Hi!

Very often, I have come across statements like:

1. French is a "soft", "sweet", and "feminine" language.

2. German is a "harsh", "rough", and "masculine" language.

Mostly, I've heard such statements from people who speak neither French nor German. They seem to base such statements on some short spoken excerpt or song which they might have happened to hear.

When asked why they feel thus, the typical responses tend to be:

1. No particular reason; that's just the way it seemed to me.

2. German seems to have too many "raspy" or "guttural" sounds. (Usually referring to the 'ch' sound in 'Bach', and the German 'R'.)

3. French has dental T's and D's, as opposed to alveolar ones (as in English and German).

Now, as a student of linguistics, French, and German, I find this to be a very curious phenomenon. Phonetically, there is nothing like a "soft" or "hard" sound. A dental plosive and a uvular plosive are both formed by completely obstructing the outflowing airstream with the tongue, at some particular place in the mouth (the back of the teeth and near the uvula, respectively).

So why is it that, at least apparently, people tend to perceive dental sounds as being relatively softer, and velar and uvular fricatives as being harsher? (The aforementioned 'ch' is a velar fricative; the French and German R's are usually uvular fricatives.)

My mother finds French softer than German. She said one reason might be that since the 'ch' sound doesn't occur in any of the languages she speaks, the only association she makes with it is the act of clearing one's throat, which isn't exactly the most pleasant of acts. Interesting...

Another thing that I found intriguing was that although Arabic has many more uvular and pharyngeal (made even deeper in the throat) sounds than German, she likes the sound of Arabic songs. I don't know if that's solely because of the music or rhythm or something similar. I don't know what her reaction would be if she were to hear naked spoken Arabic.

I think another sound which native English speakers might find disagreeable is the trilled alveolar R. This is just a guess, though.

Personally, maybe due to the little linguistics I've studied so far, I don't think any sound has any inherent properties which make it sound soft or harsh. I think other, subjective factors are at work when people make such distinctions.

If, however, it turns out that even native speakers of languages with gutturals find them unpleasant, then the explanation which seems most convincing to me is that there's probably something about that particular sound's acoustic features that makes it thus. Maybe its frequency or some other physical property.

Along with making your opinion known in the poll, it would be nice if you could also mention, as a post in this thread, the language which sounds harshest to you (This language need not be one of the languages I've provided as choices.). It would also be helpful if you could mention any specific reasons you find a particular language soft/harsh, and if you could mention the languages you speak.

Lastly, any other comments or thoughts regarding this issue are, of course, welcome.

- Rohan

I thought german was a harsh language(because of old war movies where every one is always crying).
But recently, I heard two women speaking german, an austrian and a swiss, and it was very soft and ... melodious !
(My native language is french.)

Notions of hardness and softness may be due to the perceived quality of the culture as well the sound of the spoken language (the extent to which it grates, or not, on the ear). If my understanding is correct, French people do not like to send their children away to boarding schools, whereas authoritarian upbringing and strict discipline may be more typical of German culture, at least in non-German popular imagination.

The language that sounds harshest to me is definitely Dutch. It has the German "ch" sounds, spelled "ch" as well, and the G's are also pronunced that way. Plus it has the German and French R sound, which makes it sound like they say every single word with their throat. Arabic sounds very harsh to me too, more than German... but less that Dutch. It must be because I'm used to latin languages (I speak Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Catalan), that do not use this kinf of sounds, except for the R in French and Portuguese.

PS: I'm a native French speaker.

Latin languages tend to be "soft" to the ear because they tend to use more vowels than consonants at least in speech. German, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, probably some of the Caucasian languages like Georgian, etc sound "Hard" because they have groups of consonants with fewer connecting vowel sounds. That is my opinion as an English speaker; and is without scientific background but I base it on popular culture:

A German soldier in a war movie barking orders in German seems more effective than if someone was doing that speaking, say, Gaelic or Italian.

A woman reading a love poem to her man sounds "softer" and more romantic in French or Italian, than it would be in Arabic or Georgian, or even English!

Describing the beauty of a landscape sounds "rolling" and "expansive" in English and "peaceful" or "enigmatic" in perhaps Spanish or Greek, but probably sounds "mechanical" or "descriptive" in Swedish or German or Polish.

It's like variations on music, the sounds are onomatopaeic sometimes; if that makes any sense

Hmm. Ironchef, I didn't consider vowels while thinking of this, so this is a nice new idea for me, good food for thought.

Here's a sentence in five languages, as a random sample for comparison, with the number of consonants in each, as analysed by me. I've distinguished between diphthongs and sequences consisting of a vowel followed by a consonant. Many will disagree with the analysis. Here it is:

English: "The boy is going to the house."
(9 consonants)

Esperanto: "La knabo iras al la domo."
(10 consonants)

French: "Le garçon va vers la maison."
(10 consonants)

German: "Der Knabe geht nach dem Haus."
(13 consonants)

Arabic: "Al-waladu dhaahibun ila-l-bayti."
(12 consonants)
('dh' is the same sound as 'th' in 'though', and hence a single consonant. Also, in speech, the -un of 'dhahibun' may be dropped.)

I hope I've got the sentences right.

So in this particular case, German does have the most consonants!

To me the sami language (laponian) sounds very soft when watching TV-news in sami ("Oddasat"). Actually there are various sami languages: nordic, enare-sami, south variations etc and then kolta-sami which is totally different. I think that they are using usually nordic sami. I myself don't understand but some words.

Hi everybody!

This is a very interesting thread, Rohan. But I'd like to make a little remark about your German example. The correct prepositins are "zu dem" which are merged to "zum". You picked some random phrase of course. But in this particular case it leads to a reduction of two consonants. Thus "Der Knabe geht zum Haus" is ranking no 2 concerning the uantity of vowels. ("der Junge" is a more contemporary expression for "der Knabe" that's the same for the consonants but maybe of your interest)

To me the Japanese language sounds soft. It is very strict about the alternation of vowels and consonants. So the criterion of the latter might be a valid one.
Somebody told me her impression about the Russian language once. Not knowing Russian, all conversations in Russian sound like disputes to her. I, as a Russian speaker found that striking since I'm not that doubtful about the content of a conversation.

Apart from German, Russian and English i'm speaking French and struggeling with Arabic at the moment. Spanish sounds harsh to me. I'm not sure about the reason. Maybe I'm just comparing it to French due to the lack of even basic Spanish. Hopefully, the Spanish speakers around here don't mind.

The source of spoken language is also determining the impression i guess. Is it because people see so many oficers speaking German in war movies that they consider the language harsh and bossy?

Saluton,
Kamapuna

I used to think that most Germanic languages (English included) had very harsh sounding consonants until I went to Sweden. I could listen to people speaking Swedish all day, even though I understand very little. It is really a pleasant language.

Kamapuna, I'm glad you like the thread.

What I've learnt is that 'nach dem Haus' means 'to the house', while 'zum Haus' means 'at the house'. I've learnt that Haus is somewhat exceptional in this matter, for normally, 'to the X' is 'zur/zum X'. It seems I've been taught incorrectly.

And yes, as Miland mentioned, the listener's preconceptions regarding the culture and the ways of the speaker of a language probably do tend to colour the way the language sounds to him.

As far as the sample sentence goes, I had to think of a sentence which I could translate into all five languages. I have a very limited knowledge of Arabic presently, so first, I had to come up with a simple and correct Arabic sentence. I then translated this sentence into the other languages.

May the ideas keep pouring in!