Innate Beauty in Languages?

[Maquise]

I have a question for the playground: Do you think that there are certain traits that make a language more "beautiful" than other languages? Some languages seem to sound better than others when spoken. Is this consistent, or based on the native language of the listener? I know, for example, that a lot of people seem to consider Parisian French a beautiful language, though I am not particularly fond of it; I far prefer listening to Gaelic. I don't think I could say what English sounds like, being unable to separate the sounds of the words from their meaning. I don't have much background in linguistics, and would be interested in learning if there are any studies in this regard.

[Eldariel]

There are actually observable traits that make a language sound beautiful. However, they're not necessarily objective, though there are strong tendencies. A person's cultural background has a huge influence on how they perceive a language, as well as the cultural context of said language. For example, I kind of dislike High Standard French simply because I find the language planning and artificial shaping they've been doing for centuries - this naturally influences my perception of the language as well. Melodic languages tend to be perceived as beautiful in the western sphere of influence - Standard Swedish is an excellent example. Danes claim Swedes actually sing - though it's not exactly a compliment.

On the other end, particularly the individual sounds make a huge difference. For the sake of simplicity and familiarity, I'll try and use the English values for the letters even though they are quite inconvenient for any kind of cross-linguistic representation (hell, they barely work for English) - this topic doesn't really require IPA. Languages heavy on non-constricted consonants (nasals [n, m, etc.], approximants [l, r, etc.]) and voiced constricted consonants (v, b, d, etc.) in particular tend to be considered beautiful. Languages heavy on constricted, voiceless consonants (fricatives [f, s, etc.] and stops [p, k, t, etc.]) tend to be divisive. They tend to have a stronger sound which can either be intrepreted as a strong, sensual, alluring, or crude, distorted, nonlyrical. Of the more commonly known western languages, Standard Russian and High Standard German are good examples of such. I happen to be quite fond of both. Then there's also the matter of word length, particularly the flow of the word. I don't particularly like the sound of Finnish simply because of the number of long vowels and the clumsy intonation in various longer words. Finnish intonation and word stress is very flat while the languages that appeal to me tend to have a certain flow and rhythm to them.


Of course, when we delve a bit deeper into the linguistic landscape and begin to consider all the languages and particularly the dialectal variation, the number of options becomes overwhelming. I personally love Celtic languages - as did professor Tolkien for instance. Their soundscape is very beautiful - Tolkien compared them to the English word "cellar door", an English word commonly found phonetically aesthetically pleasing, and said the languages are full of such words. They do have their strength and voiceless constricted sounds, but at somewhat unusual locations and with a kind of a flow to them. This applies as much to Scottish Gaelic as Irish Gaelic or Welsh. Of course, every speech community has their own dialectal variation which further complicates matters.

But yes, there's certainly an inner beauty in languages at least far as people of certain cultural background go, much like with music and anything producing sound really.

EDIT: Missed the "studies"-part. There are some but I don't have the time to properly look them up for you at this very juncture. I might suggest you take a look at psychology instead of linguistics (or a field touching upon both such as cognitive linguistics, cognitive sciences or even aesthetics) - the perception of beauty tends to fall into that field, though it's naturally of interest to linguistics (well, phonetics) as well.

[Anonymouswizard]

Everyone's views will be different. For example I have no particular feelings one way or another on any type of French, but thing properly pronounced German sounds really cool (especially when not shouted), and my view that Mandarin Chinese is a beautiful language is partially what inspired me to learn it (the other reason is to visit my Chinese friends. There may be academic reasons for why I think this, but honestly the main reason I like Mandarin is because the four/five tones and the pause after every word gives it this nice rhythm.

[Comrade]

Danes claim Swedes actually sing - though it's not exactly a compliment.

Corollarily Swedes (and, well, pretty much everybody else, as far as I can tell) claim Danish sounds like a drunk person with a potato in their mouth trying to speak. I think it's quite beautiful, though, which I suppose attests that there isn't really an 'innate' beauty in languages that's consistent across the board. Everybody brings their own perspective to matters of aesthetic appreciation, moulded by cultural background, exposure to other cultures, and general life experiences, so I would be surprised if there were any studies indicating some consistent inveterate beauty to any given language.

[tantric]

it's not exactly beauty, but i love click languages. consider - bantu languages have no clicks. after the proto-zulus 'absorbed' several pygmy cultures that did use clicks, the zulus added clicks to their language. watch/listen to this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SVsxKCLmC4

[Fri]

Clicking language always fascinates me. As well as languages that uses other unstandard stuff like whistling and such. Shame that it's likely that most of them are going to extinct. Learning second language is hard enough without having to learn to whistle in specific tune!

[tantric]

try as i might - i can make the clicks, but i can't integrate them into words without 'stuttering'. i use these in my bantu setting, so i feel i ought to be able to pronounce them. i've formally studied spanish, french, japanese and swahili. of them, i like the sound of swahili the best. it's earthy and rich. listen to this guy...

mzungu speaking kiswahili

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy12jhf5kg8

i much prefer (haitian) kreyol to french. spanish depends - check out this video of accents from different countries (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F2mkQALAt4)....



i like mexican and chilean, but for me, castellano straight from madrid. i really don't like mandarin or other monosyllabic tone dependent languages - it's just discordant . i actually like spoken russian.

for structure, lojban is glorious. consider - lojban for 'talk' is 'tavla' defined as such: x1 talks to x2 about x3 in language x4. thus.. [I] tavla [you] [rpgs] [english]. 'go' and 'come' are 'klama' defined as x1 comes/goes to destination x2 from origin x3 via route x4 using means/vehicle x5. and it just gets better. logic!

[Red Fel]

For me, it's a certain type of rolling r sound. Frankly, I find most things you can do with an r, across multiple languages and dialects, to be fantastic; whether it's this particular 'err sound I hear in Chinese, or how the letter is pronounced in Japanese, or the sort of crunchy gruffness of the sound in German, I enjoy the various ways the letter is used.

But there's a particular, almost purring sound that always catches me. Surprisingly, I sometimes find it in English as well. For an example of what I mean, just listen to a recording of Eartha Kitt. Talking or singing, does not matter, give it a few minutes, you'll hear it. That sound, specifically, is something that just strikes me as wonderful, in any language.

So, yeah. For me, various r sounds make a language beautiful.

[ForzaFiori]

I find languages that flow (in my mind, Im thinking immediately of the romance languages - Italian and French more than Spanish or Romanian) to be more beautiful than the more gutteral languages like English, German, or most Slavic languages (Russian being the one exception, I love the sound of Russian). I haven't heard enough Gaelic or Scandinavian languages to really have an opinion on them. Eastern Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc) sound... Interesting to me, but I wouldn't really say I find them beautiful. I do find the various clicking languages incredibly interesting, but I think Swahili is probably the most beautiful of the African languages I've heard.

However - the beauty of the langauge doesn't correspond to my interest in them. I'd much rather learn German than French, and would learn Japanese over Swahili. I already know English (my native language) and a smattering of Italian and Spanish.

[Lemmy]

I don't think there's anything innately beautiful, as beauty itself is completely subjective. There are however, things (including languages) that innately contain traits that appeal to most people's sense of beauty.

When it comes to languages, I honestly have no idea. I think Italian is quite beautiful and German is pretty cool, while French and Spanish sound very unappealing to me... English is fun to use because it's very simple and dynamic. Portuguese, OTOH, sounds completely neutral and bland to me, most likely because that's my native language.

I honestly have no idea why I think of any of these language the way I do... So maybe it's arbitrary or based on something else? I couldn't answer if my life depended on it...

[BWR]

Danes claim Swedes actually sing - though it's not exactly a compliment.


They say the same about Norwegian. They also think we sound happy all the time.
A few Chinese people I came across said Norwegian sounded like dogs barking. :smallconfused:


Corollarily Swedes (and, well, pretty much everybody else, as far as I can tell) claim Danish sounds like a drunk person with a potato in their mouth trying to speak.

We say the same.



I think it's quite beautiful, though,
I'd cut down on the moonshine, if I were you. :smallwink:

Danish is a pain to understand, and every Dane I've met who I've had to ask repeat something has tried to increase their clarity by speaking faster and less clearly, rather than slower and clearer.

[Vinyadan]

To me, French sounds like the most beautiful language, and by a very wide margin on any other language. It's as if it had some sort of innate metric system; maybe I just like how the accent is usually at the end of words, and how many consonants were killed on the road to today's language.

I guess people tend to give certain attributes to certain sounds. So Walter Scott, in a page of Ivanhoe which I find rather comical:

In short, French was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even of justice, while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other.

I find German somewhat goofy, because of the "I have young been" system, although that's only in translations to German: in the spoken language, and generally in texts conceived in German, it's OK. I don't have any feeling about English, but there's at least one Scottish accent which feels like it's quietly drawing your attention to its unusual vowels.

As for ancient languages, it's very hard to tell. Latin in and of itself isn't IMO as beautiful as Greek, but Horace, read in the right way, is incredibly beautiful even if you don't understand what's being said. Sanskrit reads quite well. Hittite and Gothic not really, they're hard to pronounce. But this is also the difference between languages you like to listen to and languages you like to speak. Adding to that, there's the fact that we don't know the accents with which these languages were spoken.

Accents vs languages/dialects also make a lot of difference. A local accent changes the way a language is pronounced, possibly without changing the phonemes, but still in a very perceivable way. A non local accent is even stronger, like an Italian talking French, or a Chinese talking German. Some accents are then felt as attractive, while others are felt as whining, hard, or childish or unintelligible, depending on the person you ask.

[Donnadogsoth]

I don't think any language has any objective innate beauty related to its sound, but languages do have objective beauty related to their capacity for profound and impassioned content.

[Comrade]

Danish is a pain to understand

As a non-native speaker (or, more accurately at this point, learner) of the language, I definitely don't disagree. It's a little infuriating at times how the consonants just decide 'I don't feel like being pronounced' and the pace at which it's usually spoken doesn't help one bit. Still, I think it's a rather lovely language, and if I can get it down, I should have no problem leapfrogging onto Swedish and Norwegian.

[T-Mick]

As for ancient languages, it's very hard to tell. Latin in and of itself isn't IMO as beautiful as Greek, but Horace, read in the right way, is incredibly beautiful even if you don't understand what's being said.

I'm incredibly biased, but Greek is a nasty language. It sounds like blowing air over the top of a bottle, and then a string of /kʰ/. But every now and then, it hits me hard. My favorite line of poetry is from the Odyssey. In Roman script: "En spesi glaphyroisi lilaiomene posin einai." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOvVWiDsPWQ&t=2m44s)

Funny you mention Horace, my sig is a Horace (mis)quote. He's mostly just a grumpy old man, it's hard to imagine his lines as beautiful (They are). He's notoriously difficult to translate, because he was deliberately writing in a convoluted style to be an @$$.

Language beauty for me is a particular thing. I like back vowels quite a bit more than front; they give a word a solidness that I find pleasing. Take the word "Modus." You drop that sucker on your foot, it's going to hurt. Compare it to "Monasterium." Still very heavy, but longer, and if you tried to break it over your knee, it'd snap between "Monaster-" and "-ium."

But more important than word sound, for me, is how terse a language is. "Terse" is a good word, by the way. For instance, older languages tend to be much more direct in both thought and diction (not word length, necessarily) than younger ones. I find directness very aesthetically pleasing. Compare "I hope you have a good trip" to "Fare well."

Also, I like words that have reference to images. For instance, "Lethargic" is a perfectly fine word, but it doesn't make a picture for me. "Sluggish" means pretty much the same thing, but it makes you think of slugs.

Another thing. Word's should sound like what they mean. Sluggish is a great example, but look at the word "morose." Morose sounds slow; it's the back vowels. If a person were morose, he would be sad, yes, but probably a slow kind of sad. Which is exactly what the word means. Perfect word. If only it had reference to a picture. Another word that sounds like itself is "ash." "Ash" feels like ash on your tongue.

My ideal language (haven't found it yet) would combine the antique tendency to directness with the short, punchy words English puts out sometimes, plus would have lots of words that sound very firmly themselves. Preferably a stress accent. I don't like pitch things. Looking at you Ancient Greek.