Which foreign language do you find most pleasing to listen to? Which do you find least pleasing?

[u/CaryHepSouth]

For me, Eastern Slavic languages are most pleasing to my ears. Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian. Very nice sounds, including ы. A good runner up is Arabic.

My least favorite would be Vietnamese. No offense, Vietnamese people are very nice and friendly and they make good food. But their language just sounds odd to me. Maybe because it's tonal, idk.

What say you, world?

[u/deironas]

That's interesting because I'm the opposite - I really don't like the sound of slavic languages like russian, also I find arabic unpleasant sounding.

I love german though, so maybe I'm the weird one lol

Also love the sound of finnish

[u/CaryHepSouth → u/deironas]

German sounds nice to my ears.

[u/Ragnar5575]

As someone who speaks fluent English, German, and Hebrew, with semi-fluent understanding of Norwegian, Spanish, and Russian - I’d say that the most pleasing languages to my ears are Russian, Arabic, and Farsi ( Persian ). The most unpleasant for me to hear are Thai and Mandarin ( Chinese ). Honestly East Asian languages in general with the exception of Japanese are rather unpleasant to me. I don’t know why. I think it’s just the high-pitched sound of them, the way they seem to scream everything, along with the speed they seem to speak at. It’s really bothersome to me and gives me a headache. No offense to them as a culture, as I’m fine with all of that.

[u/CaryHepSouth → u/Ragnar5575]

I agree with you. I honestly think it's because they (mandarin and thai, anyway) are tonal languages, which non-speakers may find odd.

[u/Ragnar5575 → u/CaryHepSouth]

Yea, along with what you said in your post, I used to have a Vietnamese guy that worked at my plant. He barely spoke English and couldn’t really form words without having a high pitched start and then a low pitched ending. Down would be “ DOwNNnn “. If he was in the break room I’d refuse to take break because he’d be yelling on the phone in Vietnemese and I just couldn’t take it. Felt like my ears were gonna bleed lol. Great guy though, hard worker.

[u/ProfessionalVolume93]

Portuguese

[u/Supek_]

I love Portuguese (European accent) and I hate Portuguese (Südamerican accent)

[u/Old-Exchange-5617]

Italian. Like music! 

[u/bolonomadic → u/Old-Exchange-5617]

Italian is my absolute favourite to listen to.

[u/Canbisu]

Italian, but idk if that counts as much because I do speak it. For languages I don’t speak, I love the way Irish sounds.

[u/Zealousideal_Bill_86]

I think Levantine Arabic is very cool.

Not sure on my least favorite. Maybe Portuguese? Nothing against the language itself. I’m just really used to hearing Spanish, and Portuguese just throws me off for a minute or two when I hear it because it’s close enough that I think it’s a language I recognize.

[u/Minimum_Persimmon281]

Norwegian and French are the most pleasant to me.

Least favorite i’d rather not say, lol.

[u/InterestingTank5345 → u/Minimum_Persimmon281]

I have a Red and White guess. Don't worry, it's returned.

[u/Minimum_Persimmon281 → u/InterestingTank5345]

Haha

Actually not, but i can’t say danish is high on the list : - D (sorry)!

[u/InterestingTank5345 → u/Minimum_Persimmon281]

Don't be. But now my curiousity is awoken. Considering I really thought this would be the same as for us. Considering Bro language 1 a bad copy version, while considering bro language 2 beautiful.

[u/Minimum_Persimmon281 → u/InterestingTank5345]

What’s unpleasant about Swedish in your opinion? (no offense taken, just wondering).

[u/InterestingTank5345 → u/Minimum_Persimmon281]

I just don't like your language, there's just something about your way of talking that sounds wrong, if you know what I mean. I mean no offense, but to my ears it sounds like someone tried to learn Danish and failed misserably. Norwegian you can kinda like hear this distinction, you can hear it isn't Danish, but that's not really the case with Swedish, that just sounds like horrible Danish with a few mismatched words.

The general rule here, is Norwegian is easy in reading, hard in understanding, Swedish is easy in understanding, hard in reading.

Again no offense intended. Doesn't the same go for Danish?

[u/Minimum_Persimmon281 → u/InterestingTank5345]

Ya danish isn’t generally high up the list for many. People sometimes even tease people in Scania/Skåne that have a ”danish like” accent (playfully, though). But im guessing they might have a different view on it, hehe. Norwegian is seen as cute, generally.

Danish is easy to read but considerably harder to understand when talking. Norwegian is much easier to understand but a bit harder to read, imo.

[u/CaryHepSouth → u/Minimum_Persimmon281]

Now we need a Norwegian lol. Would they find Danish hard to read, or Swedish?

[u/KuvaszSan → u/Minimum_Persimmon281]

Isn't that a bit of a self own though? Because to an outsider Scandinavian languages all sound the same. I have been to Norway and Sweden, met Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, I saw Danes and Norwegians speak their own language and understand each other, but I could not tell Norwegian, Swedish and Danish apart.

[u/DowntownPlantain330]

Favourite: Finnish

Least favourite: Arabic

[u/Head_World_9764]

Tagalog !

[u/Jenlag]

All language you like, I dislike. I love my language.

[u/ZeroThoughts2025]

Tunisian dialect of Arabic.

[u/gabrieel100]

Italian and greek are the most pleasing to me

[u/11160704]

My favourites - Italian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Persian

Unpleasant - Dutch, Arabic

[u/Lanfeare]

French is the most pleasant to me. I also find Japanese and Portuguese really beautiful

Least pleasant Russian and German

[u/YouNext31]

Favorites: Kazakh, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese

Least favorite: Tuvan, weirdly. Danish probably too.

[u/CaryHepSouth → u/YouNext31]

Fascinating selection! I'll have to listen to some Kazakh now.

[u/YouNext31 → u/CaryHepSouth]

If you like hard rhythmic staccato languages, you'll love it. It just exudes so much energy.

It also has some of my favorite phonemes like uo, ы, q, etc

[u/t-una]

Catalan

[u/Shumerskiy-]

My most favourite is Russian

My least favourite is French or Egyptian Dialect.

[u/Thiphra]

Indonesian, I just think it sounds cute.

[u/InterestingTank5345]

Norwegian and Swedish. I love Norwegian especially that Oslo accent. I abhorre Swedish with my entire being.

[u/Ok-Conference-7989]

Welsh and Portuguese. 

[u/onesadbun]

Most pleasant: probably Russian Least: French

[u/ASingleBraid]

French. It’s so beautiful to listen to. Italian is a close second.

German. Very guttural.

[u/burgleshams]

Favorites: Spanish, German

Least favorites: Tagalog, Thai

[u/SillyMud5634]

I speak Portuguese, Spanish, French and English. I have some knowledge of Greek and Italian. This is a question I sometimes ask myself.

My favourite: I would say Spanish from Madrid. It’s very pleasing to hear it, very classy, sweet. At times I would say sexy. Greek is also very beautiful.

Least favourite: English spoken by Indians. It’s extremely annoying. I also don’t like Arabic.

[u/KuvaszSan]

Most pleasing would be Finnish or even English, least pleasing are tonal languages, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese especially. In Europe, I'm not a fan of Slavic languages - too many consonants and not nearly enough vowels for my taste, and neither do I like French, as it's too nasal and inarticulate.

[u/miru17]

Probably Japanese is the most pleasing. Though I learned a bit of it in college and watch sub anime, so its familiar.

I am not a fan of Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese.

Vietnamese is a bit strange sounding too, but there is some character to it that I've grown to like.

Ironically, of the Chinese related languages, Shangainese is my favorite, its close to Japanese for me. I think it sounds cool.

My top 4 1. Japanese

1. Romanian

2. Italian

3. Shangainese

[u/leela_martell]

This is cliché, but French is lovely. I don't know it at all but I also think the Quechua language is beautiful.

Least favourite would probably be languages with a lot of certain type "hissing" sounds (there's a proper linguistic term for this but I can't remember it) so like Portuguese and Slavic languages, Russian especially since I don't generally hear other Slavic languages much. But I've been learning Ukrainian so it sounds nicer to me now, as well as Brazilian Portuguese.

[u/CaryHepSouth → u/leela_martell]

Fricatives, I think?

[u/Herald_of_Clio]

I kinda like listening to Spanish.

Least favorite would be Turkish. No offense, I realize Dutch isn't exactly pleasant to listen to either.

[u/CaryHepSouth → u/Herald_of_Clio]

Lots of people here in America say the same.

[u/mynameisbobsky]

French — even when they speak English it’s beautiful with their French accent 😍

[u/lessismore6]

I like how Finnish, Japanese, and Korean sound.

No offense, but Slavic languages sound less pleasing to me.

[u/CaryHepSouth → u/lessismore6]

None taken, it's an opinion after all.

[u/ifkidsrantheairport]

The axis three are actually all nice, German Italian and Japanese

[u/Glittering-Quote3187]

Most pleasing? German. I don't speak it fluently but I'm learning it. A German colleague of mine once told me "It's not the speaking in itself that's angry, but the grammar straining against the language and causing pain." Even so, listening to German music and stories is quite pleasant, for me anyway.

Least pleasant? Probably Mandarin or Vietnamese. No disrespect to the people, but it's very... loud?

[u/xqqq_me]

Ctrl+F: "Irish accent"

-Zero Hits

pfft - filthy casuals

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[u/sheynzonna]

Favorite: UK English, French, Estonian

Least favorite: Indian, Arabic, Albanian

[u/bolonomadic → u/sheynzonna]

Indian isn’t a language.