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"Soft" languages?

kelle poolt Rohan, 21. november 2008

Postitused: 42

Keel: English

erinja (Näita profiili) 23. november 2008 15:43.09

Italian is often thought of as a beautiful language, but a friend of mine who learned Hebrew, and lived in Israel for several years, always thought that Hebrew sounded very soft and beautiful, and that Italian had an unpleasant "rat-a-tat" kind of sound, very staccato and unsettling to her.

Personally, in terms of sounding soft, I have always thought that Welsh sounds very soft. It sounds very flowing and breathy to me.

Language sounds also depend a lot on the accent of the person speaking it. Certain accents in French sound very harsh and guttural to me, while others sound much softer. Swiss German sounds very harsh to me, although that is essentially a different language from standard German. German itself sounds very nasal to me. Although I studied Yiddish for a couple of years, and Yiddish sounds much less nasal to me, and more beautiful. Sound-wise, I think that Yiddish sounds more similar to Austrian German, and I prefer that sound.

I do not much like the sound of Dutch, or of Danish either.

EL_NEBULOSO (Näita profiili) 23. november 2008 17:37.48

Hi,

I don't know Arabic (though I have heard it in films...) but from the options given, I think that German is the "less soft" language, rivaled maybe only by Oxford English.

However, I like Oxford English and I also like languages that sound "softer" like French or Portuguese...

Gerald

P.S. @Erinja: Yes, Yiddish sounds very similar to Austrian German and is very far from dialects spoken in the northern parts of Germany.

Ironchef (Näita profiili) 24. november 2008 15:52.35

Another thing you might want to consider is the range of vowel sounds in any given word or phrase. English throws any of its vowels into any combinations possible. My understanding is that Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian (the Finno/Ugric family?) have a grammatical feature called Vowel-Harmony which means that only certain types of vowels (open/closed/rounded etc) can appear in the same words together; so it could explain why Finnish sounds smoother than English for example.

Then there is voicing and tone. Italian is very ratta-tatta-tat-i-tatta because final vowels are pronounced and words almost always end in vowels. I would imagine that languages like Hawaiian would also be very "bouncy" on the ear because of a limited phonemic and repetition of the same syllable structures. French does the opposite, and simplifies its phonemes and "slurs" its words together so that a sentence can sound like one long word. Of course English does this too, and there are jokes about how certain dialects of English are spoken. Where I live we have the example of the word "Wojeet?" /wo'jeet/ as an extreme contraction of "what did you eat?" and the one made famous by Jeff Foxworthy, Widja-didja as in "You didn't bring your truck widja-didja?" ("With you, did you") --- but I'm probably getting far from Rohan's original poll by now....

mnlg (Näita profiili) 24. november 2008 16:36.46

Ironchef:My understanding is that Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian (the Finno/Ugric family?) have a grammatical feature called Vowel-Harmony
Estonian doesn't have it anymore. It is still present in a few Altaic languages.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_language

ceigered (Näita profiili) 26. november 2008 5:28.28

To me, English sounds softest, because, it has virtually no guttural sounds, very few speakers role their 'r's, and in fast speech almost all the consonants become softened to some extent (infact, t often becomes deleted or turned into a glottal stop, and d, well, d stays the same but thats different). So, in a way English is 'softer' as it lacks any trills and instead has many fricatives and approximants (especially in some dialects where 't+y' or 'd+y' become 'ch' and 'j' sounds, like in Australia were we say 'Dune' as 'June' and 'Tune' as 'Choon'). However this in effect kind of makes English sound like a language for slackers who can't be stuffed pronouncing things properly lango.gif.

Rogir (Näita profiili) 26. november 2008 16:47.40

Actually, I think a trilled r sounds nicer than a tapped or approximated r, because the latter sound a bit sloppy to me.

ceigered (Näita profiili) 27. november 2008 8:01.53

Rogir:Actually, I think a trilled r sounds nicer than a tapped or approximated r, because the latter sound a bit sloppy to me.
Ah, yes, great point. The trills definitely are better than taps and approximates because they have this rolly-polly sound which is more melodic than a 'growling' alveolar approximate or a quick tap (forgive my horrible descriptions). But even if they sound better, approximates are *softer*, just to be technical lango.gif

In terms of beauty, Russian/Polish, Swedish, French, Italian and Finish get my vote - Russian/Polish because of the palatalisation and use of fricatives, Swedish because of the rhythm (not so much the pitch accent), French because it just flows, Italian because of the rhythm (like Swedish again), and Finnish because it flows and has it's own rhythm, but not as much as the other languages.

Dutch would be softer if the 'G' wasn't a guttural fricative (maybe a H sound instead?) and Esperanto needs more of something. Maybe more post-alveolar fricatives (sh, zh, ch so it sounds more Slavic) or maybe more 'h', 'l' and 'm' sounds (so it sounds middle-eastern), I don't know, it just seems too neutral and boring at times. But there's no point in making an Ido over it, because Ido's don't seem to catch on too well ridulo.gif

Or maybe it can be like Esperant', and every one starts going 'Mi ŝataŝ vin, ĉar mi nje sĉiaŝ*, ke vi jestaŝ malbono krimulo.'

No? Ok..........

*(admittedly, some speakers probably do say 'sĉias' instead of 'scias', but still I reckon that Esperanto needs more fricatives lango.gif)

Rogir (Näita profiili) 28. november 2008 18:39.37

Dutch would be softer if the 'G' wasn't a guttural fricative (maybe a H sound instead?)
Have you ever heard Limburgs? It's a Dutch dialect in our very south, which is considered very soft and is known for its soft voiced g.

ceigered (Näita profiili) 29. november 2008 14:46.25

Rogir:
Dutch would be softer if the 'G' wasn't a guttural fricative (maybe a H sound instead?)
Have you ever heard Limburgs? It's a Dutch dialect in our very south, which is considered very soft and is known for its soft voiced g.
Goed, dank je!
I must hear this dialect ridulo.gif Although, I was once told on Yahoo! Answers that using a soft 'g' will make you sound like a foreigner. Is the limburgs 'g' like in English?

Rogir (Näita profiili) 30. november 2008 15:56.42

No, it's still a fricative, but close to an approximant. I don't think it will make you sound like a foreigner, but like a Limburger or Brabander, which may be worse.

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