Rohan:

LunaMouse:I have a certain fondness for Mandarin and Norwegian, but I'm hardly qualified to say whether either is particularly soft or not. I just like listening to people speak in those languages.

Makes me feel all happy inside.

Come now... Fortunately, presently, no one needs any qualifications to be able to express their personal opinions.

My only experience in Mandarin in speech is hearing Faye Wong talking once, the rest is in music (...mostly, but not entirely, her music). The same with Norwegian, but of Liv Kristine's singing, and a friend I once had a brief chat with on the phone who was being a bit flirtatious. So, basically, just a few encounters with a few different people isn't enough to base a solid opinion of either upon.

I suppose given the choice of those listed, I'd pick English, but I tend to have a great deal of soft poetic rhythm floating through my brain in English.

LunaMouse:I have a certain fondness for Mandarin and Norwegian, but I'm hardly qualified to say whether either is particularly soft or not. I just like listening to people speak in those languages.

Makes me feel all happy inside.

Mandarin is a lovely language. I really enjoy trying to speak it. The tones make you feel like you're singing when all you're doing is trying to communicate. Unfortunately, I constantly mispronounce them/get them mixed up and confuse anyone I'm speaking to. I think this is the main reason I gave up on Chinese.

LunaMouse:I suppose given the choice of those listed, I'd pick English, but I tend to have a great deal of soft poetic rhythm floating through my brain in English.

Mmm, come to think of it, English has that kind of rhythm that you can't just learn in a text book, even more so with Middle English. Maybe we should go back to Middle English?

Thou seest the catte nu over there = Thu see-est // the ca-tte // nu ov-er there = 3 syllables 3 syllables 4 syllables, how nice would it be to have that rhythm in modern English? Nowadays it's 'Hey look at that cat!'