If french sounds innately sinuous/pretentious to an english ear...is it the same for other..?
nationalities?
ie: does french sound sinuous/pretentious to swedes or germans or japanese to the same degree that it does to an english ear?
if you "get" my assertion that german is harsh and masculine sounding...and french is sinewy and feminine sounding...and english sits somewhere in between...youll see what im trying to get at.
i am asking, is it the character of the listeners language that determines how another language sounds as much as that language itself?
ie: on my masculine to feminine scale i think finnish and french are more alike.
now to a fin[s] ears, will they not perceive french as sounding as feminine and sinewy as it does to the english..because their language itself has more of a feminine sinewy sound?
==============================...
also is it the character of the people who evolve the language...or is it the language that evolves a nations character.
can you only be aware of the flavour of your own language, if you learn...
Answer:
every language has the potential to sound any way you want it. i am quite fond of languages, and i actually spend as much time as i can afford to analizing how they sound. i also speak german and can tell you it is very easy to make german sound very feminine. i also think french is sexy as hell, even though i speak maybe ten words of it, pretty much anything said in frech sounds classy. i dont think its terribly feminine at all. my favorite example is finnish. finnish is a very rolling language. ups and downs and all r's are rolled.if you are just speaking it it sounds very light and is actualy very fun to speak. you couldnt ever imagine it sounding threatening. but then if you hear an angry finnish woman yell, finnish is the scariest thing you will ever hear. every language has the potential to be whatever you want it to be depending on the situation.
I'm German, I speak both English and French. I have always liked English a great deal better although I'm good at both. English sounds melodic to me although I know that many people would disagree with that.
I think both the character/origin of the listener and the language itself determine the sound of it as well as the experiences the listenener has had with the language and the people who speak it.
English is a mixture of many languages such as French German etc etc. We as a mongrol race should strive to learn everybody elses languages.
Besides when I hear beer bellied, kebab fuelled birds talking on a Friday night I feel they make the german language seem very timid indeed.
England truly has become a nation of heathons and give in to apathy, proud well mannered Brittania my **!
Are you talking about how real people speak their languages or stereotypes, because I've heard regular French and German people talk and their French isn't necessarily sinuous or pretentious and their German isn't necessarily that masculine or harsh. Now when they speak English with their accents, it does seem to exagerate their manner of speech because of their inexperience with such a different system of language patterns. I think that English sounds "just right" to our ears because we are so used to its sound, to the point that some might even find it a bit boring in the sense that it is so ordinary to our ears (which also might explain why many people find accents attractive). Additionally, there is also "proper" ways of speech, which perhaps the "correct" way to speak French may sound more pretentious to us, similar to "Queen's English" or "BBC English" may sound more prim and proper than other English accents, and the type of speech we hear from foreign sources could be of that "proper" variety.
Now I'm not saying that all languages "sound" the same, but I don't think they sound that "extreme" to the same degree that one might think. I also think that the more one is exposed to a foreign language, the more our ears and brains get used it and can find the nuances that we can find in our native tongue.
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ie: does french sound sinuous/pretentious to swedes or germans or japanese to the same degree that it does to an english ear?
if you "get" my assertion that german is harsh and masculine sounding...and french is sinewy and feminine sounding...and english sits somewhere in between...youll see what im trying to get at.
i am asking, is it the character of the listeners language that determines how another language sounds as much as that language itself?
ie: on my masculine to feminine scale i think finnish and french are more alike.
now to a fin[s] ears, will they not perceive french as sounding as feminine and sinewy as it does to the english..because their language itself has more of a feminine sinewy sound?
==============================...
also is it the character of the people who evolve the language...or is it the language that evolves a nations character.
can you only be aware of the flavour of your own language, if you learn...
Answer:
every language has the potential to sound any way you want it. i am quite fond of languages, and i actually spend as much time as i can afford to analizing how they sound. i also speak german and can tell you it is very easy to make german sound very feminine. i also think french is sexy as hell, even though i speak maybe ten words of it, pretty much anything said in frech sounds classy. i dont think its terribly feminine at all. my favorite example is finnish. finnish is a very rolling language. ups and downs and all r's are rolled.if you are just speaking it it sounds very light and is actualy very fun to speak. you couldnt ever imagine it sounding threatening. but then if you hear an angry finnish woman yell, finnish is the scariest thing you will ever hear. every language has the potential to be whatever you want it to be depending on the situation.
I'm German, I speak both English and French. I have always liked English a great deal better although I'm good at both. English sounds melodic to me although I know that many people would disagree with that.
I think both the character/origin of the listener and the language itself determine the sound of it as well as the experiences the listenener has had with the language and the people who speak it.
English is a mixture of many languages such as French German etc etc. We as a mongrol race should strive to learn everybody elses languages.
Besides when I hear beer bellied, kebab fuelled birds talking on a Friday night I feel they make the german language seem very timid indeed.
England truly has become a nation of heathons and give in to apathy, proud well mannered Brittania my **!
Are you talking about how real people speak their languages or stereotypes, because I've heard regular French and German people talk and their French isn't necessarily sinuous or pretentious and their German isn't necessarily that masculine or harsh. Now when they speak English with their accents, it does seem to exagerate their manner of speech because of their inexperience with such a different system of language patterns. I think that English sounds "just right" to our ears because we are so used to its sound, to the point that some might even find it a bit boring in the sense that it is so ordinary to our ears (which also might explain why many people find accents attractive). Additionally, there is also "proper" ways of speech, which perhaps the "correct" way to speak French may sound more pretentious to us, similar to "Queen's English" or "BBC English" may sound more prim and proper than other English accents, and the type of speech we hear from foreign sources could be of that "proper" variety.
Now I'm not saying that all languages "sound" the same, but I don't think they sound that "extreme" to the same degree that one might think. I also think that the more one is exposed to a foreign language, the more our ears and brains get used it and can find the nuances that we can find in our native tongue.
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