What do you like and dislike about each language ?

My favourites: 1. Italian: Most elegant and aesthetic sound. Its a fun to listen to. Vocals and Vowels interchange. But it can become annoying after longer time.
2. Swedish: I tried to learn it, because I find it to be the most neat and beautiful of all germanic languages. A peculiarity is that the melody of the voice pitch is important for spoken words.
3. Serbo-Croat: A less popular language of which I understand a few words. Every word sounds clear and marked. This language makes just fun. I was told it is the best language for swearing. Other slavic languages sound quite different superficially, despite similar vocabularies.
4. English: Very handy, short and flexible. I don't like the often fuzzy pronunciation, which makes it difficult to understand, especially when spoken by people of other mother tongues or dialects. Also I often don't like the many different ways of expressing one-and-the same thing.
5. Russian: It is a rather concise language. But way too complicated. It has 6 cases and every second word starts with a prefix like 'pri', 'pro', 'pod', 'u', 's', 'po', 'do', 'v' etc. Thats makes me confuse the words. Well, german words have many prefixes too.
6. German: My mother language. probably the worst nightmare of most belcanto opera singers.
 
I am Russian and I can analyse only English, French, and German as I can speak and still learn more about these languages.

It has to be noted that a complicated grammer and being deficult to learn, it's two defferent category related to a language.


1) English it has a simple grammer but for me it's quite dificult to speak properly, just because of that. There are so many phrases constructed very easy, so I often think:"there must be something wrong with it " and adding some aditional words I often ruin the sentence.
But as you getting better in it, it start being quite handy to use such short scheme to explane something without using excessive words. This language is very conveniant for business and formal correspondence. Though I always feel a bit uncomfortable, like something's off, as if I coudn't describe things as lively as I'd like.
(I like the most British English, like someone above said it's sounds grandeur, and often even arrogant to my russian ear. lol) Hey,... and short words brilliant!!:good_job:

2) French (it's my favorite one, there is no other more elegant and beautiful language for me^^). I like French when speaken by men, by women, slowly, quick, in songs or not, even by drunken men, it sounds fabulous to me. (a little off topic:rolleyes2:)

Ok, it has more complecated grammar than English but still not such complex as German, for instance. It's formal style doesn't very stand out from informal. it can be can perfectly used for business, and I can say it could interchange English in that issue.
Maybe English have more vocabulary but it sounds strange to me, because learning French I've noticed that English, German, and Russian don't have such a big amount of synonyms as this one. While speaking with the French I rarely leasten to the same word twice.
Looking through my english dictionaries I find many words which aren't used in the speech at all, but I still find new words I don't know while speaking with the French.

Then, despite more complex grammer, with French I feel like I can say all that I want right, because everything has it's own ruler or an exception to remember. So French is easier for me to learn then English. It's true I confuse the gender often, because Russian have other gender for many French words. It was hard for me to understan how can а "mountain" be musculine when I clearly see it's feminime!:annoyed:" Now I'm used to it and my mistakes are decreasing.

It's quite strange but there is one more thing about French. As I speak English or German I constantly subconsciously think how to say exactly what I want to say, by which means it's translated into these languages, but when I speak French I just say what I want to say and it sounds correctly! We have very similar syntaxe, even many idioms looks the same. it's just amazing! So in French I feel myself very comfortable.
short words are brilliant as well!!!

3) German. In general to the Russians not familiar with German it sounds very rude and even scaring (like dog’s burking). And it's really a big surprise for us when some foreigners say they can't tell apart Russian and German. But there are many Russians who love this language (including myself). If the personne doesn't scream, and just joyfully talk to someone to my ear it's like cats' purring. Especially all the s, d,t and sch sounds.

German it's a great language, it's philosophers and economists' language I'd say. It has rich vocabulary and a sophisticated formal style so it's very fit for business relations, despite being more dificult to learn then English or French.

It's grammer has even more big level of сomplexity, and I truly like it.
Unfortunately most of the words are long and aren't easy to remember. But it's interesting to see the parts which combine words. In this language knowing the rules you can create new words by yourself^^
It's very different from Russian in the terms of syntax. In my point of views it's grammer has many inexplicable things, compared to French where almost everything can be cleared. But still it's a great language.:grin:



Well being Russian, I don't want to analyse my own language. :embarassed:



I also think about study Italian or Sweden.

Italian is rather funny I can’t listen to it without smiling. It sounds like when children in school, at language class, don’t know some foreign word they have to use, they often invent it on their own, Italian is all like that to me! Lol

Sweden often reminds me of German with french pronunciation, a very interesting combination ^^.
 
English: Rich vocabulary, easy grammar, but with lots of phrasal verbs, irregularities and idioms. The fact we are surrounded by it makes it much easier though.

Spanish: Beautiful and easy sounds (I prefer latin american spanish, because the castillian "z" sounds too annoying sometimes), but not so easy grammar (subjunctive, verbs with prepositions, reflective verbs come to mind). Not the easiest language to learn, but not hard either.

Italian: The intonation makes it very annoying to my ears. I prefer spanish, sorry.

Portuguese: The sounds remind me a lot of "rural" greek, so I only see it as a rural version of spanish (no offence, it sounds exactly as a greek old man from a village would pronounce spanish)

German: I'm currently learning it. The sounds are a bit harsh, but I like them in general. The grammar isn't that difficult for a native greek speaker (similar cases, three genders, not so many tenses) The only real difficulty is the memorisation of genders, since they differ from the greek ones.

Dutch: Very unpleasant to my ear.

French: I was taught a bit of it back in school. I like the sounds of it, but the grammar is ridiculously difficult. Plus the way they pronounce words much different than the way they are written gives it an extra point of difficulty.

Russian/Ukrainian/Belarusian: I don't like their sounds at all. The grammar is also difficult from what I've read so I wouldn't bother more.

West and south slavic languages: Too harsh sounds

Norwegian/Swedish: I lived in north Norway for some months in the past and I got used to the language. I like the sounds very much and the grammar is probably the easiest in Europe. Very hard to pronounce the words correctly though.

Arabic: I love the alphabet, I hate the sounds. I have to recognise that it has the richest vocabulary of all languages and maybe the most complex grammar as well. That makes me demotivated to learn more about it.

Chinese: I like the sounds, since they are very exotic to my ears.

Japanese: I like the sounds even more than chinese. I would like to learn more sometime in future.
 
julia90 said:
FRENCH It conveys me Tenderness. It's elegant, i like its j (sweet sounds) and also the vocals (like you find in german and northern italian dialcts). But i don't like listening to music in french. Spanish it's way much better in songs for example.

SPANISH I like it, spanish music is popular in italy (latin american music, you often listen to it played usually is summer on the beaches, with songs like Vamos a la playa, Aserejé ah ehehé; Salsa etc..). It conveys me fierceness, but not as in german (it's actually pleasing to listen to it).

PORTUGUESE I prefer spanish to it. (spanish sounds way more clear and more "pure").. portuguese is....shhshshs..eo..eu..shs..eo...ao...eu..eu..eu

ENGLISH I like it it's what i call a round languages (i don't know why it conveys me something round and joyful). I'm crazy for American English accent, "No wayyyyy" "You are a *****!!!" it's very exagerated but i like it. i like it also when it's extremely nasal too.

GERMAN it conveys me Vigour, harshness. Ich liebe dich(dick lol) sounds harsh and not romantic.

I've read always that italian seems sung, happy etc.. but i don't know why??
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How do you define If a Language is more Pure?And what does that mean a Language being more pure then another?
 
Aesthetically the ones I like are not in order of preference: Italian, French and Spanish in Spain, Latin Spanish, Mexico and many others.

I like English because I love the English Pop, but now I'm learning English with the google translator, cheaper than a thousand English words, as I see it is more schematic or perhaps avoid further entanglement or power, it may be wrong through ignorance, maybe I'd learn it well because I do not like talking too much.

I also like the German, though a few years ago I had to cross a wire and started not to distinguish too well between German and Arabic. The Portuguese in the songs is beautiful, spoken is very intense, like a good cheese, I speak very much exhausted. I have heard foreigners pronounce better Spanish are the Greeks.

The Basque is not ugly at all. Other languages ​​derived from Latin, Galician, Catalan and Italian have appeared, but it was not, I think just horrible to hear, sorry.
 
Spanish is my favourite language though I do not speak it myself (soon, however, I will)

I am trying to learn German (had taken private lessons in it when I was younger + we did some in school), French and Japanese only because I am interested (who isn't) in the these cultures in general. French sounds gay and German and Japanese sound funny.

Chinese sounds annoying (I'm sorry guys!), Russian sounds mildly cool. Italian sounds fine as well but nothing to get too excited about! Same goes for Swedish and Norwegian.
 
I like Italian (especially Tuscan) for its pure and distinct sounds as well as for its musicality too. Greek and Albanian sound very exotic to my ears. English is my favourite, but I don't like American accent.
 
Can you elaborate how come Albanian sounds exotic to you? Isn't it your first language?
 
LeBrok said:
Can you elaborate how come Albanian sounds exotic to you? Isn't it your first language?
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Well, you're right LeBrok, Albanian is my first language and I was born and used to live in Toskan Albania up till 2005. Now I live in an area where is Gheg Albanian in use (more than 2/3 of Albanians are ghegs) whose vocabolary is mainly a monosyllabic one (it is unique in all IE languages). Believe me, it sounds quite an exotic one!
 
English-I've been learning for a long time 20 Years or more.I like the British English(Proper not chavs)and I like to read in Old English.
German and most of It's derived languages sound harsh to me ears.
Italian melodic.
Spanish(Castille) I listen to It to often:grin:I like the literature.I like the sound of Catalan and Galician.
Don't like the sound of French very much.
 
Boss said:
Spanish is my favourite language though I do not speak it myself (soon, however, I will)

I am trying to learn German (had taken private lessons in it when I was younger + we did some in school), French and Japanese only because I am interested (who isn't) in the these cultures in general. French sounds gay and German and Japanese sound funny.

Chinese sounds annoying (I'm sorry guys!), Russian sounds mildly cool. Italian sounds fine as well but nothing to get too excited about! Same goes for Swedish and Norwegian.
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LOL!! How does French sound "gay"? Hello Boss by the way :)
 
I like the German Language mostly because I know more about it than the others I half ass learned in military service. Plus I live in a German community with Street names like Sontag Weinbach and such I learned a lot of German from My Grandfather Schwarz. Most German Americans in my area spoke it in the house for many generations after coming here. My Grandfather is not fluent in it mostly due to his age group and WW2 but he knows a lot of it. His dad and Grandfather spoke it all the time. During would war 2 they leased German "Afrika Korp" Prisoners of war to work on the family's tobacco farm. And Grandfather said. His dad talked in German to them. Both of my neighbors to the home I own and grew up in spoke it fluently So German is the most contact I have with my European roots even though My blood contains the DNA From France England Scotland Germany. Plus who could pass up a local Bier Stube or Folk Fest. I did get to Germany 2 times once on the way to Iraq the other after a medical evacuation from Iraq to Landstuhl army medical center in 2008 I was on a stretcher did not get to enjoy it
 
Yes, I like the German language too L.D. but only have limited knowledge of it. I can pick my way through some things written in German but I`m afraid that`s not very good and of little use.
 
I wish I would have taken it in school but I did not I can understand more of it than I can write But it's use of for example Die Der Das I can count as fast in German as I can in English and I know lots of words. But not enough to function. I do not like Spanish "nothing against Spain" But here in the states they are cramming it down our throats to accommodate illegals coming from Mexico. America is a English speaking nation but it seems someone forgot
 
hope said:
LOL!! How does French sound "gay"? Hello Boss by the way :)
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Haha hello, I don't know how but it does. I can't explain it.
 
I am a native English speaker, I've learned French since I was 11, German since I was 12, Spanish in university and Italian for a year during university.

SPANISH - By far my most favourite foreign language. I love how you could teach Spanish pronunciation to an (intelligent) person in like 10 minutes, and they would never miss pronounce a word ever again. I adore the pronunciation of their consonants, they all seem to be softened-down versions of English ones. I love how D and T become near enough TH(at) and TH(in), how G becomes in words like agua, almost sounds like 'owwa'. Guatemala is the best way I can describe it, it ends up sounding like Wathaymala. I also think Spanish is the most beautiful sounding language especially in music. I think it has to do with their extremely short amount of vowel sounds so they just repeat the same ones over and over.
DISLIKE - I think this must just be because I'm English but I find their verb conjugation and use of things like the subjunctive an absolute NIGHTMARE! Also I hate the Spain-Spanish pronunciation of the soft C and Z and the harshness of soft G and J. I like it in (I don't know which country) South America where C/Z are like S and G/J are like H. Also gender, I really don't see what giving a door or a chair a gender achieves. Finally Spaniards talk fast!

GERMAN - I'm actually quite fond of this language, I was drawn to it first I guess because the simpler, beginner vocabulary is very similar to English. German is actually how I got in to etymology. I love the 'CH' sound in particular but just the general sound of it. I can see why people think it's ugly and by all means it's no Spanish, but I actually like the sound of it. Compared to other Germanic languages I think it sounds funky (Dutch sounds bloody awful and the Scandinavians really just sound alien to me). I also love how clear-sounding it is, you could hear a sound and 95% write it down correctly.
DISLIKE - Again because I'm English, the grammar. I do appreciate the relative simplicity of verb conjugation compared to say French or Spanish but back to the gender thing again, GERMAN HAS THREE grrrrr!! Also I would like to KILL the Dative, nominative, genitive and accusative.

FRENCH - I think I have a bit of a love hate relationship with French to be perfectly honest. To me it looks aesthetically pleasing, I like all the silent letters at the end of the words. I also LOVE how ridiculously easy it is to understand written French.
DISLIKE - I don't really understand why it got this reputation of being the most beautiful language, 'cause it ain't! I mean, by no means is it an ugly language on the whole. For me he 'R' sound and 'U' sound are particularly ugly in music, also I hate how they pronounce the final 'E' in songs, ugly. Also when spoken, I think more often than not it sounds pompous, pretentious and snobby, a bit like RP English. And again, the verbs man, why do they have to be so complicated! Finally I find it hard a lot of the time to understand it when spoken, a lot of time it seems very slurred and unclear.

ITALIAN - I took this subject as an extra option in my second year of university and boy do I regret it! I thought with its similarities to Spanish that I'd love it but I really just hated it, the pronunciation especially. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I didn't like it. Luckily though having studied Spanish and French, I found that I already knew basic Italian without even knowing it ^^.

MANDARIN - Literally sounds like the Martians have landed, sounds so weird and bumpy and awkward

MALAY - The only Asian language I've ever liked the sound of. Strangely it has a real European feel about it, but when either sung or spoken, it's music to my ears ;).

RUSSIAN - Sounds really really comical

SLAVIC LANGUAGES - They all sound really dirty and harsh to me, not nice at all. Up there with Dutch.

PORTUGUESE - To me they did the impossible, make a romance language sound 100% ugly, I think it's all the ZH and CH sounds and that harsh Slavic-like 'L'.....ugly

DUTCH - Ugliest looking and ugliest sounding language I've ever had the misfortune to come across. Nothing against the people of course, Dutch people by far the best speakers of English outside the UK/US.

ENGLISH - My native tongue and by far my most favourite language. I love how simple our conjugation is because I don't see the point in the complications of Latin-based languages, for me they don't achieve anything. Same with genders - pointless and cases - pointless. I love how we have so many tenses, means we can be so precise about things. Along with our rich vocab, it makes story telling that much more interesting and intriguing I think. I love how our spelling sometimes has no rules i.e. enough, tough, cough, borough, through etc. I like how English looks on paper, it certainly managed to inherit a lot of aesthetically eye-pleasing qualities from French. Also I believe English is superior when it comes to music. To me other languages only seem to be good in a specific genre, for example French rock sounds terrible and German ballads sound like a nightmare. English I find is good across the board (maybe because English speakers invented most types of modern music). I don't think it is necessarily the most beautiful sounding language but in music, I don't know, it just has that je-ne-sais-quoi, the open vowel sounds which we can drag out, the final consonant sounds we can drop and our high percentage of one syllable words. I'm just so proud that the language of people who live on a teeny tiny island, tucked away off Europe's coast, has come to dominate the world.
DISLIKE - Some UK Spelling. centre, litre etc - doesn't make sense to me. We got the word enter from the French too but we don't spell it entre. Also the word manoeuvre pisses me off.


LEAST FAVOURITE ACCENTS - The South African, Birmingham, Southern-US and Scottish accents, along with really harsh Australian accents. They all sound really ugly, I actually can't even listen to South Africans, it bothers me that much. To me they sound like foreign people who learned to speak English in Australia
MOST FAVOURITE ACCENTS - Geordie (very melodic, friendly and inviting), West Country, African-American (So expressive and frankly hilarious) and finally Jamaican.

Peace out Y



















 
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Wilhelm said:
Italian. Sounds like they are always singing, because all the words finish with the same intonation, and when they speak very fast sounds like they are complaining and angry.
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Really? I have never heard that Italian sounds angry, this is interesting.
 
First post!

Well, as a fairly advanced native English speaker I am clearly quite biased, but I will nevertheless make an attempt to come off somewhat fair with the languages I have studied.

Spanish
I think that Spanish should be made the universal language due to its simplicity of pronunciation, easy grammar, and ingrained beauty (as an American I can't comment on Spanish Spanish, but South American Spanish is fairly colloquial in the US). Though I honestly don't know of an easier language, Spanish does have "Don Quixote" (arguably the greatest work of literature yet) to speak of its capacity for the sublime.
Italian
Don't know it well, but it seems a bit prettier than Spanish and less "exclusive" than French. I'll be going to Rome soon so I should probably study it more.
Russian
This is the language of ambivalence for me. First off the bad: the vocabulary is very, very difficult for a native English speaker to learn. Now the good: I love it so much, I would speak it colloquially if everyone around me could understand because it has a "sincerity" that other languages don't seem to have (besides maybe Spanish). It also shares with English the body of outstanding literature, and for some reason it seems all the Russians I know are far more learned than Americans. Not sure why that is, perhaps something to do with upper-class immigration? It is complex grammatically, though it seems the verbs are a bit lacking as far as intricacy is concerned. This isn't really a bad thing, though. Overall, love Russian. Probably my second favorite contemporary tongue.
Latin
The language of the law! Latin is my favorite to read, my favorite to speak, my favorite to study and my favorite to have knowledge of (much of English vocabulary is Latin). It was the language of the intellectuals.Unfortunately, its students have surpassed the old magister himself so I don't really ever speak it with anybody. Tis rather fun to leave cryptic notes, however. I've always said that knowing whether a technical English term was Latin or Greek based was a matter of the following: Greek=fun sounding, Latin=powerful sounding. The most powerful empire ever (or maybe second if you are a Mongol fan) is echoed by the power of this ancient language. Though as an afterthought, nothing sounds more innocent...or perhaps more burlesque than some of the stories of the Roman family in "Lingua Latina." A truly great language that has stood the test of time through its influences.
French
Don't know much about French, though I've heard its easy to learn but very difficult to master. I think its sexy (think Cotillard) but in a much different way than Spanish. I think that it is typical American stereotype to classify the French as a passionate people, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of this viewpoint.
German
I just don't like German very much. The sound isn't too pretty, and thankfully as I think Germany's days as an intellectual and artistic center of the world are over. Economic, not so much, but English dominates it in this field anyway. English just seems to be the better, in my opinion, of the Germanic tongues. It doesn't help German's reputation that about half of Germans speak English. I only expect that number to grow.
English
I saved this for last, as it is my favorite and the one I have the deepest understanding of. The vocabulary is unmatched, the grammatical freedom is profound, and the worldliness is convenient. Its the best language to know, and though that may change, I'm sticking with it. Most of the best literature is in English (check various top 100 book lists). I won't say anything more about English, but that the more I learn other languages, the more clearly I see that English stands apart and above in flexibility and breadth. I'm getting redundant and sensationalist, so I'll just stop now.
 
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