I like Spanish (some Colombian dialects are very beautiful), and I also like Portuguese. But in regards to this one, I dislike the carioca accent, so many “sh” sounds make me crazy. Give me a paolista or even nordeste accent before a carioca…
I have to pitch in a vote for Bahasa Indonesia. I learned to speak it when I lived in Jakarta and although I never got truly bilingual in it, I learned it well enough to develop an “ear” for it. It’s really a pretty language.
I mean, how can you go wrong with a language that translates “Thank you” as “Terimah kasih” (“receive love”) ?
Of the few languages I have extensive experience with, I love several for different reasons.
French was my first second language, so to speak, and I measure others against it. In French, my favourite accent is a medium Québécois accent; not so thick as to become difficult to follow but not so light that it starts to sound like a radio announcer. Those gorgeous diphthongs, triphthongs, that affrication… ahhh. It just sounds… warm and strong. A soft butch language, if you want. 
Castilian Spanish: everything sounds like an epigram. And the structure: all those marvellous strings of clitics, the crystalline conjugations, the perfect edifices of relative pronouns. It’s no surprise to me that Martial’s language turned into Spanish. And then every so often it drops some amazing little verbal bomb on you: it’s ignominious to be the town mattress, but imagine the thrill of being la pelandusca!
But if you want to get my pants off with maximum efficiency, speak to me in British English – everyone says this but it’s true. Not so much Received Pronunciation nor deepest cockney, but Chris Lowe’s “sexy northerner,” or the Manchester boys in Queer as Folk, or … regretful sigh Potter’s half-Oxonian townie, half-working class Bristol. I could have listened to him read the phone book. It just flowed like thick cream all over me. Rarely have I encountered an otherwise attractive man who didn’t become eighty times as hot when he started speaking in a British accent.
Absolutely right. I don’t understand either Brazil or Portugal Portuguese. I think we are being more objective when judging languages we don’t understand.
Those that mention Brazilian Portuguese realize that there’s more than one accent, right? It wouldn’t surprise me if there is more than one accent for Portuguese Portuguese, but there are at least a couple of different ones for Brazilian Portuguese. As a whole, yea, they do sound more melodious to me, with the exception of the carioca accent.
That’s interesting. Your comment on Vietnamese I can understand (it can be beautiful, but it depends on the speaker - it can be harsh too), but Mandarin? I’ve always thought it was one of the softest languages - all those *siu siu[i/i] sounds. Now Cantonese is harsh - it’s all t and k sounds.
Anyway, my pick (in no particular order): Maori, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, Italian.
Italian is gorgeous, and I absolutely love the sound of Finnish - the softness of the l’s and n’s contrasting with the k’s give it such a special sound.
I used to love Hebrew spoken by native Israelis, but now that I speak it, I don’t like it as much… funny.
And some people, like J.D. Salinger, make English sound positively melodious.
Never mind the language, the words, “I love you” are pure magic in any tongue. Especially Attic Greek.
I’ve always wondered what English and Slavic languages sound like to people who don’t speak them (I’m a native English speaker, fluent in Ukrainian). I always felt it was impossible (for me) to really hear what a language sounds like if you understood what the speaker was saying.
When I was a small child my older sister put on an album of Amalia Rodrigues (spelling?), and I was struck by the beauty of the sounds. To this day I find Portuguese to be the most beautiful language. Unfortunately, I’m not familiar enough with it to be able to detect the differences in Brazilian vs Portuguese pronunciation. :o
It’s because now you actually understand what we’re saying! 
Dani
Ouch!
Perhaps I am biased towards the carioca accent since my wife is one.
Very, very true… 
But Paulistas have that whole American “R” (pronounced way back in the throat) thing going, which I am not very fond of (just listen to a Paulista pronounce “porta” to hear it). Which nordestino accent do you prefer: Bahiano, Pernambucano, Cearense, Maranhense? They all sound different to me. I have heard several native Brazilians say that they prefer Maranhense (from the region of Sao Luis de Maranhao), because they have the best enunciation.
hhmmm… I prefer the more “neutral” accents from Minas for example. Paulistas have a horrible tendency to sound like “rednecks”.
Yep, especially if they’re from the “interior”. They sound like real “caipiras” and I always imagined Chico Bento whenever I hear this accent. Example: “Qué sabê duma coisa? Nesse rio não tem pexe!”
Agreed. Especially the really proper newsreader version. One of the most beautiful pronunciation was in a computer game, called Broken Sword (the original one on the PSX). You could play it in both Italian and English, and the Italian was perfect (an Italian guy confirmed this to me), whereas the English was a badly acted American drawl that got some overdone hall effect to boot. Typical. But then the game was produced by an Italian developer … .
I hope to get my hands on that game someday, I only had the demo and I’d love to use that game to help me learn Italian - being an adventure, it showed all text as well as narrated it. I had already started trying to pronounce it after the narrator, endlessly clicking on a newspaper that was blown against a lantarnpost by the wind. 'la journale e … ’ (forgot the rest)
By god, a game related memory that is nearly 10 years old. And I have some that are now 20 years old. I feel ancient
I’ve heard Ukrainian lately (by Yushchenko). Sounds very much like Russian to my ear. For some reason, I like Russian (though I don’t understand it); it can be soft and powerful, especially in folk songs (…kak ruskaya dusha).
Don’t know if I’ve heard all the different nordeste accents (other than probably not Bahiano). But probably the Maranhense, for enunciation (I remember being told nordeste accents were not necessarily known for that). I’ve heard Cearense, and I did like it too. The “r” thing doesn’t bother me, but the “sh” sound irks me. I don’t know, sometimes I think it’s because I speak Spanish and that accent deviates from what I would normally do when speaking my language.
I am glad to see I’m not the only one! A redheaded girl with a Scottish accent is one of the only women my fiance ever needs to worry about. I melt and swoon and stammer in response every time.
For language, not just accent, Italian. It just has a gorgeous lilting grace to it.
Only Mostly Missus knows she’s safe, even from a harem of comely Scot maidens.
[QUOTE=Only Mostly Dead]
I am glad to see I’m not the only one! A redheaded girl with a Scottish accent is one of the only women my fiance ever needs to worry about. I melt and swoon and stammer in response every time.
/QUOTE]
Yep, I melt and swoon too. Particularly when said Scottish accent is busy whispering sweet nothings into my ear.