vijayjohn wrote:Vlürch wrote:Of course with Swedish there's a political/historical aspect to it that influences my view, but it can't be all there is to it since I don't like how Norwegian sounds either.
Does Norwegian sound especially different from Swedish?
Not much, but I'd say it's somewhat less "bouncy" and "jolly" or whatever, like it sounds more serious and less like its speakers are always drunk and looking for someone to have sex with. I mean, Swedish sounds like the cast of Geordie Shore. Norwegian
can sound like that too, but more often it sounds like they're already hungover. Danish, on the other hand, sounds like its speakers are on the verge of passing out...
vijayjohn wrote:You like Björk?
Of course!
vijayjohn wrote:Germanic languages just aren't my cup of tea overall.
What about English?
Well, English has so many loanwords from French and Latin, etc. that it's not nearly as bad. Of course, it's also the one I've been exposed to the most and the only one I can actually understand and speak, so... I don't know, even the stuff I'd find annoying in other languages can sound nice in English.
vijayjohn wrote:a mix of Arabic and Somali, so probably Somali Arabic
I'm not so sure about that. FWICT Somali Arabic = Djibouti Arabic = Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic = Southern Yemeni Arabic.
Well, I don't really know anything about Yemeni Arabic, so it could have been that if it has more similarities to Somali than other forms of Arabic. It could also have simply been that they spoke a mix of Arabic and Somali, although I don't know why they'd have done that... or maybe it was just Somali but there was a higher proportion of Arabic vocabulary than usual, making it sound more like Arabic? I've heard Somali enough to be pretty confident in my ability to tell it apart from other languages, but it could've been that they were speaking about medical stuff, in which case it'd make sense for there to be more Arabic loanwords, and although I couldn't understand what the words meant, I could pick up that they originated from Arabic...?
Lur wrote:Heh, it looks and sounds cute. I even find the reduced variety of consonants kind of interesting. I imagine the perceived cuteness of it is invisible to Finns.
Finnish? Cute? Sure, it has a lot of cute words, but it also has a lot of ugly words that for the most part aren't ugly in the way that makes them simultaneously cool; there are words like that too, but the majority of ugly words are just plain ugly. I also think whether it sounds absolutely cute or absolutely horrible depends on the speaker more than with a lot of languages, like the exact pronunciation of /s/ and /r/ and whatnot, probably due to the small phonemic inventory meaning the sounds that can sound cute or ugly depending on the speaker are all over the place either way. The way nouns and adjectives decline in the same way is also pretty annoying, even if it's practical and probably makes it easier to learn for foreigners.
Anyway, I've actually grown to like Finnish myself. I still dislike how its phonemic inventory is the smallest in Europe and how much it has been influenced by IE languages, but well.
Lur wrote:I've also read Finns not liking that one either, so...
I can't speak for all Finns, but my reason for not really liking Estonian in practice is that it sounds way too much like drunk Finnish and/or broken Finnish spoken by Russian immigrants who have yet to learn how vowel harmony works, etc. In theory, it's an interesting language that I
should like, but... I just can't. I hate feeling that way about it because they're our closest relatives with an independent country (and AFAIK they like Finland and consider Finns their relatives, unlike Hungarians), etc. Then again, not liking a language doesn't automatically mean not liking its speakers, so yeah.