Let's hear the Dutch opinion too, about arguable the most horrible language in the world. I live on a somewhat international university where I here quite some languages around me. I personally think Italian is the most beautiful language I know, but I do not hear it often enough to give a justified opinion. French sounds softer to me than German, but German is still softer than English, with its strange interdentals and horrible vowel array. Everyone around me thinks Dutch has too much ggg's, I don't think it's that much, but it does make the language sound ugly. My personal disliked language is Bulgarian, but that may be more due to the Bulgarian people here than to the language itself.

Rohan:
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.

No, at the house means "am Haus" (am < an dem) expressing a place, whereas "zum Haus" (to the house) expresses a direction. My native language is German.

Let's add one more:

Spanish: "El niño va a la casa" (7 consonants).

It seems that my mother tongue is the sweetest of all the languages we have considered.

Regards,

Daniel

Rohan: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!

Rogir: ...but German is still softer than English, with its strange interdentals and horrible vowel array.

Ah! Personally, I find the English interdentals really nice to hear.

I'm curious to know why the vowel array of English seems 'horrible' to you. Could you let me know, please?

andogigi: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.

It sounds us that the swedes of the kingdom of Sweden "sing" because of their intonation. The swedish people of Finland don't "sing" but speak "normally".

Actually, I've heard Swedish described many times as a "sing song" language because the tone and timing seems to go "tee-dum--tee-dum dee-dum da-dum." when spoken. The Swedish Chef on the Muppets, although making fun of Swedish is actually more than a little accurate when it comes to what non-Swedes hear when Swedish is spoken!

What I also just remembered was seeing the American drama show "Dallas" from the early 80s overdubbed in German when I was in Germany in 1986. I remember Larry Hagman's smooth, drawling Texas voice being overdubbed by a German voice sounding like an SS-officer! So I think there is something to this; and also the ear of the listener, and what he/she is used to .

Rohan: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.

Here's one more for your collection:
Dutch "De jongen gaat naar het huis"
(13 consonants)

Dutch seems to be an ongoing quarrel to many people. But we, in turn think the same about Spanish.

Peter

very nice thread in deed.

my native tongue is German and I am an undergraduate student of translation studies for English and Russian. That means I've gone through several phonetics classes and my teachers have trained me to "get rid of my German accent as far as possible".
I think that one of the main features that make German sound harsh is the glottal stop (interrupting your breath shortly before prononcing the next sound) before vowels and at the end of some syllables. Spoken language sounds chopped up into bits and pieces rather than flowing nicely. I know no other language that has a glottal stop.
Another reason is the terminal devoicing. That means if a word, or syllable, ends with a voiced conconant like d or g it still is pronounced as t or k respectively. I find that unvoiced consonants generally sound harsher than voiced ones.

and about your example:
what you mean is "nachhause/ nach Hause" and "zuhause/ zu Hause". Both spellings are possible.
Those are adverbs and mean something like "being on your way home" and "being at home"

"Der Junge geht nachhause." would mean something like "The boy is on his way home" (if you mean his own house).
or
"Der Junge geht zum Haus." which means he is going to a house not further determined.

oh, and if you compare the quantity of vowels, you should not only compare the absolute number of vowels but rather the vowel to consonant ratio. That would make more sense, I think.

Rohan:
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)

Japanese could be interesting here.

Japanese: "Otokonoko wa uchi ni itte imasu."

The thing is, the word "uchi" implies that the boy was going to his own house. If we just want to say "house" (as in anybody's house) we could have said "ie" and removed a consonant.

ronda_vex:I know no other language that has a glottal stop.

The glottal stop is present in plenty of languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop

You're right when you say that comparing the vowel-consonant ratio could prove more useful than merely comparing their absolute numbers. Also, as Ironchef hinted, consonant clusters should be taken into account too.

I'm very keen on listening to some samples of spoken Swedish now, thanks to the 'reports' of it sounding quite sing-songish (in a non-pejorative and non-trivialising sense, of course)...