What do you like and dislike about each language ?

Ma Cherie, I don't think anymore that Spanish is such a beautiful language (after learning it).
It doesn't really sound like you have a good ear if your liking changes that much from hearing the ponetics to pronouncing it :p

Real Spanish (from Castilla)
There is not such a thing like real Spanish BUT a somewhat standarized norm of Spanish that you call "from Castilla", and that's hardly even spoken in Castilla as it is.

is too harsh with all those "j" sounds and snake-like "c" and "z" (like in Zaragoza).
Curiously enough, these are the traits that I like most and best about Spanish. The Z somewhat makes it different too. This is an example of why I am fascinated by the Spanish diction:

(well i can't post urls here yet)

It is "drier" and lacks the joyful intonation of Italian.
and that being a Basque trait makes it unique amongst all the rest Romance languages. It's funny that the ups and downs is what I find a bit "annoying" of Italian after hearing for awhile.

It doesn't have the elegance of French, nor the grandeur of English.
Not that elegance is a thing that you can measure at all, but I would find the most harsh language sounding elegant if an elegant person (indeed) is speaking.

About the grandeur, written like that, or greatness... I am afraid that Marx o Freud did not think like you when they learnt Spanish to read The Quixote in original version.

Thanks!
 
I have 3 native languages, with English they would be 4 fluent ones.

Greek:
My 1st native language, being from Crete, Greece.
what I like about Greek is that it's extensive, very intense and rich with words and grammar, it's old and rich with history, and it carries so much words that even can be evidences of the long Greek history, or generally, the human history, you feel the history of Greece when you hear it or speak it.

What I don't like about it is that Greek has a very limited range of pronunciation, like, NO ACTUAL LETTERS for some common sounds like b,d,g (as in 'game'),h,w. so we have to write like d=nt, b=mp...etc.

Arabic:
My 2nd native language, as I lived in the Holy Lands for 9 years.
What I like about Arabic that it's constucted over 200 years by the most clever Arab minds 100 years before Islam. Being constructed on over 10 different languages such as Hebrew and Egyptian, Arabic is AMAZINGLY rich with vocabulary, and that makes it hard to learn as you hear 20 different expressions and words for the same meaning and all of them are commonly used! And that's why there is NOTHING on the planet you can't express in Arabic. It's grammar is fantastic with a very little range of exceptions, it has a very wide range of pronunciation and over 40 sounds expressed very easily by writing as every letter expresses only one sound.

An example for the Arabic vocabulary:
Water can mean kawthar, maa', mayy and many other words.
the Arabic word ''oud' can mean: wooden stick, perfume, music instrument, the Palestinian Arabic slang for "come back", remaining, a small and thin plastic stick and many other words only God knows.

And what I don't like about it is that it's pronunciation is impossible to nail if the learner was not Arab, for me, I speak it well, but still not like Arabs.
A special muscle was discovered in Arabs is the reason why they can pronounce those sounds.

Hebrew:
Hebrew is my 3rd native laguage which I learned in a UN mission my parents had in Israel when I was 10 years old and since that time we live between Israel and Greece.
It's the main language which Arabic was constructed on (Ancient Hebrew) and Modern Hebrew was consrtucted over Arabic! Weird!
I like it because it's an easier version of Arabic.
I dislike that it's limited in vocabulary and verbs, and 50% of it's words are built up from simplier ones.

English:
It's very simple and feels too modern, poor with vocabulary compared to other languages.
The grammar is very simple which making English very easy to learn and thus it's not interesting to study it's structure and go deep in it.

French:
French is a romantic, sexy language I tried many times to learn and gave up but now I can handle myself in France, but not in every detail.

Spanish:
I studied Spanish when I was in the 7th grade and I enjoyed it, but forgot it all, I think it's the not-really-interesting version of the fabulous Italian!

Italian:
Romantic, sexy, simple, easy. I love Italian.

German:
I liked nothing in German so I like : nothing.
Dislike: All of it.

Latin:
Sounds too ANCIENT!!! and so related to French and Spanish and the most thing Italian.

Turkish:
I liked that Turkish grammar is so easy.
I disliked: the awful pronunciation and the sounds of Turkish, it's very silly and disgusting and most of the times sounds like gibberish.

Russian & Bulgarian:
They both sound like speaking non-sense in non-sense with non-sense so I gave them up on the 1st class and the same day!

I know my words are a little harsh with some languages so I'm sorry to all the native speakers of those languages...
 
English:
It's very simple and feels too modern, poor with vocabulary compared to other languages.

Are you kidding ? English is the world's richest language in terms of vocabulary. There are about 500,000 words. A educated person in a developed country knows only about 20,000 to 30,000 words in their mother tongue. You only need about 5,000 words to be considered fluent in a language.

In comparison, French language, supposedly rich because it is a great literary language and used to be the language of the aristocracy and the diplomacy, only has 70,000 words (that's partly because there are so many dialects and minor languages in France that were excluded from standard French). But I am pretty sure that French has more words than a recent language like modern Hebrew.

The grammar is very simple which making English very easy to learn and thus it's not interesting to study it's structure and go deep in it.

You should read the works of Winston Churchill before claiming that English grammar is simple. English grammar has its complexities. Few other languages have 5 future tenses, 4 forms of conditional, and 6 perfect tenses (past, present, future ; simple or continuous).

What you meant is perhaps that English grammar is easier to learn than most other European languages, because there is less to memorise (almost no conjugation).

Latin:
Sounds too ANCIENT!!! and so related to French and Spanish and the most thing Italian.

That is because it is ancient. ;)
 
Are you kidding ? English is the world's richest language in terms of vocabulary. There are about 500,000 words. A educated person in a developed country knows only about 20,000 to 30,000 words in their mother tongue. You only need about 5,000 words to be considered fluent in a language.
I don't quite agree with this. English is only rich because it is influenced by many other languages over the years. English words that are not borrowed by other languages are a lot less than greek/russian/arabic ones.

As for the languages I can speak:

English: I like that its very easy to learn (at least for me), I like the English and Irish accent very much even though my accent is closer to American-Irish (from what i was told by native english speakers). I also find the english grammar way too easy. The vocubulary was never a problem to me cause there are so many greek-origin words.
What i dont like in english is that the way some letters are pronnounced makes no sense. For example the letter e is pronnounced differently in the words egg and return or the letter i : ice and ill, letter a: apple - hate

French: I adore the french accent. I find the french grammar to be closer to the greek one (even though I haven't confirmed this with other people. Its just a feeling i get). I like that it's very similar to other latin-origin languages so it helps me learn those easier.
What i dont like in french is the fact that there is no rule for whether something is male or female. Greek has the same problem and that's what makes it harder for me, cause one word can be male in french and female in greek etc.

German: I like the fact that in the past (when i couldn't speak a word in german) I could partially understand it because of the similarities with english and greek.
I don't like the German accent and I think the grammar rules are not the easiest..

Spanish: I recently started learning spanish but I like the fact that its so easy in grammar and vocabulary (I guess it helps a lot that i can speak French very well). I dont like the way some words are pronnounced and sometimes i get the feeling that people speaking spanish talk superfast.

Japanese: Just started learning but I love it. I love japanese culture in general and i guess this makes me like the language very much. I love the way japanese sounds but I dont like that many words are sooo similar to each other. Makes it harder to learn..

Greek: my native language. I love it cause of the fact that everything has a reason to be called the way it is called, it's not random, if you analyse the etymology of greek words you will see what i mean. I like the fact that it has influenced so many western european languages that I can find words with greek roots everytime I read or listen to english/french/german/spanish/italian ( http://www.godimitris.gr/a13_en.php ). Although I don't like the greek accent. I prefer a lot more the ancient greek accent that the modern one. Nowadays, the way words sound is a lot more simplified, while in the past it sounded like music...
 
I don't quite agree with this. English is only rich because it is influenced by many other languages over the years. English words that are not borrowed by other languages are a lot less than greek/russian/arabic ones.

It's true that English borrowed a lot, but this is also why it is so rich. English is a hybrid language created on the merger of Old French (itself a variant of Latin with a lot of borrowing from Greek and some from Gaulish Celt), Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon) and Old Norse (through the Vikings of the Danelaw).

You can attest of this diversity in this post. If you have learnt French or another Romance language, it is fairly easy to tell Germanic words from Latin ones in English. But unless you are well-versed in Germanic linguistic, you may not realise that even Germanic words have multiple origins. For example, "house" comes from Old Norse, but "home" from Anglo-Saxon. They originally meant the same, but "home" has come to be used differently with time (in a way not found in most languages, in such expressions as "home-sick", "home sweet home", "home alone", or "go home").

Another reason for the richness of English is that it is very flexible and new words can be coin quite easily (e.g. I have been googling). Many new terms in sciences, technologies or lifestyle also appeared first in English because of the importance of English speaking countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. Pretty much every terms specific to computering, aviation, aerospace, or recent genetics (e.g. haplogroup, genomics, introns), for instance, first appeared in English. Even words that sound Greek and are built on Greek roots, are in fact English (e.g. telephone, technocracy, heterozygosity, meiosis), because that is the language in which they were coined and first used.

A third factor is the diversity of regional English. No other language on Earth has ever been spoken (by native speakers) on such a geographic scale as English. British English is already varied enough - especially the hybridised Gaelic version that are Scottish and Welsh English. Add to that Irish English, American English, South African English, Indian English, Singaporian English, Australian English... not just with their regional terms and expressions, but all their slang too. No language has more regional and slang terms than English.

What i dont like in french is the fact that there is no rule for whether something is male or female.

This is not entirely true. Genders in French are inherited from Latin, and will 99% of the time be the same in Italian. So if you have learnt Italian and don't know if a French word is masculine or feminine, think about the Italian equivalent, which gender you can determine with the final vowel (o = masculine, a = feminine). For example, if you wonder whether oiseau is masculine or feminine, the Italian is uccello, so it is masculine in French too. You still need to know the gender of Italian words in -e, which can be either. But at least you won't mistake for about 80% of the words.

I love the way japanese sounds but I dont like that many words are sooo similar to each other. Makes it harder to learn..

I agree. I am often irritated by the excess of homonyms in Japanese. It's good for puns though.

Greek: my native language. I love it cause of the fact that everything has a reason to be called the way it is called, it's not random, if you analyse the etymology of greek words you will see what i mean.

That is also the case in German, for the most part.
 
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I won't go through all of them, but I will talk about German since I'm studying it right now. I'm heading into my second year at the University that I attend.

I'll just say what I dislike about it. The three different genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The dative case: Seriously! retarded.......

That's all I have to say about that. However, I am enjoying the language very much and intend to go as far as possible with it. I would love to learn as many languages as possible.
 
Language & History

English is an amazing Language. It's made great my it's ready introduction of words from anywhere. For the greatest part, other European Languages.
For Native English speakers to learn other languages can be the most enlightening and broadening of experiences. Filling up a world of Historical knowledge along the way. The history explains the seeming silliness of some English words. Take the word "Sound" I think in English it has 5?? possible meanings, all of which occurred through different language groups arriving in what is now the UK & Ireland and the words accepted into common vocabulary often giving name to some slight variance of the same theme. This taking on of other origin words I feel has probably created the subtleties that can be acheived in English speech, poetry and writing.
Language though is a great aid in the study of our Origins. Some of the books on the origins of modern languages provide fascinating clues as to our origins. Their study along with the recent DNA revelations are going to increasingly continue to zero in on our beginnings and travels as a relatively new and extraordinary species on this Earth of ours.
 
World's richest language seems to be Arabic as the 13'th century Lisan al arab dictionary contains near 4,5 mln words(if we add neologisms,current scientific terminology and dialectal words it can reach 5mln words)

But of course a great part of these words are somehow synonim
(with nuances)
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My native languages are English and Continental Portuguese. A am also fully fluent in Spanish and have a good business working knowledge of French and Italian.

I prefer to use English professionally but I think that both French and Portuguese are more complex languages. Both have beautiful, unique phonetic structures.
 
What I like particularly about my own native language(Slovene) is that it is quite a phonetic language, far more so than French or English. I also find its structure very interesting, although most foreigners would probably see it as an unnecessary complication. I like it that Slovene is a relatively archaic and conservative language in terms of grammar and vocabulary. I also like the richness and numerousness of Slovene dialects. And I find its sound and accent very pleasing to the ear as well.
 
I find Arabic and Japanese languages phonetically difficult.
 
I find Arabic and Japanese languages phonetically difficult.

Japanese phonetically difficult ? For speakers of Romance languages only the "h" sound might be difficult. Other sounds exist in every languages (ok, you need to roll the "r" more gently and pinch a bit the "u", but that's it).
 
I think that Japanese is easy to pronnounce but japanese grammar is a bit difficult.
On the other hand, chinese is harder to pronnounce but easier in terms of grammar

I guess it depends on the main language someone has. For example it's very hard for Greeks to tell the difference between mad and mud when they hear them but very easy to pronnounce "r" like the French do since it sounds a lot like our "γ" letter. We also don't have sounds that combine vowels like oe, ae etc so it's hard for Greeks to pronnounce them.

Ancient Greek was different. It included all of those sounds and had more rythm, that is why we have different vowels or combination of vowels for the same sounds for "i" sound we have η, ι , υ , ει, οι, and for "o" we have ο and ω. In ancient Greek each of these letters was pronnounced a bit different but now we read them all the same. We still keep the correct spelling but most Greeks just learn it by heart without knowing that they are different cause of the different pronnounciation they used to have
 
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The only other language I can communicate in is German,which I like a lot.
I'm not at native-speaker level,though.
I live in Texas,so I hear a lot of Spanish.Don't know how it sounds when spoken by Spaniards,but I don't care for the Mexican version.Hard on the ears.
Dabbled a little with Mandarin,many years ago.Very interesting.
 
I'll make a very short introduction now to something completly new:

Kiswahili
likes:
-Very easy pronunciation: it uses latin alphabet, consonants are pronounced as in english, vowels as in german. only exception is gh as a pharyngal sound
-the language belongs to the Bantu branch. it's grammar is really easy, although you have to get used to it first as it differs widely from IE or semitic languages. for example it has 14 noun classes, which are bound to semantics such as persons and animals, plants, artifacts, loanwords, abstractions etc... with many exceptions. However, if you confuse these classes in practice, the language still remains comprehensible.

dilslikes:
-vocabulary is very poor. for every word there seems to be only one expression. so distinction between formal and informal language can only be made through politeness in grammatical expression. it is a very good language to simplify complex matters and thus to make them understandable. but expressing complex matters sometimes becomes a stimulating challenge.


Arabic

I skipped it after half a year due to unpronouncable sounds and too many words. The grammar however seemed to be logic. Can't say very much to it.


English

Above all my favourite, as I personally think the grammar and pronunciation is not too complicated. It is rich in words and so it has a big variety in expressing meanings. And I like the sound of it.

French

I think if I wasn't confronted with English more often and learned French at an earlier stage, it would be easier than English for me. I like the French sound, and probably as with other roman languages I hate the subjunctive.

German

Short, if it wasn't my mother tongue, I probably wouldn't learn it. Grammar and pronunciation are too complicated, the sound is the opposite of beautiful. I figured out the only time German sounds nice is when a young lady whispers it in a soft voice.
 

It is correct that modern English is very much a hybrid. Most sources will say that more modern English words are of Middle-French origin than of Old English. Common percentages are a little over 30% French origin and around 28% of Old English. The remainder is of direct Latin, Greek, and Brythonic Celtic input.


As a native English speaker who only has one other language (Spanish), I will comment on my likes and dislikes of that language.

The pronunciation is almost perfect. As soon as one learns the slightly different alphabet, it is nearly impossible to mispronounce a word in Spanish. The worst thing that one may occasionally do is miss on the location of which syllable gets stressed.

If one can become comfortable with the irregularly-conjugated verbs, the regular verbs are relatively easy once the English speaker can train him/herself to recall Yo, tu'. Ud. Nosotros, etc. for use is everyday speech.Spanish speakers also are pretty forgiving if you mess up!

Having dealt with a tremendously wide range of regional Spanish styles and slangs, I have to give it to the Castilian as being my favorite. I love the calm, almost methodical way that it sounds to a person who is mostly used to seemingly limitless styles from Mexico down to Tierra del Fuego and all of the islands. If I had to say what I disliked about Castilian, I would have to mention the "th" instead of the "s" sound and its absorption of many Arabic-derived words as opposed to the more conservative Portuguese, Catalan, etc. I like preserving a langauage in a manner as close to its earliest form as possible.





 
I speak some languages.

Dutch: I speak the Brabant (southern Netherlands) form. I almost never speak the official Dutch. Dutch grammar is a disaster. In The Netherlands Dutch is explained by teachers as a kind of mathematic model, that almost never fits.

In my dialect I have a pretty good idea why something is female, male or neuter.
It's simply an added value to a word. Most of the time because it pronounces more fluent.

English: My second language. Easy to understand, although I sometimes have problems with urban language and American. English sounds a bit like a chello music instrument.

German, I understand it, and I speak it, but writing it is difficult.
Also there are a lot of words that I can't compare with other languages.
German can sometimes sound a bit like a machine gun.. ;)
And the very long words...
Try this (a joke)
HauptReichsAngestelter EisenbahnLinienKnotenpuntWechsel HinUndHerSchieber.
It is 1 word!
Favorite German sentence:
"Stell dich vor es gibt Krieg, und keiner geht hin!"

It's very beautiful, because it has two meanings.
1 Imagine there's a war going on, and nobody goes there.
2 Imagine there's a war going on, and nobody dies.


French. Nice language, but I use it seldom, but if spoken slowly, I can understand.

Nicest European language I would like to learn:

Italian. Almost an opera in itself. Nice melody.
 
Favorite German sentence:
"Stell dich vor es gibt Krieg, und keiner geht hin!"

It's very beautiful, because it has two meanings.
1 Imagine there's a war going on, and nobody goes there.
2 Imagine there's a war going on, and nobody dies.

Yes that's a famous quote by Carl Sandburg. It's a good one! :LOL:
PS: the correct form is "Stell dir vor es ist Krieg, und keiner geht hin!"
 
French sounds so chic, it is so feminine and also so familiar (most loans in Italian are from French) so I can only like it. Also speaking French men sounds so romantic!

English, I like it becouse it has got the easiest grammar of Europe. It sounds also well, but in my opinion French is more beautiful.

German is definitely what you call a viril language. I like men who speak German, but the grammar is hard and sometimes it seems that people are always angry when they speak in German.

Spanish in my opinion is not that great. Itsounds the way a stammering Italian would speaks. I prefer Portuguese.

Greek sounds well. I like it, although it sounds a bit like a machine gun (ta-ka-ta-ta-ki). But it's solar and has a long and great history, so...

Italian. I am Italian, so I dunno how this language sounds. People say that it's beautiful and melodic, but I don't understand what they mean.
 

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