Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The up and down cadence is not pleasant to listen to. As well as the "hola, que pasa, mamacita" thing. However, I'm sure Spanish as spoken by newscasters in Mexico City or Acapulco is fine.
Agreed. Spanish spoken in Spain with the "theta," as in "Tharagotha" for Zaragosa is annoying. That's not the Spanish I learned in college. It was a lot "cleaner" than that.
Disagree on the swearing: the Cubans have that market covered.
English has the "th" sound too. And is not "zaragosa" but "Zaragoza" with two "z"; is the advantage of differentiating z ("th" sound in Spain) of the "s" sound. i understand why there are people who don´t like the "z" sound, however, i think that the Spanish of Spain has a very nice intonation, mexican Spanish is nasal and shrill for me.
Cantonese isn't too bad; at least it has smoother tones (it's my first language). Hokkien is choppy but at least it's funny. Shanghainese is very rapid and fluid; sounds almost polysyllabic/agglutinative, sort of like Japanese.
In Europe, German takes the cake for being harsh.
Not a big fan of Shanghainese but mostly because I don't hear it very often and initially think "WTF are they speaking?" whenever I hear it. I find Cantonese the most pleasantly sounding Chinese dialect (even though it's completely uninteligible to me.)
To me, the speaker is more important than the language.
If someone is speaking a language in a respectful and pleasant tone, even languages that I somewhat dislike the sound of become a lot more pleasant.
I love English (my native language) and I'm not too hot on "Hinglish" (Hindi/English mix). But I'd rather listen to respectful and considerate Hinglish than English being used as an instrument of offense.
English has the "th" sound too. And is not "zaragosa" but "Zaragoza" with two "z"; is the advantage of differentiating z ("th" sound in Spain) of the "s" sound. i understand why there are people who don´t like the "z" sound, however, i think that the Spanish of Spain has a very nice intonation, mexican Spanish is nasal and shrill for me.
I prefer the pronunciation of the theta, which exists in European Spanish.
It nullifies many potential homophones (cazar/casar, for one--though some may say that to be casado [married] is not so different from having been cazado [hunted for] ), and helps me separate where one word ends and another begins, which makes the speech easier for me to understand. I like the "staccato" intonation of European Spanish too.
Vietnamese. Sounds like clucking. Harsh to the ears.
Arabic. For the reasons above.
Cantonese. Lacking in volume control, sounds like they're in a fight.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
), and helps me separate where one word ends and another begins, which makes the speech easier for me to understand. I like the "staccato" intonation of European Spanish too.
