Korean. People speaking always sound pissed off.
I thought that was just because Koreans always are pissed off?
“Danish is not a language; it is a disease of the throat.”
—popular saying in Scandinavia
And farfalla in Italian. Italian is so easy to like. 
The German word for nipples is Brustwarzen (literally ‘breast warts’). You can imagine Hitler barking that word, like a command, to Eva Braun, but nobody could actually use it for romancing.
As for Arabic, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian, Tamil, Telugu, and Turkish, they all sound beautiful to me. Especially Finnish. I’m puzzled how anyone would not like those. In Cleveland back in the 1980s, on the ethnic radio station, the announcer on the Hungarian program was Kathy Kaposi. I used to love listening to her speaking Hungarian and would tune in just for that, even though I couldn’t understand the meaning. She sounded like soft pitter-patter of rain on the roof.
Portuguese is just Spanish with all the good letters removed and some extraneous “shwush” randomly inserted. That said, I don’t mind it at all after living there for a couple of years.
Interesting comments on the Nordic languages; most Swedes and Danes speak better English than most Americans, and usually have a third language, such as German, for good measure, IME. I have a Dutch friend who came to the house with her visiting relatives from the old country. It was mostly incomprehensible conversation between them, sounding like an interim language that had split off from German, but has not yet reached English.
Chinese is the only language that is grating to my ear, however. I speak none, but the intonation irritates my auditory nerve.
It’s just that the Chinese are so LOUD, as anyone who has spent a night in a traditional old Chinese hotel can attest. No need for an alarm clock, I’ll clue ya.
I’ve noticed that with other native tonal language speakers as well. My pet theory is that it’s hard to distinguish changes in pitch at low volume, so speakers of said languages end up talking more loudly then speakers of other languages to make themselves clear.
French, it is a funny tongue. It sounds fine until the speaker gets to an r and then it sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball. That uvular r just ruins it for me, and the nasal vowels don’t help much either. I wouldn’t call it the ugliest language of all, but in my book it’s probably the ugliest Romance language.
Many Native American languages sound like someone slowly choking to death on a fish-bone. Take Tlingit, for example, the language that Klingon was based on.
But without a doubt, the world’s ugliest “language” is Scouse. (Yes, I live in Liverpool…)
i find that there is no reason to use vulgar or profane language when you have ordinary german words you can throw in. drop a dish of oatmeal, look at the mess and say schmetterling! it’s fun and educational!
Brooklyn.
Oh dear god yes especially the way my late mother spoke it. Almost Fran Drescher awful. I love and admire Russian culture, food, art and literature but I grew up in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn hating the way the language sounded.
Now, I like the French language, and I speak it all the time, living in a predominantly French area… but I agree, the snorted “r” sound miffs me a bit. (The nasal vowels don’t actually bother me at all.)
(I hope none of my francophone friends ever find this post… :eek:)
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
Orcish is pretty ugly.
I also don’t really like the rolled/trilled “r” sound in languages, but maybe just because I’m jealous that I’m the only person on the face of the earth who can’t do it.
I think Dutch sounds less pretty than Danish (here’s a good video in which to compare them - it’s a Dutch TV article about the Danish show Borgen - containing segments of both languages) - Dutch always sounds a bit goofy to me - like everything that’s said is the buildup to a punchline.
Anyone who says anything other than a Southeast Asian language is ignorant or lying.
Thai, Vietnamese, Hmong, Lao, etc.
When I was in China, all the music videos and music I saw on television were subtitled with Chinese characters. I thought it odd and asked my Chinese friend about it and he told me it was difficult to understand sung Chinese because the tones were obscured by the melody. Some common phrases and such could be understood without tones, but a song that’s telling a story sort of needs the characters to help it along. I would think tones could be incorporated into rap music. I haven’t listened to much Chinese rap though.
Tell me the language the women are speaking in this excellent film isnt beautiful.
1940s American English isn’t exactly the most sonorous.
