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Do any languages sound "ugly" to you? Why?
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June 1st, 2011
What about “harsh”? Also, what languages sound “pretty” to you?
Recently I’ve been looking up YouTube videos of news reports in various languages in order to hear a good sample of the language (news reports and their constant talking are a good way to find such samples). I was looking at some Vietnamese videos and I saw comments saying that Vietnamese was interesting, but ugly. I saw several different comments, none of them against the Vietnamese themselves, but just making it clear that Vietnamese is an ugly language.
As a linguist-in-training, it’s hard for me to think of any language as sounding “ugly”. I certainly love the sound of certain languages that I am more interested in like French, Turkish, Latin, and Japanese (and recently I’ve been listening to Thai music and I love the sound of the language), but it’s hard for me to think of any language as sounding “ugly”.
Is it the amount of consonant clusters? Nasal consonants and vowels? Use of tones? Sheer difference from English and other languages you know? What makes a language sound pretty and what makes one sound ugly?
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