Which language is the most beautiful? Anne Brydon, Boston
Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.
Readers reply
My father says Mandarin,
My husband says math.
But I say it’s music,
And that’s for a fact. Michelle Zhu
Finnish can be quite cute. I have a Finnish friend, so I can now recognise people when they are speaking Finnish – they sound like birds twittering. Japanese women talking sounds like a waterfall splashing down. nina1414
Japanese. Lovely undulating intonation. Also a lovely language to learn to speak as a foreigner. Eatmyhandbag
All languages are beautiful until you can understand what’s being said. Woolfardisworthy
Tok Pisin. Just listen to it without trying to understand. It is pidgin derived to a great extent from English, but takes in enough of the many Indonesian languages, especially its rhythm and tonality. It means “bird talk”. “Thank you very much” is “Tenk yu tru” – far more beautiful than the English. brianmilne
There is an Indigenous language in the Canary Islands called Silbo Gomero. All of the sounds in the language are whistles. Listening to it is like listening to a choir of birds. It’s one of the most fascinating languages. fernlinhealy
Brazilian Portuguese. It has all the best parts of the other Romance languages without any of the bad parts. Whereas the Portuguese version is no better or worse than Spanish (Castilian), the Brazilian version just sings and swings. And those Js! I could listen to someone reading the phone book or the entire collection of EU regulations in this language and would probably be head over heels in love with them by the time they were done. (PS I don’t speak Portuguese or Spanish.) PaulDavisTheFirst
We visited Iceland recently on our honeymoon and Icelandic is a gorgeous language. Sounds like water flowing over rocks. BananaMcFanana
To get visual for a minute, some of the most beautiful languages are Caucasian (eg Georgian and Armenian), Mon/Burmese and ancient Chinese pictograms. But these are trumped by the tablets found in Iraq (Uruk) with proto-cuneiform writing and pictograms from about 3,300BC. Breathtaking. This is where writing and history and the ability to share experience across time and space began. kaml11
Beauty is in the ear of the listener. It’s not a competition, but English doesn’t sound lovely to me. rerab2
Have you ever heard this spoken, though?
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. Bookseeker
“You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.” Chancellor Gorkon, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Sagarmatha1953
English when spoken as a second language, with an accent. It makes me hear old, familiar words with a new ear. I listen to the speaker more closely out of respect for the effort they’ve made to communicate with me. RunningWater
Python has many admirers, I underssstand. MalleusSacerdotum
Italian. kulkulan
But Italian spoken by whom? A northern accent and a southern one sound so very different that they are almost different tongues. Probably most people’s idea of what Italian is supposed to sound like is based on a northern accent, but not too far north: the farther north you go, the more sing-songy it becomes. To my ear, a Brescian accent is just a joke. Farther south, a case could be made for the Neapolitan accent, which has an extraordinary sensuousness, but I think the most Italian-sounding Italian accent would be that of Emilia-Romagna – warm, melodious and clear. MrBloom
I’d put in a vote for click languages in southern and a patch of west-central Africa. Since I cannot understand a word, when I hear a conversation, I can concentrate on the music of it all. And I can feel I’m listening to something analogous to the music of an amazing post-bop or south Indian drummer. I think if I understood a conversation, that sense would only deepen – even if the speakers were discussing root vegetables or tax returns. InvasiveSquirrel
Whatever Elizabeth Fraser was doing in Cocteau Twins. ElCommentario
Welsh. stumpysheep
Dw i’n hoffi Cymraeg hefyd. Etymologically, too, it’s fascinating. ethelbrose
Can anyone really appreciate the beauty of a language if they are not fluent in it? I could listen to the sound of talking in dozens of languages and some would surely sound more pleasant than others. But without the meaning, that is all they are. Few of us have facility with more than a tiny number of languages. (Me – English monoglot with some very slight understanding of French, German and Welsh.) Which makes the question very difficult to answer. I just listened to Sukiyaki (Ue o Muite Arukou) sung by Kyu Sakamoto. A certain special sound in Japanese. But without the subtitles, I’d be completely lost. MyOtherNameIsReal
I think it is not the language, but the mood and soul of who is talking. German is amazingly sweet if spoken by a sweet German person. On the other hand, Italian – such a lovely musical language, one of my favourites – sounds to me horrible if spoken by people who are rude to each other. So it is not the language; it is the person behind it. BarcelonaCity
I’d say Cornish. It’s a language that has survived despite over a century of extinction. It’s also a language that is almost entirely intended to be spoken rather than written and is designed around community-use. Beautiful. Maymaymay
Since my grandson was born profoundly deaf seven years ago, the most beautiful language for me has been learning British Sign Language. Sign language is so expressive, using facial expressions as well as your hands and body. I love to see my five-year-old hearing granddaughter conversing in BSL with her older brother, laughing and giggling together over grandma’s frequent mistakes. They are my best teachers. Their baby sister, hearing, is also being brought up to be oral and signing. 7sisters
I think they’re all wonderful. Never met a language I didn’t love. mapejrano
