What's the most beautiful language in the world?

I like Italian. Armenian is also nice, although much less-heard.

Vietnamese sounds peculiar, but I've developed an ear for it. (See link.) To my ear, it sounds just about as far from English as one can get.

Even though I know a little Chinese and lived in China for a year, I really dislike the sound of Mandarin. It's grating and annoying.

Latvian. I love it because it manages to sound Slavic, Germanic and Romance all at the same time.

I also love Japanese, one of the few East Asian languages that actually sound nice.

The romance language are the most beautiful: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian.

My personal favorite is probably the Brazilian dialect of Portuguese.

No, French is the most flowing.

French without a doubt. Next is Spanish

French is overrated. It does sound nice but only in very small doses. And it sounds better in movies and music than it does in real life.

French

Portuguese

Turkish

English

Arabic

Another vote for Armenian, and would add Georgian as well. Both feature extremely beautiful alphabets as well.

French only!

Spanish

Italian

I vote for Italian - men sound so damn sexy

Italian or French.

Never, ever Portuguese. That is the ugliest sound one can make outside of some indecipherable (to me) Asian language(s).

Español sin duda

french girl here, the grammar is awfull, if you don't master it, writing french becomes tiresome, and you're considered a moron if you make grammar mistake in your email as an adult. (I had to think twice on how to write "tout" or "tous" in the signature...)

Cherokee

Dutch.

Maybe Dutch men, r21. But I don't think any Germanic language will ever win a "most beautiful" trophy

I love Japanese. French can be but it depends on the speaker.

Swedish and French.

French is also a "gay" language, so it's amusing when straight men who speaks French are seemingly unaware that they come across as gay just because they're speaking French.

Greek, koukla, Greek

Sign

R24 WHAT? french is gay sounding? I knew British sound gay with their accent but I had no idea we also sounded gay?!?

Gay baby boomers would not have been caught dead not taking at the very least two years of high school French. I did that plus two more in college.

Moi, ne parle pas français? Es-tu sérieux?

Which British accent sounds gay, the posh public school boy one? Because a Northern accent sounds like they’d rip out your kidneys and fry them for breakfast.

I suppose French is rather feminine. It’s not a loud or guttural accent.

As someone who was brought up speaking fluent Greek, I didn't appreciate how the well Greek words properly expressed the meaning until I was older. Most translations to other languages fall short. As for linguistic beauty though, French is the most beautiful language.

My family is from the North of France, the chtimi/picard accent is not very sexy.

Music 🎼 🎶

French, but I'm biased as my Mémé was from Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Yeah is someone says a "British accent sounds gay", they are clearly only speaking of that particular posh Southern accent.

R34 - imagine my predicament: a posh Surrey accent combined with gay voice. There was no hiding in the closet for me!

Polynesian languages are all vowels so they win. Duh.

News in Hawaiian

To me, all British accents sound gay.

Once I began watching Bollywood flicks, I began to find the sound of Hindi music to my ears. Literally, since I could sing along phonetically with the catchy songs. The language, to my ear, lacks many of the unattractive sounds of many other languages.

This northern dongboy sounded gay enough for me.

A lot of the male American millenial aged podcasters sound gay to me. Americans over 40 don’t.

French is lovely. Greek sounds very harsh and unpleasant.

Was it on the dick cavett show that richard burton demurred when the host said German was ugly. He launched into Shakespeare in German. It was beautiful.

Greek??? Um, no - French.

Italian

Welsh

Klingon

Italian, then Russian

R46 is hilarious!

Welsh is as ugly as a clear plastic bag filled to the brim with assholes.

Welsh can be beautiful r49

French sing by Shakira (her spanish is good too)

Brazilian Portuguese

R51 Ah non!! Merci mais non.

R53 Ses publicités de merde...

Français. Catherine Deneuve et les croissants.

I've done a lot of choral singing and Latin is the most beautiful language to sing.

I, too, prefer the language of the Greeks. Specifically as transcribed relating to Sappho.

French, Italian, Spanish, in that order.

French

It pains me to say this, but Russian is beautiful.

German, but I have anger issues so that’s probably why I find it so soothing.

I presume you were drunk or high at the time you were listening, r60.

R19 c'est "Tout". It's an adjective and agrees with the noun which follows. Chalamet has the sexiest accent in French.

r56 Except no one really knows for sure how Latin is supposed to be pronounced.

Worst language: Mexican!

TREMENDOUS language: American!

Portuguese

Swedish

The first time I heard it, it was two teenagers talking and it kinda sounded like rewinding a tape backwards, but later I heard a 6 year old kid and his father talking and it was just lovely.

OP you haven't been to Greece have you? Most people would completely disagree with you about Greeks....warm, generous, opinionated yet pretty chill. The language doesn't always sound beautiful, when spoken softly and sung can be sublime.

I think we would all agree that every language is beautiful when spoken with kindness, gentleness, and, perhaps, love. The only exception is Dutch, of course.

r48 I hate to agree with you but Russian is indeed beautiful.

Maybe the Russians around me in Brooklyn speak some word dialect but it never sounds beautiful.

Sylvie Vartan est Irresistiblement!

Hands down the Romance languages are the most beautiful. Por ejemplo - yo quiero cafe - it sounds so much better than I want coffee.

And I discovered that Spanish is heavily influenced by Arabic, whilst Italian which shares many cognates with Spanish is closer to the pure Latin of old days.

I'm with you, OP. Greek. Then Italian

To my ears Finnish flows beautifully too.

Most of the words in Italian end in vowels, and most of the words in French end in vowel sounds, so they're both very musical and flow beautifully.

Not French, it's too nasal.

Italian, Italian, Italian. The language of opera. Also, they speak with their hands.

Irish (Gaeilge) can be soothing when sung.

Only one mentioned English - but I vote for namely "The Queen's English" - no hackneyed cockneyed, Australian, Liverpool offshoots that sound ghastly and unintelligible.

Xhosa

Elvish from LOTR is also lovely

Welsh can be beautiful [R49]

No it can't.

Yes it can, philistine @ r82

No it can't, syphilitic imbecile r83. Welsh sounds like English spoken backwards.

Cymrophobe r84

Welsh is BEAUTIFUL

R85=twmffat

R86 ugly language.

Russian. It’s very melodic.

[quote] Only one mentioned English - but I vote for namely "The Queen's English" - no hackneyed cockneyed, Australian, Liverpool offshoots that sound ghastly and unintelligible.

I just recently watched some interviews with this late British book editor. It's not affected, it's just clear and pleasant to the ear.

Somebody did mention German, but I would add that it would be the Viennese dialect. The Hamburg is abrasively gutteral.

Swedish

Quechua.

Ukrainian

R63 zuuuuut! je retourne à Projet Voltaire.

Occitan

Enhlish of course course. Especially old English circa 500-1100

Pig Latin

Persian is lovely.

Malay

R95, ce n'est pas grave. L'important, c'est de s'être posé la question.

Langue Doc

Ukrainian, French, Farsi.

Albanian

French

Caribbean or Irish English

Whan that Aprille with her shoures soote...

New Lesbianese

r98 = Rose Nylund

Polish

Let me just back up R86's truth with some more irrefutable evidence...

Say no to Ioan Gruffudd, I dare any one of you. Can't do it, can you? Too beautiful.

R42 Very true. Greek is an ugly language. French and Italian are really the most beautiful.

I nominate Bengali, japanese, possibly arabic, and Mid-atlantic american english

Arabic is one ugly tongue. Too many guttural and harsh sounds.

Italian has a charming way to speak about sex and love. When you translate it into French or English the word equivalents and turns of phrase are so unexpected. So the language is pretty, but the thoughts are pretty, too.

Otherwise French is the best but only French people who have charm. There are charmless French in abundance who ruin the potential of the language. It doesn't have much to do with educational level. Its a quest of whether they have he poetry to keep the sounds moving and pleasant. Portuguese is not attractive. I do like Spanish from Spain.

Liverpudlian English. I am sure that god sounds like one of the beatlrs.

Beatles

Spanish from Spain is yet another ugly language. It sounds like Greek..........terrible.

American English from the southern states, especially Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina.

Caribbean English is also beautiful.

R119 Caribbean English sometimes sounds very brutal. It depends where in the Carribean. The St Lucian accent is cool because many people speak English and French there.

R116 I doubt it. Scouse is so damn ugly. The Beatles all sounded like British hillbillies.

Ch'ti

Italian hands-down !

The Southern accent that was specific to the low country of South Carolina and Tidewater in Virginia was quite beautiful. Not twangy. It is almost extinct.

French, Italian second.

The most beautiful accent in English to me is educated Kenyan.

Italian! Superior in everything!

One of the few languages I can't listen to is the Greenlandic one, because it features a strange sound that sounds like the speaker is spitting or has a mouth full of saliva or something. It would actually sound nice without that particular sound.

To my ears, French. And various versions of English. Portuguese. Yeah Romance languages.

R1 - that's not Mandarin you old troglodyte; it's Vietnamese.

The most beautiful language would be Irish, sounds like they are singing.

And the ugliest one would be Vietnamese and Russian.

R129, did you read R1's post? He said it was Vietnamese.

Swedish-very sing song

Scottish English is pretty cool. I love hearing it.

R129 Irish is one ugly fucking language along with Albannach(Scottish Gaelic). French and Italian are beautiful languages, the Celtic ones sound terrible.

[quote]Scottish English is pretty cool. I love hearing it.

I don't.

English spoken well sounds very nice. Kelly Osbourne and her MOM.

Russian is very beautiful. Very flowing and schlushy.

Yiddish.

Japanese, especially when spoken by a woman.

Russian, both lyric and muscular .

Dutch irritates the fuck out of me. The sounds are close enough to English that I feel I should be able to understand it. I can't block it out like I would an unintelligible language, but I can't understand it either.

Well I guess that qualifies as beautiful...

Easy question -Italian, hands down.

Down where?

R139, so true. It’s very frustrating!

Italian!

I'm learning a few phrases of Russian to speak with a Ukrainian girl at work who I think, while so happy to be living here, is missing the language connection a bit. It's actually a really lovely sounding language (and I think Ukrainian, which is her second language is even lovelier).

I heard some Croatian women on a train once and thought that was such a delightful sounding language.

Ebonics. Axe me why.

The interesting thing about Ask vs Aks is that they have both been in use for centuries. In Old English, the verb was both "acsian" and "ascian". Eventually, one was deemed "proper" when language began to be written down. The confusing of "sk" with "ks" sounds is pretty understandable too.

Venetian.