What makes a language sound "ugly" to you?
What makes a language sound "beautiful" to you? (Example: French is generally assumed to sound sexy)
What standards do you use to judge?
(Of course all languages are amazing, but I was thinking if one's own language influences one's taste vis à vis other languages)
I never saw a language as "ugly" and yes "funny".
Some are hard to keep on listening, but I think that it's a matter of time...
The only thing that sometimes I can't stand are some accents, but it's nobody's fault.
Hi, a female voice is what makes any language beautiful.
Considering that I have such difficoult tastes, I remember two examples, from English and Iranian, which trascend the physic support of language and enter directly in spirituality.
Besides -- an extreme and paradoxical example -- a Russian girl wrote to me such an exotic italian that it seemed to me to live in a spy story ("... it was just text").
Generally speaking, I think it is songs that express the best of a language which, otherwise, has "strange sounds" coming directly from the stomach...
Listing some songs as example, I yielded: Estonian, Saami, Turkish, and Mongolian songs. But also Arabic .. and any.
<a target="_blank" title="Guarda il video originale: Yunden googoo" class="mmvdp_meta_title_link" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lz-DUcR1uI" h="ID=video,5455.1" style="color: rgb(96, 0, 144); touch-action: manipulation; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; background-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">Yunden googoo</a>
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What makes a language ugly is certain "lazy" speech, the lack of articulation, that I could summarize as not really opening your mouth when you speak. It applies to both vowels and consonants.
What makes a language beautiful, apart from not having the above mentioned faults, is its melody and tone patterns.
What makes that a language sounds beautiful?
I would say: vowels! When most syllables end in vowels, the whole sentence will probably be melodious-sound to a foreign ear ... even if the speaker is maybe telling horrible things!
What makes that a language sounds ugly?
Well, I would not say 'ugly'. However, if many syllables in some language end with stop unvoiced consonants (-t, -p, -k, -ch, glottal stop ) or with groups containing stop consonants (-kt, -tk, -kr, -pt, -stk...), the first acoustic impression will be of a certain "harshness" or "dryness" of the language.
Of course, one may think of other elements, such as accent and tones ... they must also contribute to the first "feeling" of a language; but I don't know much about them.
Yet, I'm doubtful: is that a general feeling or is rather a bias, driven by the phonetics of the languages one speaks or is used to? Who knows, speakers of consonants-rich languages may find that the very opposite is true and that too many vowels do "hurt" one's hearing :)
