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| Porthos |
The Softest and Most Harsh Germanic languagesAccording to your ears, which Germanic languages are the softest and which are the most harsh?Dutch, hands down is the most harsh. English and the Scandanavian languages seem to be the most soft. And High German is somewhere in between. I haven't heard much Afrikaans, but if it sounds anything like Dutch, then it's safe to say it is a harsh language. What do your ears say? |
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| Irrintzi |
Re: The Softest and Most Harsh Germanic languages
I don't know really. For me Norvegian, Islandian and generally scandinavian languages are very hard to learn (the pronunciation), or undestand. English pronunciation depending the people is more soft or more harsch... That's same for German, Dutch and Scandinavian languages, so... |
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| Porthos |
I feel the same way as well, although their syntax and grammar in general are remarkably similar to English, so that part is not difficult, but being that they belong to a seperate branch of the Germanic language family, the words are often hard to identify, compared to say, Dutch or Low German. I have not read anything extensively with regard to the Nordic languages, but I find that my comprehension level of the said languages is very low. Sometimes I can recognize words or phrases largely because English imported them from Old Norse, like this sentence in a song: Scand - Vi ar en Eng - We are one
I wouldn't describe Scandanavian languages as being harsh at all. To me, they sound very soft and melodic. German can be harsh, and especially Dutch, which is one of the harshest langauges I know of (but still one of my favorites  ). English is not harsh, but then again, I'm a native speaker, and so this could be attributed to bias, but I think most people would agree that English is one of the softest Germanic languages, being that it lacks any gutteral sounds shared by German and Dutch. At one time, it did have this, with the "gh" sound being very similar to "ch" in Dutch and German.
I'm trying to find a link to spoken Scandanavian languages on Google, but I'm not having much luck. Perhaps someone could direct me to a website that has extensive audio material in a Nordic language, preferably with an English written translation. 
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| Didier69 |
I find Danish the most harsh Germanic language to my ears and Swedish the most soft Germanic language. | ||||
| Losseh |
Every language can be pronunced in both soft and harsh way. Take German as a first example. German, that Rammstein uses sounds harsh. It's so due to rolling R. Let's hear a sample:
http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=E8JAGwVuFm0 Another song is sung with a usual (the most popularly used) R http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=9pkLDEEs20U Another example: English! British English sounds very nicely for ear. What do you think of Scots?? R in Scottish English is rolling, what makes Scots sound much, much harsher than British English (f.e. RP). I must admit, that het Nederlands always sounds harsh. I know that two types of R are used in this language. First is rolling R, second actually also rolling but pronunced from the inside of throat - i don't know its name, I hope everyone know, what I mean. Thus, both dutch Rs connected with dutch G (which is pronunced like this throat, dutch R but is voiceless) makes this language sounds harsh. I'd rather say, that Danish is soft language. There is no rolling R in this tongue.. I'd say that whole this language is just floating. http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk (I'm not certain if it's Danish.. It sounds so to me, however there are many comments which say that it's only imitation.. hillarious though) |
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| Didier69 |
Yes, it's Danish. In comparison Swedish and Norwegian are far softer, more melodious and singing. Danish has many swallowed syllables and is more pronounced in the throat.
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| TaylorS |
It depends because of differences between dialects of a language, but I'd put Dutch on the harsh end and non-Cockney Southern British English on the soft end.
No clue if this is true of other Germanic languages or if it is a peculiarity of English, but the harshness varies greatly between different English dialects. My own local accent (the Upper Midwest accent of younger people, which is distinct from the stereotypical "Fargo" accent of older people) is harsher then is typical because R, oddly, is realized as uvular (as in French and German) after back vowels. My G is often realized as a voiced fricative similar to the G in Dutch, and both TH sounds are dental stops if they are at the start of a syllable. |
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