All are great
I think Cantonese is a lot better sounding and a lot more colorful, than Mandarin. Its especially beautiful when spoken by a woman.
Yeah, Cantonese. It makes me anxious listening to it because the conversations sound like the speakers are snapping at each other all of the time.
I agree with the OP. Swedish sounds like an elegant touring car; a Pierce-Arrow or Hispano-Suiza.
Danish sounds like a Trabant that needs a tuneup very badly, and lost a run-in with a Copenhagen garbage truck.
I vote Cantonese Chinese.
Here’s what passes for melodic Cantonese.
Actually, that reminds me of something completely unrelated that I’ve been meaning to ask: How do you sing in a tonal language? I mean, without messing up the tones?
(BTW, I think Cantonese sounds fine, even beautiful, from the little I’ve heard of it.)
How about Tamil and 2 more south Indian languages - Telugu, Kannada. Songin Tamil. Dont ask me the meaning, I don’t understand anything.
I’m struggling to find any language that I would consider really ugly - I’ve spent time in Denmark and I don’t really find Danish unpleasant to hear - it’s true that it sounds strange to anyone familiar with (say) English, French, Spanish and German - Danish sounds a bit like a friendly variant of Klingon
I mean, can you really hate this?
The music, singing and picturization of that song are fantastic, but what about the language?
i don’t see how a language can be ugly, and even guttural languages need not be voiced like you’re in the middle of a parade square. /throws a look at Amateur Barbarian
really? if anything i thought the stereotypes were that Mandarin is shrill and rhotic, Cantonese is sarcastic and Hokkien has colourful swear words.
a crappy rap song? how about this one? chosen at random from a favourite artist - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjF5gwBJcMY
Whatever the merits of Cantonese and Mandarin, both are waaaaay more pleasant than Vietnamese.
It’s funny, I actively like more harsh sounding languages, to me they sounds more empathic, more colourful. I love Arabic, like German and Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, other variants) and have nothing in particular against Danish.
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As a consequence of this I really hate Portuguese. It just sounds wimpy, without edge. Al wussy sort of zzzzjjjj sounds. Ew.
My husband speaks German, and whenever I hear him speak the language, he always sounds angry or that he is trying to make a very important point. It isn’t one of the prettiest languages around, admittedly.
I’ll +? to the Mandarin vote.
There is a Chinese movie titled Let the Bullets Fly.
One of the odd things in this genuinely weird movie is the language.
The movie is set in the 1920’s so the Mandarin they use, I suppose, is dated but I swear at times, what’s coming out of the actor’s mouths sounds more like animal noises than human ones.
One character in particular sounds like he’s combined braying with a Chewbacca impression.
It is absolutely bizarre and I have to say I’ve never heard anything like it.
Not in any particular order, but I could do without hearing:
Portuguese, Cantonese, Hungarian & Turkish.
German isn’t exactly pretty but it always gives me the giggles (I have no idea why) so it’s in the “like” column.
Which is waaaaay more pleasant than Khmer.
Hebrew only sounds good to me if sung.
I have to ask the Danish guy to try to say something nice in Danish.
I’m used to Mandarin, and on Hong Kong airlines, a smattering of Cantonese. They’re not terribly bad.
I speak a bit of German. Not bad at all.
I love Russian women speaking Russian!
I can’t stand Thai. Especially women speaking Thai. God damn, it’s the most whiney, obnoxious sounding language in the world. It always sounds like people are weeping.
It’s hard to hate that particular Danish speaker. In fact, it’s hard to hate many female Danish speakers if you see what I mean.
But my favourite video about the Danish language would have to be this one:
I mean, even Danes* themselves make fun of the craziness of their language
*Sure, the video is made by Norwegians. But it’s fun to pretend that it’s Danish
Agreed.
For ugliest sounding, I vote Finnish. I was stuck in taxi once for an hour with two older Finish ladies and I almost killed myself. I do agree that Dansk can’t hold a candle to either Norsk or Svenska.