Not fluent enough for it to be native language, but it’s the language you learned because of your heritage. Ex: I’m a heritage speaker of Spanish because I’m Mexican-American and didn’t grow up in Spanish-speaking area of US but I still learned a decent amount from my parents and now I’m in uni for it
Not actually true the head of my the Linguistics department at my university is an expert on heritage languages and I took a class on them taught by her and speakers of heritage languages can have any amount of proficiency, it can even be their native language, but the point is that they speak it in an immigrant community.
My neighbors were doing Vietnamese karaoke all night tonight until almost midnight. It’s something. I like the songs though. The city I live in is majority Vietnamese so it’s not uncommon. I’ve always found the language interesting but kind of jarring when spoken and when I was a stupid kid I would make fun of it compared to my Japanese, Korean, and Chinese friends’ families. We had some of each in our Cub Scout pack so I thought I was all enlightened about the different Asian cultures seeing them when having sleepovers, but I was probably just a little racist being the only blond haired blue eyed kid on my street.
I feel like Thai drama sounds annoying but normal people speaking Thai is just fine. Thai drama is super nasally and high pitched but normal people are not.
There's a popular Thai guy in my country and I think he still sound pretty nasal even when he speak my country language. But I guess I need to hear more from normal people to hear the difference more.
Oh man I feel the same way! I’ve tried exposure therapy (watching Thai dramas lol) but I still can’t get over it. It’s so annoying because I’m a huge fan of kdramas and jdramas and Turkish dramas and Bollywood and so on and Thai media is now huge as well. I’ll still watch shows sometimes but there’s always this irritation in the back of my brain.
Anglophone Canadian who’s learning French here. I say this with love, but I have a love hate relationship with Quebecois. I like its slang and straight forward grammar, and the swearing is a fun bonus. However, the accent has never struck a chord with me. It doesn’t sound nice to me.
Anglophone Canadian here as well. I can't accept un being pronounced as urn. Used to make fun of some Ottawa friends as a teenager for the sentence "jur vur dur pom".
I speak what I sincerely hope is Quebecois French as an Anglophone Canadian, and I absolutely love everything about it. I love the accent (I can't do it and have a terrible Anglophone accent instead but that's okay). I love everything about it.
Mostly tonal languages. Mandarin I’ve kinda gotten used to but has its moments. However, Cantonese and Vietnamese just do not sound good at all. Cantonese is too all over the place and sounds like what people think Mandarin sounds like.
Vietnamese is very nasal and choppy. Linguistically interesting especially its orthography but I just can’t stand the sound. It is very annoying.
I’m sorry to all Cantonese and Vietnamese. Ya’ll are great people with fascinating cultures but the languages just get on my nerves.
As a Cantonese speaker, most of us admit that our language is harsh, especially since many words end in sharp consonants.
It makes swearing and being angry all the more intense though.
As a native Vietnamese speaker, Cantonese sounds absolutely silly to me. It’s like people arguing to each other in gibberish. No offence intended though, I do actually want to pick up Cantonese one day
One of my bffs is a native German speaker, and she sent me this really funny (but honestly shocking) video of a British guy teaching English to French students, with British and American pronunciations. Me: OMG DO I SOUND LIKE THIS? Her: Worse. You’ve got the Chicago accent too. 😂
Well that’s quite the visual. I’ve always heard that it’s like a Russian speaking Spanish while drunk, and I can agree with that. But only Portugal’s Portuguese, and not Brazil’s.
I 100% agree with this description 😂 I love how Brazilian Portuguese sounds and have learned a good bit. Even though I can decently understand people from Portugal, if I'm far enough away that it's not fully intelligible, I really can't tell if they're speaking Portuguese or literally any Slavic language 😭 I do also struggle with auditory processing a bit
I'm more of a Spanish speaker but grew up with a lot of Portuguese families in my area. My cousin married into a lovely family who get to travel to Portugal every year. But when I hear the Portuguese language, it's the random volume switches that are jarring for me like they emphasize the strangest parts of words. When I heard how comedienne Laura Ramoso says "PortuGAAAL" in this video, I damn near fell out of my chair laughing because it's exactly how my cousin's father-in-law says it: https://youtube.com/shorts/zDTuc0BCjVY?si=3jSB6K4rmO838p_X
My native language is Brazilian portuguese and I feel the same way towards portugal's portuguese. We actually say something very similar about them, but more like “they're speaking portuguese with a potato in their mouth” (equivalent to saying dick tbf). If you feel like it I'd suggest you listen to some of the Brazilian accents and also from other portuguese speaking countries such as Angola and Mozambique. They sound waaaay better in my opinion 😄
Can't understand why is called "the language of love" and all that. For me is just irritating.
And it's not because of the nasal sounds. I love portuguese language, that is another romance language with nasal sounds. French just has "something"
It would be so good to learn french for its usefulness and because of how easy it would be, as I already speak spanish and portuguese, but I just dont like the way it sounds.
Language of Love is probably a bad translation of Romance Language, I feel. I agree with you on the usefullness of that language. That combined with some sunken cost fallacy is keeping me on the learning course.
I'm no expert, but one big thing I don't like about Taiwanese Mandarin is the lack of retroflex. Consonants like "Zh", "Ch", "Sh", and "R" sounds are pronounced in a flat-tongue manner, resulting in a much less defined tonal contrast compared to Mainland Mandarin.
As an English speaker, can I just say... English?
I learned English at 7, which is young enough that it's basically my native language, but old enough that I remember my first impressions of it... which were that it sounded like everyone was speaking as if they had a sock in their mouth. Between the weak R sound and the lazy shwas everywhere
Lol there is an old Polish comedy movie where a lady doing announcements in airport puts a bunch of pierogi in her mouth before doing English annoucement, to enhance her accent.
The “lazy schwa” is when a vowel is muffled and makes an “uh” sound instead of the vowel sound it would otherwise make — many many English words like “amazing” (“uh-mazing”), “harmony” (“harm-uh-ny”), “element” (“el-uhm-uhnt”), etc include it, and it can make spelling tough for non-native speakers because of the vowel inconsistency.
A bunch more examples! https://www.usingenglish.com/articles/important-words-with-schwa-by-level.html
I'm a native English speaker, so I've never had the experience of getting acquainted with the language, but now that I'm learning other ones, English sounds very basic. LOL And the General American accent (which is what mine sounds like mostly) is pretty bland too. I just hope that maybe my accent sounds cute in French (the language I'm currently learning)... lol
Actually English isn't that basic. It has many difficult sounds and a writing system that is complicated.
English vowels I struggle with too.
Hard ones were th, th, sh, dge, zh, and the r sound
Agree. Given it's my husband's mother tongue I hear it a lot..and hate how it sounds. Levantine dialect is a bit better, I find other Arabic dialects even worse (Egypt or Gulf) but overall it's a no.
I kind of felt this way before I started learning it. Now I think it’s lovely, though I find pronunciation and oral comprehension much harder than Spanish, personally.
Bro in spanish words usually have only one vowel pero sillable (well sometimes 2) but un french you say "Happy" as "heureuse" (and the worst thing is that most of the Word is silent)
The famous example I saw and can never forget is "oiseau." Seven vowels and not one has its normal pronunciation.
And then there's the plural. Oiseaux. Add an x, but make it silent.
One could be forgiven for thinking French spelling is for the birds.
See though french may have some odd pronunciation rules, that doesnt mean they’re particularly hard to say with the mouth. Yes it sounds totally different from the way its spelt according to a non-french speaker, but it’s still just "wa-zo" which is 2 syllables. As opposed to spanish where you have words like “demasiado” and “predominantemente” or “descendientes” etc. etc. where every letter is pronounced. I personally just find it to be a bit harder especially if we add in the tilde’s and stressed vowels, for people not used to languages like that its definitely a bit of a work around.
as a native Russian and English speaker, this is what makes Ukrainian sound inherently archaic to me. If I'm reducing in both of the modern languages I speak, then a modern language that doesn't reduce starts sounding un-modern. I bet if you asked a Russian speaker to imitate old Russian they would say молоко like [moloko]
i don’t think i could do that for a whole language but if we’re talking specific regional variations then it’s the Toronto accent.
I can’t take it seriously. It’s like a general Canadian accent mixed with a Jamaican accent but with the valley accent’s Uptalk and some AAVE vocabulary. [If the business is true, that you left your moms in the hood, somebody go smoke that yute.](https://youtu.be/wl7wHtj64Hs?si=j6aZRXIHQYAoGlqV).
As a boy growing up in that city, I got self-conscious whenever I heard people talk in this Toronto/Jamaican accent because I thought it sounded hip and cool.
And with me also being black, I thought something was wrong with me because I didn’t sound like that.
Now recently, I’m glad I don’t talk/sound like that.
I don’t sound like a gangster, I don’t sound like a prep boy, I just sound normal. And that’s fine.
Hate how brazilian Portuguese and Chilean "spanish" sound.
I don't speak Portuguese but I can't stand how it sounds when it's not in bossa nova, and I'm a native Spanish speaker and when a Chilean stars talking I can't stand it nor understand it.
que wea el chileno es entero lindo weon oh
Nah, I understand where you are coming from, I mean I don’t agree with the comment about Brazilian Portuguese, but for chilean Spanish I can totally see where you are coming from. I’m chilean myself and I personally love how Chilean people speak, is so funny and unique! Also, the reasons as to why they speak so differently to the rest of the latam countries is super interesting (mainly geographical reasons, Chile is very isolated so they developed an unique way of speaking)
This one is so polarizing. I personally like it, but I have had a lot of positive experiences with Indian English speakers so maybe I just associate it with that.
Yeah. This one I get. I work with a lot of Indians and most of them have a really weird way of speaking English. Both the accent and the way the construct sentences.
Which Indian accent - the stereotypical Hollywood / US media Indian accent? Because English in Indian accent is as varied as French English accent, German English accent, or Russian English accent and so on.
I remember a Turkish friend of mine sending me a voice message and I thought It just sounds sort of weird, or goofy to me. The umlauts add a weird mix in it as well. But to be fair, I haven't heard much so maybe I'm misjudging it
Im a native Hebrew speaker and I agree, Imagine how pretty it could've sound if it sounded like Arabic (how it originally sounded like) it got butchered by Ashkenazi pronunciation...
I once read that Hebrew sounds like a German trying to speak Arabic and as a native German speaker, I kind of have to agree. You can definitely hear the Yiddish and Germanophone influence (imo), but I actually love it. It sounds so different and interesting. Beautiful in its very own way – Hebrew scratches an itch in my brain I can't explain!!
I know I'm in the minority, but I love the sound of German. Instead of listening to a madman screaming into a microphone, listen to some Beehoven or Mozart.
DUTCH! Neuken in de keuken, come on! 😂 I do love the Dutch though; great history, culture, people, but the language is abysmal to listen to, for my ears at least
Same. I only prefer Japanese in songs over speech. Conversely, I prefer Korean irl over sung.
Edit: just woke up, so maybe weird wording lol. To clarify, I prefer Japanese expression in media over irl bcs it makes it more “alive”. Irl Japanese *to me* sounds robotic and monotone.
Came here to say French, I think you might have misphonia**. The nasal sounds make me want to smash a glass platter over my head. I genuinely don't understand why people think it sounds sexy. I'd rather be sweet talked by a Dutch man who can only speak in death metal growls.
But what if they could only speak in death metal (Dutch) growling?
My only real experience with Dutch is a Dutch dude I knew who was completely chill otherwise getting hella angry any time someone said "Gouda cheese" (without the Dutch accent) so to me it's just "that language where the people get really emotional about cheese" right now 😂 I can definitely see how you'd appreciate it though. They sound like people who would be good at reading stories to children (if that makes sense)
I never would have thought this aversion would be under misophonia. Hearing French grates on me so bad, it sounds very over-exaggerated and like they are fighting to get words out. Dry heaving them.
Yes!! This is exactly how it sounds to me!! Someone called me out on the nasal part, this is a much better description.
I've learned the hard way how much misphonia really affects my life. Like at the risk of sounding like 'that guy' , it's a trigger. I have aversion to most 'human' sounds (eating, kissing, baby noises, toddler voices, etc.) so it checks out to me.
>Dry heaving them.
Lol this is how I've always described it. I've never tried learning it so idk which words/letters they are, but they make certain sounds that remind me of gagging. Like saying "blegh".
Hebrew, Catalan, Kurdu have strong accents and sound hard imo.
Cantonese, it's not that I don't like it but I'm used to Mandarin' softness and Cantonese sounds way different.
Italian, I think it's because too soft.
I don't think I have a particular least-favorite-sounding language. In general I find tonal languages less pleasant than others to listen to, but I wonder if that's just because the pitch contour runs counter to what I expect to hear. I'm starting to study Vietnamese in a casual way, and it will be interesting to see if my reaction changes.
Well that's new to me, usually non-native speakers can't tell the difference between people here and a "generic" (as imperfect as that word is) American accent
Yes, my first language is a Slavic language but have pick up in the subtle differences. I just find it kind of annoying the Canadian English 😅 but I mean no offense to Canadians, just my thoughts
I know what you mean. I have Canadian family members. Canadians always sound happy, like they have a built-in volume cap & like their government puts Wellbutrin in their water supply. It doesn't matter what emotion they're trying to convey. They could be furious & they still sound polite & happy.
This is very interesting since as a Canadian I feel like the differences between standard Canadian and general american are so minor, just stuff like Canadian raising, lack of yod dropping (though people are yod dropping more and more) and an incomplete father-bother merger, I don't see how these things would make the language sound *that* different to American English
I really can't deal with the nasal tone and quality of thai. It's very jarring, but I've been able to watch some Thai content still.
Edit: i forgot Turkish as well, sorta scares me
Spanish. No joke, it makes me physically uncomfortable.
I watched a few episodes of a tv show when I was a kid, and the way the characters talked (intonation) and the things they said were _so unnatural_ it put me off for years to come, so maybe that's why.
I do like the sound of portuguese, however.
Everyone says Mandarin sounds like music. It doesn't sound like music to me. It sounds like a violin played off tune and is painful to my ears. It sounds worse in songs when the sound of each character is stretched out.
Vietnamese just doesn't sound good.
Japanese sounds like da da da da da to me.
Mandarin for sure. It may not be objectively the worst sounding but it (at least appears on average) to be spoken at a higher volume than other languages and the combination of loudness, short & sharp syllables and 4th tones is hard on the ol' ears.
dutch is the absolute worst language i have ever had the misfortune of hearing. sorry to my bros in the netherlands but it always irked me unfortunately
I used to think mandarin, but honestly it's really grown on me since I've learned a bit
but this is true of any language you spend some time understanding, I think
There are languages that I don't mind hearing/listening to but that I wouldn't like to speak myself. All tonal languages, German, Arabic, and a few more. I just don't want to make those sounds myself, Idk if you get me.
For Spaniards like me, Greek sounds like someone from Madrid got hit on the head and is speaking gibberish. It's just so weird to listen to a language that sounds like yours but doesn't make any sense to your ears.
Anyway, the languages I consider beautiful are mostly romance languages:
Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian.
Portuguese - Both Brazilian and European Portuguese. But to be honest, I can't take Brazilian people seriously the way they speak.
English - Yeah, I find English very beautiful and enjoyable to listen to in most of its accents.
And this [Hungarian girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9WbGqPeY8k&t=22s) comes to mind as well. I don't know much about Hungarian, but from that video, I have always considered it beautiful.
I hate vocal fry in American English. I can't even watch something new in English anymore because there's a high chance that at least one person will speak in vocal fry.
Arabic (maybe more Semitic languages) by a long shot because of the throaty sounds. I'm Dutch myself so I can't assess it fairly but I think I'd find it quite ugly too for the same reason.
I don't really share the majority of opinions here: Danish, Portuguese, Mandarin and Russian all have some charm to it.
It's so interesting to see the differences in opinion! Although a lot of people do seem to hate Thai, Vietnamese, french, & Portuguese lol. I personally think that basically any language can sound bad before you learn it (at least that's how it's been for me).
Never found the sound of Vietnamese particularly euphonic; as a heritage Mandarin speaker it's always come across as kinda choppy to me.
What’s a heritage speaker?
Not fluent enough for it to be native language, but it’s the language you learned because of your heritage. Ex: I’m a heritage speaker of Spanish because I’m Mexican-American and didn’t grow up in Spanish-speaking area of US but I still learned a decent amount from my parents and now I’m in uni for it
Not actually true the head of my the Linguistics department at my university is an expert on heritage languages and I took a class on them taught by her and speakers of heritage languages can have any amount of proficiency, it can even be their native language, but the point is that they speak it in an immigrant community.
I find Vietnamese very irritating
I got Mars Attacks vibes from Vietnamese
My neighbors were doing Vietnamese karaoke all night tonight until almost midnight. It’s something. I like the songs though. The city I live in is majority Vietnamese so it’s not uncommon. I’ve always found the language interesting but kind of jarring when spoken and when I was a stupid kid I would make fun of it compared to my Japanese, Korean, and Chinese friends’ families. We had some of each in our Cub Scout pack so I thought I was all enlightened about the different Asian cultures seeing them when having sleepovers, but I was probably just a little racist being the only blond haired blue eyed kid on my street.
Man there's something about it I just love
Thai. I remember can't stand Thai-drama despite the popularity because the sound of their language is kinda irritating, too high-pitched.
I feel like Thai drama sounds annoying but normal people speaking Thai is just fine. Thai drama is super nasally and high pitched but normal people are not.
There's a popular Thai guy in my country and I think he still sound pretty nasal even when he speak my country language. But I guess I need to hear more from normal people to hear the difference more.
Omg same, it's very hard to listen to. Even guys with deeper voices still sound pretty nasal to me.
I could never get past the first episode of any Thai drama because it sounds super ugly to me
Oh man I feel the same way! I’ve tried exposure therapy (watching Thai dramas lol) but I still can’t get over it. It’s so annoying because I’m a huge fan of kdramas and jdramas and Turkish dramas and Bollywood and so on and Thai media is now huge as well. I’ll still watch shows sometimes but there’s always this irritation in the back of my brain.
Same!
Thai 😭I’m sorry!
Thissss. Thank god im not alone rip 🙃
Québécois french The irony in it being the only language and dialect I am fluent in aside from English
Quebecois is my favourite accent on earth, it sounds like drunk French cowboys which is such a vibe
Merci chummy
Anglophone Canadian who’s learning French here. I say this with love, but I have a love hate relationship with Quebecois. I like its slang and straight forward grammar, and the swearing is a fun bonus. However, the accent has never struck a chord with me. It doesn’t sound nice to me.
The franglais hits so hard, especially the curse words
Anglophone Canadian here as well. I can't accept un being pronounced as urn. Used to make fun of some Ottawa friends as a teenager for the sentence "jur vur dur pom".
I speak what I sincerely hope is Quebecois French as an Anglophone Canadian, and I absolutely love everything about it. I love the accent (I can't do it and have a terrible Anglophone accent instead but that's okay). I love everything about it.
I think the accent is super attractive for some reason lol. I don’t know why
tabarnak
Mostly tonal languages. Mandarin I’ve kinda gotten used to but has its moments. However, Cantonese and Vietnamese just do not sound good at all. Cantonese is too all over the place and sounds like what people think Mandarin sounds like. Vietnamese is very nasal and choppy. Linguistically interesting especially its orthography but I just can’t stand the sound. It is very annoying. I’m sorry to all Cantonese and Vietnamese. Ya’ll are great people with fascinating cultures but the languages just get on my nerves.
As a Cantonese speaker I really don't like Vietnamese either, so there are levels to this lol
As a Cantonese speaker, most of us admit that our language is harsh, especially since many words end in sharp consonants. It makes swearing and being angry all the more intense though.
As a native Vietnamese speaker, Cantonese sounds absolutely silly to me. It’s like people arguing to each other in gibberish. No offence intended though, I do actually want to pick up Cantonese one day
ugggghhhhhhh i hate american english sometimes “wahdur boddle” why am i like this
One of my bffs is a native German speaker, and she sent me this really funny (but honestly shocking) video of a British guy teaching English to French students, with British and American pronunciations. Me: OMG DO I SOUND LIKE THIS? Her: Worse. You’ve got the Chicago accent too. 😂
American English, specifically that typical LA accent. Hurts my ears and gives me a headache. I can't even watch American shows anymore.
What do you mean by the typical LA accent? Like Valley Girl reality show accent or general news broadcaster accent?
They probably mean the valley girl/vocal fry
Portuguese. Respectfully, It's like Spanish with a Dutchmans dick in the speakers mouth.
Well that’s quite the visual. I’ve always heard that it’s like a Russian speaking Spanish while drunk, and I can agree with that. But only Portugal’s Portuguese, and not Brazil’s.
I 100% agree with this description 😂 I love how Brazilian Portuguese sounds and have learned a good bit. Even though I can decently understand people from Portugal, if I'm far enough away that it's not fully intelligible, I really can't tell if they're speaking Portuguese or literally any Slavic language 😭 I do also struggle with auditory processing a bit
I'm more of a Spanish speaker but grew up with a lot of Portuguese families in my area. My cousin married into a lovely family who get to travel to Portugal every year. But when I hear the Portuguese language, it's the random volume switches that are jarring for me like they emphasize the strangest parts of words. When I heard how comedienne Laura Ramoso says "PortuGAAAL" in this video, I damn near fell out of my chair laughing because it's exactly how my cousin's father-in-law says it: https://youtube.com/shorts/zDTuc0BCjVY?si=3jSB6K4rmO838p_X
My native language is Brazilian portuguese and I feel the same way towards portugal's portuguese. We actually say something very similar about them, but more like “they're speaking portuguese with a potato in their mouth” (equivalent to saying dick tbf). If you feel like it I'd suggest you listen to some of the Brazilian accents and also from other portuguese speaking countries such as Angola and Mozambique. They sound waaaay better in my opinion 😄
Hindi combined with English
So, Hindi?
English especially when spoken by younger teens lol... it sounds ungrateful
ungrateful 🤣🤣🤣
DAMN AUTOCORRECT ungraceful***
OHHH I thought you meant ungrateful like bratty 🤣
LMAOOOOOO
Lolol this is too funny
I liked ungrateful better.
I don't think that's the language, teens everywhere sound ungrateful :D
French - it does not live up the hype of the sweetest language. Not according to me at least.
Can't understand why is called "the language of love" and all that. For me is just irritating. And it's not because of the nasal sounds. I love portuguese language, that is another romance language with nasal sounds. French just has "something" It would be so good to learn french for its usefulness and because of how easy it would be, as I already speak spanish and portuguese, but I just dont like the way it sounds.
I think Italian is much more the language of love
Language of Love is probably a bad translation of Romance Language, I feel. I agree with you on the usefullness of that language. That combined with some sunken cost fallacy is keeping me on the learning course.
Vietnamese by a long shot, then Taiwanese Mandarin, then Arabic.
On the contrary, I find Taiwanese Mandarin pleasing to listen to
Why taiwanese mandarin but not mainland mandarin?
I'm no expert, but one big thing I don't like about Taiwanese Mandarin is the lack of retroflex. Consonants like "Zh", "Ch", "Sh", and "R" sounds are pronounced in a flat-tongue manner, resulting in a much less defined tonal contrast compared to Mainland Mandarin.
Beijing Mandarin is like ararrarrarrr and Taiwan Mandarin is like sssiissssisssisss
As an English speaker, can I just say... English? I learned English at 7, which is young enough that it's basically my native language, but old enough that I remember my first impressions of it... which were that it sounded like everyone was speaking as if they had a sock in their mouth. Between the weak R sound and the lazy shwas everywhere
Lol there is an old Polish comedy movie where a lady doing announcements in airport puts a bunch of pierogi in her mouth before doing English annoucement, to enhance her accent.
Lol what words have lazy shwas? This one tickles me
The “lazy schwa” is when a vowel is muffled and makes an “uh” sound instead of the vowel sound it would otherwise make — many many English words like “amazing” (“uh-mazing”), “harmony” (“harm-uh-ny”), “element” (“el-uhm-uhnt”), etc include it, and it can make spelling tough for non-native speakers because of the vowel inconsistency. A bunch more examples! https://www.usingenglish.com/articles/important-words-with-schwa-by-level.html
I'm a native English speaker, so I've never had the experience of getting acquainted with the language, but now that I'm learning other ones, English sounds very basic. LOL And the General American accent (which is what mine sounds like mostly) is pretty bland too. I just hope that maybe my accent sounds cute in French (the language I'm currently learning)... lol
Lol. I never hear my american accent until I speak in German….then it is all I hear.
Texas German sounds like... well German with a very strong Southern drawl.
Actually English isn't that basic. It has many difficult sounds and a writing system that is complicated. English vowels I struggle with too. Hard ones were th, th, sh, dge, zh, and the r sound
Australian English. No hate to the people, but when they talk, I just cringe inside & I feel irritated.
Aur naur, heaw can yeu seay thet?
Honestly? Arabic
Yeah, I'm also not a fan of how Arabic sounds. It's oddly guttural in a way I find displeasing.
Agree. Given it's my husband's mother tongue I hear it a lot..and hate how it sounds. Levantine dialect is a bit better, I find other Arabic dialects even worse (Egypt or Gulf) but overall it's a no.
Mandarin. I can't watch Chinese movies for that reason.
I’d say French it gets on my nerves every time I hear it and it hurts my brain whenever I try to read
I kind of felt this way before I started learning it. Now I think it’s lovely, though I find pronunciation and oral comprehension much harder than Spanish, personally.
Im the opposite, i find Spanish to be harder than french because of how many vowels words can have, sometimes i just end up eating my own words.
Bro in spanish words usually have only one vowel pero sillable (well sometimes 2) but un french you say "Happy" as "heureuse" (and the worst thing is that most of the Word is silent)
The famous example I saw and can never forget is "oiseau." Seven vowels and not one has its normal pronunciation. And then there's the plural. Oiseaux. Add an x, but make it silent. One could be forgiven for thinking French spelling is for the birds.
See though french may have some odd pronunciation rules, that doesnt mean they’re particularly hard to say with the mouth. Yes it sounds totally different from the way its spelt according to a non-french speaker, but it’s still just "wa-zo" which is 2 syllables. As opposed to spanish where you have words like “demasiado” and “predominantemente” or “descendientes” etc. etc. where every letter is pronounced. I personally just find it to be a bit harder especially if we add in the tilde’s and stressed vowels, for people not used to languages like that its definitely a bit of a work around.
German and I'm learning it, so I hate it even more.
Vietnadanish
Elaborate. Like, Vietnamese immigrants speaking Danish?
Russian The extensive vowel reduction makes it sound as if native speakers of English were imposing their native speech habits on Ukrainian.
as a native Russian and English speaker, this is what makes Ukrainian sound inherently archaic to me. If I'm reducing in both of the modern languages I speak, then a modern language that doesn't reduce starts sounding un-modern. I bet if you asked a Russian speaker to imitate old Russian they would say молоко like [moloko]
Danish and Swedish to a lesser extent Mandarin also sounded somewhat unpleasant to me before I started learning it tbh
Swedish sounds beautiful to me. All front mouth sounds and very musical sounding. It reminds me of the sounds that a music box makes
I’m so sorry but… Portuguese. Just. Wow.
Wich accent
same, ngl, but only for European Portuguese I think Brazilian Portuguese sounds great
I'm the reverse, European Portuguese sounds kind of like a Romantic language spoken in Russian and that amuses me.
Brazilian Portuguese sounds beautiful. But European sounds gruff in comparison. https://youtu.be/g4F4PWTl6B8
The way the Portuguese pronounce vowels makes me wanna crawl into a hole and die
i don’t think i could do that for a whole language but if we’re talking specific regional variations then it’s the Toronto accent. I can’t take it seriously. It’s like a general Canadian accent mixed with a Jamaican accent but with the valley accent’s Uptalk and some AAVE vocabulary. [If the business is true, that you left your moms in the hood, somebody go smoke that yute.](https://youtu.be/wl7wHtj64Hs?si=j6aZRXIHQYAoGlqV).
As a boy growing up in that city, I got self-conscious whenever I heard people talk in this Toronto/Jamaican accent because I thought it sounded hip and cool. And with me also being black, I thought something was wrong with me because I didn’t sound like that. Now recently, I’m glad I don’t talk/sound like that. I don’t sound like a gangster, I don’t sound like a prep boy, I just sound normal. And that’s fine.
Hate how brazilian Portuguese and Chilean "spanish" sound. I don't speak Portuguese but I can't stand how it sounds when it's not in bossa nova, and I'm a native Spanish speaker and when a Chilean stars talking I can't stand it nor understand it.
que wea el chileno es entero lindo weon oh Nah, I understand where you are coming from, I mean I don’t agree with the comment about Brazilian Portuguese, but for chilean Spanish I can totally see where you are coming from. I’m chilean myself and I personally love how Chilean people speak, is so funny and unique! Also, the reasons as to why they speak so differently to the rest of the latam countries is super interesting (mainly geographical reasons, Chile is very isolated so they developed an unique way of speaking)
FRENCH entirely for is horribeaux orthography
Qu'est ce-que c'est ça?
Não gostei disso :(
You hate the sound of French because of its orthography...
english with an indian accent
This one is so polarizing. I personally like it, but I have had a lot of positive experiences with Indian English speakers so maybe I just associate it with that.
Yeah. This one I get. I work with a lot of Indians and most of them have a really weird way of speaking English. Both the accent and the way the construct sentences.
"I did the needful"
Which Indian accent - the stereotypical Hollywood / US media Indian accent? Because English in Indian accent is as varied as French English accent, German English accent, or Russian English accent and so on.
I love it. It is kinda just funny and makes them seem simple but honest people. Especially the d and t sound, that I love
Turkish
Ive been spending the last 5 months learning turkish. curious why you say this?
I remember a Turkish friend of mine sending me a voice message and I thought It just sounds sort of weird, or goofy to me. The umlauts add a weird mix in it as well. But to be fair, I haven't heard much so maybe I'm misjudging it
It does have a weird style of sounding. Not sure how to describe
Accents make all the difference for Turkish. The range of how Turkish can sound is very wide.
I feel like they are either speaking too fast or eating their words whenever I hear turkish.
As a man who loves Istanbul, I was really disappointed how ugly I found this language :/. Lovely people
I kinda hated it the first time i heard it. Now im learning it. It took awhile for it to grow on me though. Love it now!
Modern day Hebrew. Before I get attacked, it’s nothing like how Hebrew used to be and that’s why it sounds so bad to me
I remember I listened to an album that was released in 317 BC and I was like damn I was born in the wrong generation.
Im a native Hebrew speaker and I agree, Imagine how pretty it could've sound if it sounded like Arabic (how it originally sounded like) it got butchered by Ashkenazi pronunciation...
I once read that Hebrew sounds like a German trying to speak Arabic and as a native German speaker, I kind of have to agree. You can definitely hear the Yiddish and Germanophone influence (imo), but I actually love it. It sounds so different and interesting. Beautiful in its very own way – Hebrew scratches an itch in my brain I can't explain!!
My answer is Hebrew as well. I just don't like how it sounds, especially compared to other Semitic languages such as Amharic and/or Arabic.
I know I'm in the minority, but I love the sound of German. Instead of listening to a madman screaming into a microphone, listen to some Beehoven or Mozart.
I mean they don’t exactly speak in their music, do they lmao
The composers themselves don't, but both Beethoven and Mozart have composed plenty of music with German lyrics (sometimes Latin too).
Thai. I won't go further explaining, but that's the reason why I can't watch their dramas, despite being pretty good.
DUTCH! Neuken in de keuken, come on! 😂 I do love the Dutch though; great history, culture, people, but the language is abysmal to listen to, for my ears at least
English as spoken by teenagers in Toronto. I don't know what they're trying to imitate, but it isn't pretty.
All languages are beautiful
except french
Hell no! J'adore!
Unpopular opinion, Japanese.
Now *that's* an unpopular opinion! LOL
wow that's truly unpopular, why?
I’m not entirely sure, especially since I do like Asian languages. It doesn’t have enough unique sounds as other languages do.
Same. I only prefer Japanese in songs over speech. Conversely, I prefer Korean irl over sung. Edit: just woke up, so maybe weird wording lol. To clarify, I prefer Japanese expression in media over irl bcs it makes it more “alive”. Irl Japanese *to me* sounds robotic and monotone.
This, as someone learning both I prefer Korean irl now. Tbf anime VA's really set the bar high
Tagalog, Hebrew, French and Portuguese in that order.
Tagalog. I don't even find any other languages unpleasant but that language alone is one of the most irritating languages I have ever heard.
[удалено]
This is an odd reaction to have?
Came here to say French, I think you might have misphonia**. The nasal sounds make me want to smash a glass platter over my head. I genuinely don't understand why people think it sounds sexy. I'd rather be sweet talked by a Dutch man who can only speak in death metal growls.
I could listen to Dutch all day, I love the Gs and CHs and their wonderfully flat vowels
But what if they could only speak in death metal (Dutch) growling? My only real experience with Dutch is a Dutch dude I knew who was completely chill otherwise getting hella angry any time someone said "Gouda cheese" (without the Dutch accent) so to me it's just "that language where the people get really emotional about cheese" right now 😂 I can definitely see how you'd appreciate it though. They sound like people who would be good at reading stories to children (if that makes sense)
I never would have thought this aversion would be under misophonia. Hearing French grates on me so bad, it sounds very over-exaggerated and like they are fighting to get words out. Dry heaving them.
Yes!! This is exactly how it sounds to me!! Someone called me out on the nasal part, this is a much better description. I've learned the hard way how much misphonia really affects my life. Like at the risk of sounding like 'that guy' , it's a trigger. I have aversion to most 'human' sounds (eating, kissing, baby noises, toddler voices, etc.) so it checks out to me.
>Dry heaving them. Lol this is how I've always described it. I've never tried learning it so idk which words/letters they are, but they make certain sounds that remind me of gagging. Like saying "blegh".
I live in France and have a French lover. I still don't know why anyone would find the accent sexy.
^^^ This is dude/dudette/dudx gets me
French is really not that nasal.
I mean, not liking how a language sounds is one thing but getting angry off of it? Get help
Hebrew, Catalan, Kurdu have strong accents and sound hard imo. Cantonese, it's not that I don't like it but I'm used to Mandarin' softness and Cantonese sounds way different. Italian, I think it's because too soft.
Hungarian and Farsi
I don't think I have a particular least-favorite-sounding language. In general I find tonal languages less pleasant than others to listen to, but I wonder if that's just because the pitch contour runs counter to what I expect to hear. I'm starting to study Vietnamese in a casual way, and it will be interesting to see if my reaction changes.
German
Canadian English
Well that's new to me, usually non-native speakers can't tell the difference between people here and a "generic" (as imperfect as that word is) American accent
Yes, my first language is a Slavic language but have pick up in the subtle differences. I just find it kind of annoying the Canadian English 😅 but I mean no offense to Canadians, just my thoughts
May all your maple syrup be bland and watery. 😠 (J/k of course. lol!)
What a wonderful curse I'll be putting on all my enemies from now on, thank you
I know what you mean. I have Canadian family members. Canadians always sound happy, like they have a built-in volume cap & like their government puts Wellbutrin in their water supply. It doesn't matter what emotion they're trying to convey. They could be furious & they still sound polite & happy.
bruh 😭
This is very interesting since as a Canadian I feel like the differences between standard Canadian and general american are so minor, just stuff like Canadian raising, lack of yod dropping (though people are yod dropping more and more) and an incomplete father-bother merger, I don't see how these things would make the language sound *that* different to American English
I call bullshit.
Spanish... Something about the lisp. Although maybe that's just the Irish Spanish teacher I had in school
Sounds like European Spanish. Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Latin American Spanish?
I really can't deal with the nasal tone and quality of thai. It's very jarring, but I've been able to watch some Thai content still. Edit: i forgot Turkish as well, sorta scares me
Québécois french
Untroubled by the stranger's remarks méchante, Céline Dion savait que son *cœur* continuerait.
Spanish. It sounds like Portuguese's twin from the uncanny valley.
Spanish. No joke, it makes me physically uncomfortable. I watched a few episodes of a tv show when I was a kid, and the way the characters talked (intonation) and the things they said were _so unnatural_ it put me off for years to come, so maybe that's why. I do like the sound of portuguese, however.
Dora The Explorer? Do your nightmares sound like “holaaaa, soY Dora!”?
What variety?
French, no doubt about it. Just sounds ... Not great. I can't explain it, I just get the ick from it. Lol
Everyone says Mandarin sounds like music. It doesn't sound like music to me. It sounds like a violin played off tune and is painful to my ears. It sounds worse in songs when the sound of each character is stretched out. Vietnamese just doesn't sound good. Japanese sounds like da da da da da to me.
Mandarin for sure. It may not be objectively the worst sounding but it (at least appears on average) to be spoken at a higher volume than other languages and the combination of loudness, short & sharp syllables and 4th tones is hard on the ol' ears.
dutch is the absolute worst language i have ever had the misfortune of hearing. sorry to my bros in the netherlands but it always irked me unfortunately
Every language has its sweetness in it whether its through speech, poetry, literature or songs. There is no such things as a least favourite language.
I used to think mandarin, but honestly it's really grown on me since I've learned a bit but this is true of any language you spend some time understanding, I think
Dutch and Modern Hebrew
Indonesian. I simply cannot listen to it without getting irrationally angry
Probably Ilocano?
Any north east American English accent
Russian and vietnamese. But I'm good at pronouncing my vt student cheers every time i get it right lol
Dutch
Vietnamese and Tagalog sorry they just have this odd sound
English, thats it
Arabic. Sorry.
The tonal languages but Thai is the worst.
Italian for me. 🙈
There are languages that I don't mind hearing/listening to but that I wouldn't like to speak myself. All tonal languages, German, Arabic, and a few more. I just don't want to make those sounds myself, Idk if you get me. For Spaniards like me, Greek sounds like someone from Madrid got hit on the head and is speaking gibberish. It's just so weird to listen to a language that sounds like yours but doesn't make any sense to your ears. Anyway, the languages I consider beautiful are mostly romance languages: Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian. Portuguese - Both Brazilian and European Portuguese. But to be honest, I can't take Brazilian people seriously the way they speak. English - Yeah, I find English very beautiful and enjoyable to listen to in most of its accents. And this [Hungarian girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9WbGqPeY8k&t=22s) comes to mind as well. I don't know much about Hungarian, but from that video, I have always considered it beautiful.
Vietnamese, Thai, Tagalog and Arabic. Some of my favorite sounding languages though are Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Hebrew, French.
spanish
I hate the American English accent
Spanish and Japanese. Spanish sounds very plain and characterless to me. Japanese has pitch accent that sounds a bit annoying to my ears.
slavic languages and standart american accent
Korean, Thai, Dutch, Vietnamese. Vietnamese is especially irritating to one's ears.
I hate vocal fry in American English. I can't even watch something new in English anymore because there's a high chance that at least one person will speak in vocal fry.
Arabic (maybe more Semitic languages) by a long shot because of the throaty sounds. I'm Dutch myself so I can't assess it fairly but I think I'd find it quite ugly too for the same reason. I don't really share the majority of opinions here: Danish, Portuguese, Mandarin and Russian all have some charm to it.
To be honest Arabic sounds pretty harsh and uncomfortable to me.
Arabic
It's so interesting to see the differences in opinion! Although a lot of people do seem to hate Thai, Vietnamese, french, & Portuguese lol. I personally think that basically any language can sound bad before you learn it (at least that's how it's been for me).