What, in your opinion, is the prettiest or most beautiful language?
I have a couple I like hearing. French,spoken by a native speaker or someone with an ear for it, can sound just lovely. Catalan Spanish and Italian sound lovely to me as well.
A guy that used to cut my hair when I was in university was from Scottland. He spent some few years living in Israel and picked up both Hebrew and some Yiddish. He’d often throw out common Yiddish phrases just for a laugh. Funniest thing I ever heard in my life.
I would make it my priority to go back to him for a haircut even after I moved far away, just so I can hear him speak Yiddish with that Scottish tint.
I miss that funny bastard. I hope he’s doing well.
I dunno about French. I guess it’s OK if a female is speaking it. However, I sometimes pick up a weather channel from up in Canada where a male announcer is giving the forecast in French, and it always sounds like he’s trying to hork up a bit loogie.
People rarely list German as a beautiful language, but I’ll tell ya, you get the right German lady whispering sweet German nothings in your ear, and it’s quite pleasant.
I’m Italian, but my favorite is Swahili. Filled with lots of vowel sounds, very flowing and soothing. I’d rather listen to someone speaking Swahili than just about anything.
What may surprise you—spoken Mongolian sounds pretty nice. I heard a Mongolian poet once being interviewed on NPR, and when he recited some of his poetry in Mongolian, the interviewer was all “Wow! That sounded beautiful!”