Ugliest language

[mōdgethanc]

I really really didn't like Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Tagalog, or Malay/Indonesian, Korean and Tagalog were alright, and Teochew surprised me, I like it in theory, but listening to samples, it's terrible!

Other way around for me: I assumed Shanghaiese would sound terrible, but it actually wasn't bad.

I also love the sound of Japanese and think anyone who doesn't is nuts. It's just so smooth and flowing. The exception might be a high-pitched girl's voice.

I actually adore the vowel reduction, it's so sexy. I remember, in a Deolinda video, someone shouts /ˈmuzɨkɐ ˈmuzɨkɐ/!, and I was totally sold. I also really dislike the alveolarization of stops like /d t/ in BP, verdade /veɾˈdadʒi/ hurts my ears. The other big thing I like, is that they go along with the lenition of voiced stops intervocalically, like Spanish. /vɛɾˈð̞að̞ɨ/, muuuch better.

I'm inclined to say that both varieties are awful in their own way. But Brazilian is awful in a way I can tolerate better.

[Sirach]

I can not stand Vietnamese or Cantonese at all... although Taiwanese Mandarin and Thai are quite lovely. Beijing dialect of Mandarin just sounds pretentious.

Dutch and Danish are very harsh to my ears, and English is just plain ugly. However, German and especially Swedish are very sweet to hear.

Hawai'ian and Tahitian have become completely annoying to my ears, but in contrast Samoan and Maori sound quite pleasant and sweet. Even Fijian is a very smooth language.

Certain Spanish accents and Brazilian Portuguese are plain ugly to hear to me, but I love Iberian Spanish and continental Portuguese, both very beautiful.

Arabic, Somalian and Hebrew are very harsh to my ears...

Punjabi is very ugly, annoying and sounds like Hindi but drunk, and Bengali is okay. Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian are sweet altogether. Tamil and Telugu sound even sweeter!

Mongolian is completely harsh to the ears.

The Westcoast BC aboriginal languages all sound ugly to me. But the Inuit and Cree dialects are very nice to listen to.

[Mutusen]

English is just plain ugly.

Do you find your own mother tongue ugly? Personaly I couldn't say whether mine is beautiful or ugly; I've always spoken French and it just sounds normal to me. It's hard to imagine how people who don't speak it perceive it.

[''']

when you hear a movie in your language form the next room but haven't yet realised that that's what it is, that's what your language sounds like. I think magyar would sound harsh to a lot of foreigners.

[null]

Cantonese
Vietnamese
Wu
German
Russian (plus all slavic languages)
Hindi
Korean

[Quevenois]

Hungarian sounds sweet to my ears.

[mōdgethanc]

I can not stand Vietnamese or Cantonese at all... although Taiwanese Mandarin and Thai are quite lovely. Beijing dialect of Mandarin just sounds pretentious.

I agree. My Chinese tutor is from Taiwan and I like her accent a lot better. Beijing dialect just sounds ridiculous with its constant érhuà.

when you hear a movie in your language form the next room but haven't yet realised that that's what it is, that's what your language sounds like. I think magyar would sound harsh to a lot of foreigners.

Not harsh, but it does sound very funny. The stress is always on the first syllable and there are lots of front rounded vowels and postalveolar sounds. That's how I know it's Hungarian. Oh, and the palatal stops it's famous for.

[Mongol]

I've been able to hear Chechen on globalrecordings.net, and it sounds like just about the harshest sounding language I've ever heard, though fascinating to listen to. It's very explosive and abrupt sounding, and sounds as though the speaker had a bad attack of hiccups because of the many ejective consonants and harsh velar sounds.
It also sounds like a tape recording of some one speaking some language backwards !
It sounds more like Klingon than a human language. Still,it's mesmerizing.
Circassian sounds as though the speakers were talking with their mouths full of food !

[Johanna]

Both Polish and Norwegian use the unvoiced velar fricative

Nah, Norwegian uses the unvoiced postalveolar fricative, the unvoiced retroflex fricative, and the unvoiced palatal fricative, but not the unvoiced velar one.

[Satsuma]

I think that any language can sound bad, depending on the person. German sounds the least appealing to my ears.

Beijing dialect just sounds ridiculous with its constant érhuà.

I love erhua!
我爱儿化！

[Siegel]

spanish
chinese
japanese
flemish
swiss german

[Sirach]

Do you find your own mother tongue ugly? Personaly I couldn't say whether mine is beautiful or ugly; I've always spoken French and it just sounds normal to me. It's hard to imagine how people who don't speak it perceive it.

I have no idea. I was born and raised in English, with Tagalog in the background of things, so I heard both languages. I'm used to hearing English and Tagalog, and I still hold the opinion that both are not the most gorgeous sounding languages in the world.

The amount of vowels and vowel combinations in English are crazy... and the continuous presence of b, d, and g in Tagalog make me go crazy.

But there is that sense of exoticism that may make a language sound interesting... French used to be exotic to me, but as I ended up making French immersion friends, going to QC for two months, listening to the language, etc. it just sounds... normalised. The element of exoticism in French of which I perceived as sensual and romantic disappeared on me, lol.

En particulier quand on parle le joual la...

[Sirach]

I agree. My Chinese tutor is from Taiwan and I like her accent a lot better. Beijing dialect just sounds ridiculous with its constant érhuà.

I have forgotten all my Mandarin save basic phrases like: "Qing3 zuo4. Qing3 he1 cha2!" Hahaha!

But I used to annoy my Mandarin professor from Beijing in my first year of university when I spoke with a Taiwanese accent, collapsing all my chi, zhi, shi, to ci, zi, and si. And no 'er', or 'dianr' but 'dianli'. Taiwanese is not only easier on the tongue, but kinder to my ears, lol.

[linguoboy]

I agree. My Chinese tutor is from Taiwan and I like her accent a lot better. Beijing dialect just sounds ridiculous with its constant érhuà.

But I used to annoy my Mandarin professor from Beijing in my first year of university when I spoke with a Taiwanese accent, collapsing all my chi, zhi, shi, to ci, zi, and si. And no 'er', or 'dianr' but 'dianli'. Taiwanese is not only easier on the tongue, but kinder to my ears, lol.

I also had a Taiwanese instructor (actually a native of Nantong 南通 in Jiangsu). This caused some difficulties for many of my classmates because of her inconsistent attempts to distinguish the retroflex series. (She seemed to hypercorrect as often as merge.) But I appreciated the fact that she tolerated my saying 哪裡？ instead of 哪兒？. (I do say nǎr sometimes, but only the way I do yìdiǎnr--i.e. as a joke.)

[Lietmotiv]

Arabic,Danish,Polish,Hungarian,Turkish,Hebrew.

[Czwartek]

Both Polish and Norwegian use the unvoiced velar fricative

Nah, Norwegian uses the unvoiced postalveolar fricative, the unvoiced retroflex fricative, and the unvoiced palatal fricative, but not the unvoiced velar one.

I'm sure I've heard the voiceless velar fricative in the word ikke in some dialect, but I could be mistaken.

[Formiko]

Arabic,Danish,Polish,Hungarian,Turkish,Hebrew.

I find that Hungarian has a Russian sound..but a different cadence.

[Lietmotiv]

I find that Hungarian has nothing to do with Russian,nor the words,nor the way it sounds

[ILuvEire]

Both Polish and Norwegian use the unvoiced velar fricative

Nah, Norwegian uses the unvoiced postalveolar fricative, the unvoiced retroflex fricative, and the unvoiced palatal fricative, but not the unvoiced velar one.

I'm sure I've heard the voiceless velar fricative in the word ikke in some dialect, but I could be mistaken.

I think you're thinking of maybe a voiceless palatal fricative. I've heard that in words like ikke.

[Michael]

But there is that sense of exoticism that may make a language sound interesting... French used to be exotic to me, but as I ended up making French immersion friends, going to QC for two months, listening to the language, etc. it just sounds... normalised. The element of exoticism in French of which I perceived as sensual and romantic disappeared on me, lol.

En particulier quand on parle le joual la...

The exact same with me and Portuguese. Before when I only heard Brazilians speak and Portuguese sing, it just sounded like gibberish to me..

Nowadays Brazilian Portuguese literally sounds similar to its sister French, especially when you consider the consistency of that sound which is like a Parisian r; of a slightly different variation of those nasal sounds we associate with French; of the addition of 2+ simple affricates (dʒ+tʒ); and finally, of the loss of the final -r! Yay! Which makes me love the songs of Fafá De Belém (pron., fafah jee behley^m)! (Not really because of that!)

Now I love European Portuguese and its long literary history, longer general history, and especially its fado, but as the Onion says, it really just sounds like people speaking Spanish with their mouth full of olives! They need to speak slowly! And enunciate! (The Brazilians enunciate too much perhaps!)