why, noboy knows .

German had a bad reputation for a long time, but you can make any language sound scary if you ham it up like Hitler who by the way had a pretty silly Austrian accent.

English is OK I guess, the grammar is pretty simple for a european language and the sound of it can be really beautiful depending on the speaker. It's best with a British accent spoken by somebody who can pull it off without sounding pretentious.

As a student of mandarin chinese I have to say that it's a mixed bag.
The tonal system sometimes makes it sound more like singing than speaking, but it also really takes the edge off profanities, making grown people sound like agitated children. Definitely not a good cussing language.

 

[Mango Elephant]

English is nice sounding because it sounds like falling stones but it doesn't sound so gutter-like as in German.

French is very pretty and flows very nicely.

I really like Spanish for some reason.

I'm surprised that German has gotten so many votes. It sounds kind of angry to me.

 

[Kozmos]

German elegant? Drahtlosnetzwerkverbindung and Landswirkraftmashine disagree.

 

[Gurubashi]

Allright, 21 votes! So far our top three are:

1. English (no surprises there) - 14 votes
2nd tied. French, Spanish and Russian - 10 votes
3. Italian - 9 votes

Keep it coming people!

 

[GoodSarmatian]

If you say them out loud there's nothing bad sounding about these words.
I find it pretty elegant that German is able to construct such things without lengthy explanations or clumsily chaining adjectives together.

For non-German speakers: Drahtlosnetzwerkverbindung is wireless network connection and Landsiwkraftmaschine looks like a German word but isn't. Maybe it's supposed to be 'Wärmekraftmaschine' which means heat engine (which is a generic term for machines that convert heat into work [in the physical sense]).

 

[Ai Shizuka]

There should be two different english options.

British English is classy, US english is auditive diarrhea, so I can't vote for a generic english option.

EDIT: I'm Italian and voted German.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I'm surprised that German has gotten so many votes. It sounds kind of angry to me.

Try listening to Nena -- something other than "99 Luftballons". I'd reccommend "Liebe ist", "Willst du mit mir gehn", and "Ich werde dich lieben". There are also German operas...and the vocals for "Ode to Joy", or "An die Freude", are traditionally German. Nena (and two years of German ) have made me fond of the language.

Swahili is a beautiful tongue: one of the benefits of YouTube is that I can listen to songs performed in it and Zulu.

I voted for English, Italian, Swahili, German, and Spanish. There are some beautiful songs in the Arabic language, but I don't like the way it sounds spoken. I was torn between the three Romance tongues and chose Italian to represent them because of the opera.

 

[Veles]

1. Latin
2. Russian variant of Slavic language
3. Donegal Irish Gaeilge

EDIT:

k, prolly 2 moar:

4. Sanskrit
5. Italian (kinda)

 

[Leoreth]

German elegant? Drahtlosnetzwerkverbindung and Landswirkraftmashine disagree.

But nobody uses these words!

It seems to me that the image of the German language in the Anglosphere has improved lately, is that true?

I'm obviously not objective about it, but I'm of a split opinion on German. On one hand, it can be very harsh sounding especially compared to "smooth" Romanic languages like English or French, with all its consonant clusters and the glottal stops between words. But I also think that can be very powerful in word choice and arrangement, and overall in my opinion, very good German poetry or very good German lyrics are better than very good English counterparts.

Aside from that, my choices would be French/Spanish/Swahili (sorry but how can any civ player vote otherwise?)

 

[Veles]

What I like about German is that they seem to be more reluctant to introduce loanwords into it, compared to other langs.

 

[Winner]

I voted for Russian only, can't pick the remaining two from this selection. English is automatically disqualified because I understand it.

French is overrated, Italian is... Italian, Portuguese is weird, Arabic is ugly as hell, German is gut only when I hear it from Rammstein, Dutch is funny but not exactly euphonic, Spanish is... yadda yadda.

Russian is actually a very nice sounding language, especially when Rusky speak it


Link to video.