Posted: Sun Oct 22, 2006 8:56 pm Post subject: Fun, which language do you find most pleasant to hear?
I do believe we've all seen The Lion King, and I think we also all know that this was a movie meant for children ( ) and this means this movie was dubbed, in many many language and thanks to You Tube we can do this little poll.
Note, you must only listen to the sung bit ! For some reason in a few clips the normally spoken bits are in Spanish.
The assignment!
Make a top 4 of all languages and choose 1 you thought was the worst (and explain) and the funniest (not neccesarily the best. and explain) . You're not allowed to choose your own language.
Last edited by Sander on Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:08 am; edited 1 time in total
The first seven! Good grief, you really want us to work, don't you.
Well, I have to go for the Zulu as the best, as that is the original version. _________________ Toe ek jonk was, het ek al die antwoorde geken. Nou verstaan ek nie eens die vrae nie.
Well, I have to go for the Zulu as the best, as that is the original version.
Well I thought that too, but apparantly Zulu (South Africa) isn't spoken where Lion King took place (Eastern Africa) Swahilli and Masai would have been more accurate. But I do believe Hakuna Matata is Zulu ...
I did like the Zulu version too, but i'd put that number 2... after Finnish, i thought it was a very fluid version of the song... 3rd for me would be Italian, and 4th Japanese.
It seems that the languages which have more of a (consonent+vowel) stucture and which avoid rough velar and uvular fricatives and even hissing sibilant fricative get more of my vote. In fact, Finnish, to my untrained ear, really seems to resemble Japanese (which i'm studying at Higher-Further level).
I wasn't sure where to rank the Arabic version. I say i don't like the uvular fricatives, yet i adore the swallowed pharyngeal fricatives and glottal sounds of Arabic... it ranks very high for me... yet Hebrew ranks extremely low.
To me Serbo-Croation sounded the worse. It was full of rough throaty fricatives and annoying hissy sibilants. Closely followed by either Polish, Hebrew or German (but ordinarily i love the sound of German).
I've left a few languages out, mainly because i couldn't make up my mind...
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 9:59 pm Post subject:
Of the ones I've heard so far, I thought Russian sounded the strangest in the song. I generally like the sound of Russian, but somehow it just seemed wrong for this style of singing. French didn't sound quite right, either. I liked Hungarian, but I may have been influenced by having heard quite a bit of Hungarian spoken by a couple of people I liked very much, while I was visiting a friend last week.
Another one I really liked the sound of generally was European Portuguese. (The Brasilian Portuguese never loaded, so I can't say anything about it.)
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Mon Oct 23, 2006 10:11 pm Post subject:
Now that Sander has lowered the favorites number to 4, here's my list after having listened to about half of the languages (if I get around to listening to the rest, I'll post a modified list):
1. Spanish
2. Arabic
3. European Portuguese
4. Hungarian
Worst: Russian (only because I didn't like how it sounded in the song)
#1 Norwegian (The way Simba pronounces "hakuna matata" just makes me want to learn Norwegian)
# Finnish (Nice and fluent, sounded a bit oriental to me for some reason)
# Polish (Normally I can't hear any difference between Slavic languages, but compared to the other 3 this one just stood out. Very nice.
# Spanish (Gutteral at times but quite fluently sung whoever did the Adult Simba has a beautiful voice)
# Hebrew (Nice and gutteral, a lot like Arabic but for some reason it didn't get the "mooth")
Worst: German. Just terrible, they sounded like very bad opera singers complete miss of atmosphere.
Funniest: Cantonese ... I just couldn't stop laughing. Just hilarious. It sounded like a Xylophone.
I thought the Cantonese version wasn't soooo bad. It did, however, make me think of an advertisement.
In my opinion, the Mandarin version was the worst. Timor and Pumba sound so effeminate when they were gaily singing the evergreen melody.
The French version wasn't as good despite its overall beauty of the language.
So here's my top 4 rankings:
1. English
2. Spanish
3. Dutch (the novelty appealed to me, I reckon)
4. Iberian Portuguese _________________ Hillary Clinton is an acquired taste which I have clearly yet to acquire.
Wow, I never knew that so many languages could sound so similar. (And that Cantonese sounds like Dutch!) Impossible to pick a favourite.
What impressed me most was that they found so many actors/singers from so many countries with so similar voices. I guess voices essentially are like languages, basically very similar...
And I found that understanding or not understanding what is said has a lot to say for how you evaluate it.
1. Tagalog (maybe I'm a bit biased but it sounds so pretty)
2. Inuktitut (you should hear it - so beautiful, very ethereal)
3. Portuguese (Brazilian version)
4. Catalan
5. Spanish
I agree with Sander on Cantonese being the funniest to hear.
I was in Hong Kong last month and I went to this 7-Eleven to buy some noodles for my lunch when I just listened to the animated conversation between a shopkeeper and the customer. They spoke so fast and it just sounded so funny in a funky way. I smiled and chuckled the whole time especially when I heard words like "gei duk" (sounds like 'gay duck'), "fuk" (sounds like 'fuck') and "ho" (like the shortened form of "whore"). There's a shop called "FUK TAT". (fuk tat gei duk ho). :D
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) and this means this movie was dubbed, in many many language and thanks to You Tube we can do this little poll.
(fuk tat gei duk ho). :D