What do you like and dislike about each language ?

[Riccardo]

It seems that many people find difficult to study Italian. I can perfectly understand why, the grammar for a foreigner is really difficult!
I prefer Latin languages anyway. French and Spanish are the best, melodious, sexy for women and charming. I guess Italian would sound similar if I wasn't mother tongue. I don't like English, but we must study it (and I still speak a worse English than my great Spanish, also with many more years of studies).

[Endri]

It seems that many people find difficult to study Italian. I can perfectly understand why, the grammar for a foreigner is really difficult!
I prefer Latin languages anyway. French and Spanish are the best, melodious, sexy for women and charming. I guess Italian would sound similar if I wasn't mother tongue. I don't like English, but we must study it (and I still speak a worse English than my great Spanish, also with many more years of studies).

I don't understand why so many people think Italian is hard. My personal opinion is that Italian is one of the easiest languages and the most easy Latin language.

Spanish is very similar to Italian. Knowing one enables you to understand the other. Furthermore, both Italian and Spanish have a pretty much straight forward accent.

[AdeoF]

Spanish

likes: The language has a mix of macho and romanticism inside which makes the language nice to hear. (please don't talk about how they pronounce the j it is bad). Also the phonology sounds a lot like Latin, Italian and also Greek.

Dislikes: It has a lot of Arabic words (which is 8% in Spanish language) and it separates with Italian and French, and yea the J sound. Also it's too related to Portuguese.

French

likes: Sound lovely and also has a different point of path from the other Romance languages which makes it interesting.

Dislikes: Too much Germanic needs more Latin inside and also the language looks hard to learn.

Italian

Likes: It has the most Latin words and also has good relations with other romance languages. the phonology is really nice and sounds a lot like Spanish. It sounds more feminine then the other romance languages.

Dislikes: There's not much words with Italian e.g. h and y, and also some of the words are odd and also can't link up the the para in Spanish and Portuguese

Galician (home language with Spanish)

likes: It's very historical and has joined in with the other romance languages. It's old fashioned as well. The Celt words in Galician sounds nice.

Dislikes: Has got little to no Celt words in Galician. It's well.... Portuguese version 2

Portuguese

Likes: It has a lot of history inside and also it has a good mix of phonology and vocab.

Dislikes: phonology sounds like your voice is a bit blocked and also when your reading it. It's a lot like Spanish.

German

likes: The language sounds powerful with a lot of words coming from Germanic side and has been in use a lot in different parts of Europe.

Dislikes: it's too far away from English/Scots and also it's not an easy language to learn.

English

likes: Very rich vocab, it can take in a lot of words and be used anywhere which is useful and also it's more easier to learn then the other Germanic languages.

Dislikes: It's has too many words which is from Latin/French ,Greek and other languages which separate from the other Germanic languages.

[Francisus]

I only like english and spanish because those are the only ones I can understand haha

^stupid answer I alrdy know

[martinmkp]

What is a very interesting, that "sound" of the language varies according to your native language or the place you have been living or lived. Also, "judging" the language is based on a very subjective grounds.

For example, some people do not like several sounds (or language itself) which are strange - in Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, or some other languages. On the contrary, they tend to like theirs own languages. This is natural. But, try to explain to the native Dutch person that his language is not nice!

What I want to mention is, that the more distant (geographically) the language is from the core of its group origin, the more specifically sounds (or has more difficult sounds for other listeners) - compare the German with the Dutch (more difficalt sounds), or Spanish to Portuguese (more difficult sounds), or Czech to Russian (more soft and difficult with some objections).

I have, on the contrary, a very seldom heard that Italian would sound not nice to other people. It si considered as a nice, not difficult language. Why it is so?

I personally like German. That is probably because my grandfather who raised me, spoke German as his native language. But, many Slovaks do not like the sound of German (without any negative connotations toward the nation). I do not like Russian, for example - it sound to me too soft and strange.

English - is quite neutral for me, and I consider it only as a mixture of anglo-saxon, normandian, latin influences. I think the English language was not able to receive the latin alphabet properly - therefore there is so many discrepancies between written and spoken language. The American English is moving those discrepancies to the higher level - and still developing :)

Spanish and Italian - sounds very nice to me... learning Spanish has been easy until the gramma...
French - culturally, yes, it was the language of high society, culture, the civilisation itself. But, frankly, I do not like the sound of it (those very fluent in French would beat me!)
Greek - a very nice, special language, although different form it old greek grandfather.
Japanese versus Chinese - definitely I think Japanese is simplier and easier. Chinese is simple only to the extent of the beginner (Wo yao ni 我要伱). And those terrible chinese sounds - saying four tones for ma... with different meanings. But, taking into account such a vast chinese culture, reading the old manuscripts gives the reader the completely new dimension, great dimension as well:)

[Nordsee]

I just speak 2 languages: German and English.

German: My mother tongue. Very specific language, powerful, hard grammar, often hard to learn for foreigners (I like that). It might not be the nicest language to hear and as many of you say it might sound "harsh", but I don't understand when people say it always sounds like Germans are angry or are argueing. I hear and read this very often. To me it's the best language. Ok, maybe because it's my mother tongue, but I just like it.

Austrian German: I like the dialect spoken in Vienna. I dislike the rest.

Swiss German: Awful. It's very awful to hear and even to read. You think German has too many "ch" sounds? Just listen to Swiss German.

English: I started to learn it when I was 12 years old I guess. Was easy to learn and sounds not bad. But sometimes it's not specific enough.

Fench: Someone here said it sounds "gay". Often heard that in Germany, too. I'm not very interested in French but I don't dislike it. I think it's not easy to learn. Sometimes I try to read foreign languages. When I compare the romanic languages I have by far the most problems by pronouncing the words of French language.

Spanish: To me Spanish sound nice. I learned a little bit (I learned to sing the first Pokemon intro in Spanish when I was younger lol). It's not that hard to pronounce and easy to learn the pronounciation of for example "ll" and "j" (it's like one of the two sounds of the German "ch").

Italian: Very easy to pronounce and to emphasize. About the grammar I know nothing. I don't like the language very much.

Dutch: It's pretty much like High German (specially Low Saxon dialect and Frisian), but also it's very different. I don't like hearing Dutch. Many people here like listening to it because it sounds funny to them and makes them laugh. I don't think it's funny, it's just not nice to hear.

Slavic languages: I put them all together because I have 1 opinion for all of them. They don't sound nice to me, rather kind of "cold".

Scandinavian languages: Primarily Swedish is similar to German. When I read it I understand many words and even if I listen to it I understand a bit. Norwegian is less similar and Danish the most difficult scandinavian language to me. Listening to scandinavian languages is just like hearing another type of German to me (not in a dialect way).

Greek: Sounds kind of confusing. I rarely listened to it.

Portuguese: My ex girlfriend is Brazilian so I primarily know Brazilian Portuguese and it never sounded bad to my ears.

Japanese: Sounds cool.

Latin: Sounds cool.

Notice: These are just my own opinions!

[dony]

I suppose that it depends of your knowledge about the material culture and proficiency in a specific language, in which I denoted the following aspects :

Español (Spanish) : A beautiful sounding language with so many different accents, is complicated to find resemblance between Standard Castillian and Lunfardo; additionally there are some versions like "El cantito" or Chilean Spanish , which sounds more musical than any variety of Italian; and it sounds interesting in the speech of a philosopher like Roberto Barbery, in the songs of Alex Ubago or in Borge's prose.

Français (French) : Another beautiful language but more focused in abstract thinking and intellectual matters , is not only Derrida or Sartre is Cohn-Bendit and Jaques Delors too, by the way is a pleasure to listen the melodic voices of Lola Dargenti , Mylene Farmer or Hélène Rollès in a song.

Italiano (Italian) : Well they transformed our mother tongue here in Argentina, with a melodic intonation, closer to French in vocabulary but to Spanish in pronunciation; is not surprising than Laura Pausini, Andrea Bocelli or Al Bano Carrisi sounds very well, singing in it.

Русский (Russian) : Well I am lucky that learning it helped me to be in touch with the most beautiful girls in the world :), but of course reading the original versions of the masterpieces of Лев Николаевич Толстой (Leo Tolstoy) or Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вски (Dostoyevsky) has been a great reward, without forgetting the songs of Юля Савичева or Варвара.

English : the contemporary lingua franca is utterly useful nowadays, but I cannot add anything more, just to say than for many romance speakers with a null knowledge of it , can be sometimes confused with German; In the same way that some people confuse Spoken Italian with Spanish.

Another languages in which I am not fluent, but in my humble opinion I considere them pretty sounding are : Português (Portuguese) , română (Romanian) and украї́нська (Ukrainian), but à chacun son goût .

[K_Sacana_Blomqvist]

It is a very complex questions but if I focus on the phonetics and sentence intonation (in general, how a language sounds) here it goes:

I like most the Brazilian Portuguese and the standard Swedish as it is spoken in central Sweden.

Next I would probably put the levelled out general American. Then I could place a number of other languages like Italian, Russian and putong hua - which means Mandarin.

I definitely don´t like the sound of Arabic, Hebrew, Somali, Danish, Kurdish and Farsi.

[K_Sacana_Blomqvist]

What is a very interesting, that "sound" of the language varies according to your native language or the place you have been living or lived. Also, "judging" the language is based on a very subjective grounds.

For example, some people do not like several sounds (or language itself) which are strange - in Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, or some other languages. On the contrary, they tend to like theirs own languages. This is natural. But, try to explain to the native Dutch person that his language is not nice!

Well I am a living proof that you may be critical of your own langauge :) My mother tongue is Polish but I don´t like the sound of it. On the other hand I have the fairness to admit that another slavic Language Russian has a very nice, soft sound. And bear in mind that I don´t like Lenin, Putin and communism !:)


It´s amazing how you mix up very different and unrelated languages! Anyway, I am wondering what´s strange in Finnish phonetics? A language that really have very clear sounds.


Indeed the Dutch r sound is special. I in person dont like it.

Japanese versus Chinese - definitely I think Japanese is simplier and easier. Chinese is simple only to the extent of the beginner (Wo yao ni 我要伱). And those terrible chinese sounds - saying four tones for ma... with different meanings. But, taking into account such a vast chinese culture, reading the old manuscripts gives the reader the completely new dimension, great dimension as well:)

Well, would you say to a Chinese girl/boy - I want you ... ? :)

I in person would put Mandarin on a high level because for me an Indo-european speaker this language is an a absolut challenge with everything: tones, characters and a structure of isolating language type - in short an anty-thesis of indoe-eurpean language structure.

If you can read Mandarin already - my respect

[Sigehild]

English - Mother tongue. It is hard to judge how it sounds since I cannot be objective! I'll leave that to the non-English speakers.

Likes - none besides I can speak it and understand it and many foreign speakers helps with travelling and communicating!

Dislikes - Feel it has completely lost its soul. Some folk here seem to think its massive vocabulary is a great thing to be proud of but in reality wholesale raiding words from French, Latin and Greek while leaving thousands of native Anglo-Saxon/Old English words to die is cultural suicide (selfquell in Anglish. Why not!) That is my massive shortcoming with English: it should have been prouder of its Germannic/Anglo-Saxon roots and words and kept many more of them alive and used them. We had Old English words for most modern Anglo-Latin-French words, e.g. (including updated spelling for some lost old english words) Sye/Sie = Victory, Rime = count/number, rine = touch, leod = people, Fierd/Hera = Army, Hue/Blee = Colour, Earm = Poor, Akithe = Declare, Kin/Kindred = Family, Missenly/Sundrily = Different, Ellen = Courage, Angetful = Intelligence, Oathbreach = Perjury.... and thousand more examples. Check out the Anglish movement to see about increasing English word stock and old english revival.

Spanish - learning due to Spanish girlfriend and now living in Spain.

Likes - like how the pronunciation is standardised from written Spanish (none of the crazy mess of English!) - of course accents and dialects do exist - such as my girlfriends Andalucian accent - but generally find it easier than understanding some English accents!
Grammer is not so tricky once learned and I find the gender system and verb conjugation extremely flexible. Take 'Tios' one word whereas I would have to say my Uncle and Aunty in English; Amigas = female friends, etc.

Like the Augmentative and diminutive in the language (something English doesn't seem to have). It helps to make lots of new and interesting words with differing senses - ventana (window), ventanilla (car window, box-office window) - is all I can remember now but many more. I think you can apply it to most nouns (a native Spanish speaker will have to enlighten further).

Sound - it is nice, as are most Romance languages, maybe not as expressive as French and Italian, but it still has flow and charm.

French - first learned at school but later mostly forgotten

likes - Sounds nice. Grammar is not too tricky after getting your head around conjugations gender system.

dislikes - the pronunciation can cause problems when listening to French as many conjugations sound similar. 'Singy' uplifting sound of the language can get a bit annoying after a while, like a permanent question tone, but it generally sounds nice.

Italian never learned it but like to try after learning Spanish.

looks similar grammar and vocabulary to Spanish (so easier to learn after Spanish!). Good latin words. Sounds generally nice with the 'singy expressive nature' but again it can get annoying after a while. Especially after sharing a coach trip full of noisy Italian students, it eventually sounds like everyone is saluting each other! But I guess a languages sound annoying after hearing a coach full a noisy youths!

German - Limited knowledge but respect it purity of vocabulary especially in the face of Latin/Greek pressure, even in the fields of science/engineering/technology. Sounds strong and powerful yet sometimes elegant.

[Sigehild]

"Maciamo

English

"I find quite primitive and unscientific to have words ending in "-fish" for sea/water creatures that are not fish, like shellfish, crayfish, jellyfih, etc. I also dislike words like 'pineapple' or 'eggplant', because a pineapple is not related to an apple, and 'eggplant' sounds too weird (it's just a word vaguely based on the appearance of an "egg"). Fortunately the latter is only American English."




So you expected the anglo-saxons to be scientists and zoologists?! I much prefer the usage of -apple and -fish as good pure English roots instead of, yet again, raiding into Latin and Greek dictionaries.

In fact, apple in Old English meant more generally fruit, not just an apple. OE also had earthapple (and others) for cucumber - much better in my opinion - etymologically transparent and using English to its full potential. This constant flooding of English with Latin and Greek does it no favours and weakens our sense of speaking a true English tongue. Same with -fish, do you know the full etymology of the word fish? It might have been a general term for sea-creature in OE times? All we would be doing if we 'borrowed' yet another 'scientific' Latin or Greek word is to hide its true meaning from the general English speaker - basically, another academic snob word.

[dony]

J’aimerai effacer ce message, s'il vous plaît

[dony]

Maciamo
Ma Cherie, I don't think anymore that Spanish is such a beautiful language (after learning it). Real Spanish (from Castilla) is too harsh with all those "j" sounds and snake-like "c" and "z" (like in Zaragoza). It is "drier" and lacks the joyful intonation of Italian. It doesn't have the elegance of French, nor the grandeur of English.

Well it has changed a lot, with is sometimes amusing is how people describe how beautiful is a "standard version " of a language but don’t usually compare it with its daily spoken version, and sadly you like most part of Europeans do not have a clue how Español got so many different accents and how sound them , thankfully in most Spanish speaking countries in the Americas ,almost all the television programmes or the most popular music on radio are en Español, and we can deduce just for hearing it for a couple of minutes from which nationality is someone or what is more is really interesting when there is a discussion between a Italian, South-American and Brazilian about football on the telly using their mother tongue, and there isn’t any subtitles .

NB.- If a non native speaker don't reduce his accent in the process of learning spanish, he will never sound like a native one, and I can assure you que cada hispanoparlante lo sabe.

[Johnny Matos]

I'll start with spanish, my native language:

What I love:

-The way vowels are pronounced: Five vovels, five sounds, and that's it. Unlike english and french for example, vowels will always keep their own sound even if they are followed by another vowel. I like to think that this facilitates the listening process for spanish students.

-If you see it, you pronounce it: For some reason there's no need to mute any consonant nor vowel, except for the letter H which is mute because it lost its sound somehow.

-Accentuation: You will never run into the problem where you see get to read a new word and you don't know exactly how it's said. Its grammar structure and the way you have to accentuate words (using the tilde when needed) will let you know exactly how to pronounce the word even if it's completely new to you (while reading it), unlike english, where if you read the word "island" for the first time and no one told you how it is pronounced, you would end up pronouncing the S and probably accentuating the A.

-Native speakers: A lot of people speak this language natively, so there's a lot of countries I could visit (in the American continent) and have no problem communicating with people.

-Similar languages: Knowing spanish will make learning portuguese, italian, french, catalan and galician MUCH easier than if you didn't know any spanish at all. There are more minoritary languages that are very similiar to spanish, but they are not very useful.

What I hate:

-There is no neutral gender for objects, unlike russian for example. Since I was a little kid this seemed just plain stupid to me. Why would a spoon be female and a desk be male instead of neutral?

-Integrated classism: What if I told you that the way you say "you" and 2nd person conjugations vary depending if you want to be formal or not? Formal spanish uses "usted" instead of "tú" (both mean "you"), and the second person conjugation will be exactly like a third person conjugation. Weird and unnecessary isn't it? If a person has a "higher social position" or if they are older than you, they will be offended if you call them "tú".

-Conjugations, when compared to english and some other languages, are not so practical: The way verbs are conjugated is different for every person/number/tense combination (e.g: we eat, they eat, we ate, they ate, I eat, I ate = nosotros comemos, ellos comen, nosotros comimos, ellos comieron, yo como, yo comí). The verb "comer" had 6 different ways to be saidin this example whereas in english there's only eat and ate regardless of the person.

-Mysogenism?: if there's a group of five male engineers, thay are called "ingenieros" (plural masculine word for engineers). If there's a group of five female engineers, they are called "ingenieras" (plurar femenin for engineer). If there are four female engineers in a group and just one male engineer, somehow they are called "ingenieros" and they are all malenow. Not very important but it's weird.

-The ammount of irregular verbs: because I speak this language naturally most of the times I'm not even aware that I am using an irregular verb. They all seem regular to me, but I can imagine most people who try to learn spanish struggle a lot with the ammount of irregular verbs we have.

English

What I love:

-It's spoken all around the world: A lot of people with different languages have this language in common so they can still communicate. It's what esperanto wants to be, says I.

-It's simple and practical: Objects have no gender, verbs rarely vary when being conjugated.

-Sounds nice to my ears: It doesn't sound as rough as russian or german.

What I hate:

-If you ever had to spell the word week at a spelling bee contest, there's a 50% chance you are screwed. Good luck trying not to spell weak.

-Island is pronounced i-land. I will NEVER get over it, I am sorry.

-Why isn't the word "wicked" pronounced wickt?

French

What I love:

-Sounds a little sexy sometimes.

-Has less irregular verbs than spanish.

-Nothing else.

What I hate:

-Sounds like gibberish sometimes.

-The ammount of homophone words is TOO DAMN HIGH: si, scie, scient and scies, are ALL pronounced "see" despite the almost useless consonants that only serve for reading purposes and not for pronunciation, because they think it's cool I guess. More of this nonsensical crap: (Ver, vers, vert, verre) (sang, sans, son, cent, c'en, s'en) (mai, mais, maie, mes, m'es, m'est, met, mets) (voie, voient, voies, vois, voit, voix) (ai, aie, aient, aies, ait, es, est) (eau, au, aux, haut). All of the words between parentesis sound the same, only context can save you.

-The ridiculous ammount of letters you need to put together just to make a somple sound in some words: eaux is pronounced as "oh" ; oisseau is pronounced as "wasó" ; scient is pronounced as "see"

-Learning how to listen to french can be pretty hard because of the previous phenomena: When listening to this language you can hear a couple vowels and two consonants in a sentence, but when you read that sentence you can find out that you were missing 50 mute consonants and about 150 vowels mixed together that made just one sound. Forgive me forbeing exagerated and "funny" about this matter, but french is just beyond me.

[Alcuin]

I think French has a good orthography, which lends itself well to the written word and makes French texts, newspapers, etc very aesthetic. I also think it is utterly hideous to listen to, perhaps second only to Chinese on a list of the foulest sounds that can be heard coming from the mouths of men. How it ever came to be considered 'beautiful' is beyond me. What I most enjoy isn't the language itself, but the impotent rage of Francophones who detest English with a passion. I'm not sure why they dislike it so much, though I do love hearing it described as 'impure' and a 'creole' (as opposed to a provincial, peasants' dialect of Vulgar Latin with Germanic grammar and a vocabulary of which one-in-five words is derived from Old Frankish, German and English). Perhaps it's just an extension of the rampant Anglophobia in France, which seems to be popular even amongst the 'educated elite'?

Spanish is a language I find very pleasant, Italian less so but still quite nice. German is incredibly underrated (some of those compound words excepted, of course), Dutch is like its weird cousin, and Icelandic is one of my favourites. Celtic languages are a mixed bunch, but I prefer the sound and spelling of Goidelic tongues to Brythonic ones.

[Foxy]

(British) English
Like - my native language. I like the fact that different regions give rise to different words with the same meaning & even different ways to pronounce the same word.

Dislike - the concept that English is one standard language. It isn't. British English is not American English. British English is not simply RP English, there are dozens of regional dialects (just as how Spanish, Italian, etc. has regional dialects) that are not "chav" otherwise professionals, wealthy & well-educated wouldn't have them. How, as example & no offense to anyone, would an Italian like it if they were told their Venetian dialect was solely the dialect of the undesirably uneducated & poor. It's the exact same as saying a regional dialect of British English is "chav".


Japanese
Like - I like a lot about the Japanese language. I'd sort of have to as I grew up there; same reason why I greatly enjoy the people & culture. The language is, in a way, far more complex than school Japanese (standard Tokyo dialect) taught to foreigners and that's probably what stumbles some foreigners beyond rudimentary conversational.

Dislikes - grew up in a multi-lingual family & spoke Japanese from an early age so the dislikes are limited.

For example Japanese (and most East Asian) songs generally suck, but they don't get on my nerves in the same way.

I find this interesting. I've lived in Japan on & off for 20 years with relatives having lived in China for 40+. In many ways I find East Asian music can be superior to European. Lovers by Shigeru Umebayashi or Bei Qing mian Ju as very easy examples. If you are speaking of pop East Asian music, almost allpop music the world over sucks that's why it's typically sung by pretty boys/girls as they're what sells not the songs.

[Angela]

^^No offense, but actually, in Italy, the more educated you are the more standard Italian you use and the less your regional "language" or "dialect". The Veneto might be the only semi-exception, although even there it holds true to a great extent.

There "has" been a move to bring back the "dialects" a bit. In my area the schools teach it a few hours a week, and they changed the road signs to include two versions of the place names, but I think it's doomed.

[Foxy]

^^No offense, but actually, in Italy, the more educated you are the more standard Italian you use and the less your regional "language" or "dialect". The Veneto might be the only semi-exception, although even there it holds true to a great extent.

There "has" been a move to bring back the "dialects" a bit. In my area the schools teach it a few hours a week, and they changed the road signs to include two versions of the place names, but I think it's doomed.

That's more a city problem. But then, no offense, cities in a way have a habit of loosing their traditions, culture, even their uniqueness/individuality, etc. faster & easier than people from towns & villages. Be it due to immigration, foreign trade, etc. or as here governments / city society saying you're "not cool" if you speak like a "village bumpkin". Language standardization, after all, is quite simply a government ploy for it's far cheaper to write in one standard version than maintaining different dialects.


And just because one speaks with a regional dialect doesn't mean they're uneducated or poor.

Personal experience as some (multi millionaire) Italians I know well speak with regional dialects. Some well educated/rich landowning families in the UK speak with regional dialects (friend's uncle is an engineering grad from Oxford, from a own-multiple-country-homes-with-acreage rich family, and he sounds like any other Liverpudlian "chav"). While a German family friend speaks Low German when at home & he got his PhD when 33.

Americas are an even easier example universal, in a way, to the country. It's possible to tell where people are from by their regional dialect as different areas have different words for the same thing (e.g. mountain lions are generally called cougars in one area & pumas in another area).

[gidai]

off-topic,
You also have robotic posts here ?
Look at that profiles:
software-developer
RenataOstrozzz

[Angela]

Yes, we get robots and sometimes morons. It's harder to get rid of the latter.

[gidai]

Renoant
jowel
JamesWorsham
software-developer
RenataOstrozzz
...
Please check all posts from new "profiles" like those above! There are many such false profiles made especially day by day to pollute the topics in the forum.
Thank you!

[StevenEvans]

I like to learning language by classic literature like https://freebooksummary.com/the-anal...elopment-20683