Posted on 09/20/2026 1:39:08 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
LINGUISTS TEND to say that all languages are valuable, expressive and complex. They usually attribute negative attitudes to prejudice and politics. That is probably why no one has carefully studied the touchy question of which ones are seen as beautiful or ugly. That is until three scholars—Andrey Anikin, Nikolay Aseyev and Niklas Erben Johansson—published their study of 228 languages last year*. They hit upon the idea of using an online film about the life of Jesus, which its promoters have recorded in hundreds of languages.
Crucially, most recordings had at least five different speakers, as the film has both exposition and dialogue. The team recruited 820 people from three different language groups—Chinese, English and Semitic (Arabic, Hebrew and Maltese speakers)—to listen to clips and rate the languages’ attractiveness.
What they found was that nearly all the 228 languages were rated strikingly similarly—when certain factors were controlled for (of which more below). On a scale of 1 to 100, all fell between 37 and 43, and most in a bulge between 39 and 42 (see chart 1). The highest-rated? Despite the supposed allure (at least among Anglophones) of French and Italian, it was Tok Pisin, an English creole spoken in Papua New Guinea. The lowest? Chechen.
The three language groups broadly coincided in their preferences. But the differences between the best and worst-rated languages were so slight—and the variation among individual raters so great—that no one should be tempted to crown Tok Pisin the world’s prettiest language with any authority.
A few factors did make the raters say they quite liked the languages they heard. But those seem unrelated to intrinsic qualities. First, being familiar with a language—or even thinking they were familiar with it—made raters give a language a 12% prettiness boost on average. And there seemed to be some regional prejudices.
If a rater said that a language was familiar, he or she was asked to say what region it came from. Chinese raters, for example, clearly preferred languages they thought to be from the Americas or Europe, and rated those they thought from sub-Saharan Africa lower. (When raters said they were unfamiliar with the languages, such preferences disappeared.)
The other extrinsic factors that influenced ratings were a strong preference for female voices and a weaker preference for deeper and breathier ones (see chart 2).
But try as they might, the investigators could not find an inherent phonetic feature—such as the presence of nasal vowels (as in French bon vin blanc) or fricative consonants (like the sh and zh sounds common in Polish)—that was consistently rated as beautiful. Only a slight dislike for tonal languages was statistically significant. Tonal languages are those that use pitch to distinguish otherwise homophonous words. Even Chinese subjects slightly disliked such languages, though Chinese itself is tonal.
Dr Johansson highlights some unanswered questions. His team had no information about which sounds tend to appear together (English strings along consonants—as in “strings”—in a way that many other languages do not.) Such a feature was beyond their ability to measure. So was prosody—roughly, the rhythm of a language. And with just five speakers per language, the presence of a couple of attractive or unattractive individual speakers could easily move a language’s rating this way or that.
Finally, the audio materials were scripted. This was a good thing in one way, because the raters heard the same part of the film (with the same meanings) in each language. But spontaneous, natural speech could make quite a different impression. Perhaps people like and dislike not the sound inventory of a language, but the way its speakers tend to speak it. If that is so, the attractiveness of a language might be better attributed to its speakers’ culture—not to the language itself.
Negative results in experiments usually do not make waves, but this one is both interesting—since it goes so strongly against people’s instincts—and cheering. The world is divided enough. As the researchers conclude, “We have emphasised the fundamental phonetic and aesthetic unity of world languages.”■
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
even though it's the holy tongue. It's not for everyone, however, because it's full of holes.
No wrongs only riiight.
They hit upon the idea of using an online film about the life of Jesus, which its promoters have recorded in hundreds of languages.
"My sheep hear my voice!" (So baaaad.)
So if your primary language is Mandarin, Tagalog, a Bantu dialect, or another non Indo European language, it will be as hard to learn as basic English.
But the main problem is that it has Marxist roots and is taught as a way to push a one world language.
So if your primary language is Mandarin, Tagalog, a Bantu dialect, or another non Indo European language, it will be as hard to learn as basic English.
But the main problem is that it has Marxist roots and is taught as a way to push a one world language.
Latin is a very useful language to learn. But I’ve never thuught it was very ‘beautiul’.
I haven’t studied enough languages to determine which might be the ‘loveliest’. But I can’t imagine a language MORE expressive and beautiful than English.
(Italian seems lovely, though...)
How about volume? Vietnamese talk in to their phone like they are trying to be heard from miles around.
I have Welsh and Irish ancestors.
My fave foreign language is Italian. Spent a month in Italy, visiting friends Giovanna and Ernesto. Traveled all over the country. Hard to get accustomed to English when I got home.
Loved my trip to Turkey too. Interesting language to hear, hard to understand. So Italian wines.
Been all over the world, French was most difficult to understand. And so were French people.
And Latin was the language of the educated in Europe so they could communicate with each other.
Up to recent years, French was the language of governments and education but in today's world, it is English.
The Chinese would like to replace it with Mandarin, but unless you grow up speaking it, it is hard to learn the tonal aspects of that language, although the grammar makes it easier to learn.
And all around the world, English words are included in the normal speech: We call it Taglish here in the Philippines, but my friend who is African complains that her students in Zimbabwe often use an English word for objects and don't know the traditional word for many objects.
Teen Age Talk and Op are related languages.
Of the foreign languages that I speak, German sounds the best, closely followed by Russian.
“Haben einen guten Tag”.
The Filipina women I worked with click-clacked in Tagalog. It might be the most off-putting language I’ve heard.
George Soros’ father created Esperanto.
In another video, he walks around the Vatican speaking Liturgical Latin, the version used by the Catholic Church and in sacred vocal music. This time, he has no trouble finding folks with whom he can converse.
Now if you want clicks, try some of the Bantu languages in southern Africa, which not only have various clicks but have implosive consonants (e.g. B pronounced by inhaling instead of exhaling).
His horse was probably an Austrian Lipizzaner.
When sung, I agree completely.
My oldest homeschooler studied Elvish and spoke it and wrote it back in the day. She also copied all the costumes and jewelry and also dressed her sibs.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.