Tonal languages like Mandarin sound really bad, not just to non-tonal language speakers, but to speakers of other tonal languages.
Possibly due to too much of a difference in inflection.
Familiarity (I recognize it) was one factor that had a positive influence.
They couldn’t find a control factor for why people s think German sounded bad. Not enough people couldn’t recognize German.
Subjectivity
a lot of mainlanders think taiwanese mandarin to be “soft” and like the way taiwanese girls speak it (not so much the men).
I actually think the way men speak it is pretty good, sounds pretty relaxing and smooth. If it has a Taiwanese inflexion anyway.
They just have a stereotype in China, the one attached to Taiwan is the men are all ‘sissy boys’ and they all stick to that.
dam beautiful italian girl (who doesnt look italian to me )
What does she look like?
Taiwanese-inflected Mandarin does sound better. Proper mandarin is way too sharp. What do you think of Taiwanese, to Mandarin?
swedish? shes blonde and “real” italians arent blond. Blonds are viking
Look at her roots. They’re not blond.
taiwanese is a good language to taiwanese speakers because it has a good ability to express ones thoughts and feelings I think. but i also think it does NOT sound all that pretty in general.
mandarin sounds better i think.
Hakka > Mandarin > Hokkien > Cantonese
my taiwanese wife spoke hakka fluently in addtion to taiwanese and mandarin. I didnt think she sounded the best in hakka, rather more she sounded the best in mandarin
If a language has a lot of ugly sounds, it’s probably going to sound ugly.
I define an ugly sound by if you find repeating a consonant or drawing out a vowel starts to sound stupid, then it’s probably a ugly sound.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
ooooooooooooooooo
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
all are fine.
ɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨɨ
ʉʉʉʉʉʉʉʉʉʉʉʉʉʉʉ
sounds like someone’s constipated.
So if your language has a lot of ɨ and or ʉ, probably not the prettiest language. Same goes for ɻ̩. Oh, and ɚ or ɝ. Sorry American English for that last one one. I still like it better than dropping the r all together and just lengthening the vowel. Still, ɚɚɚɚɚɚɚɚɚɚɚ, not the prettiest sound.
For Taiwanese some words sound cool but there are some sounds i don’t like either. One sounds like a horses neigh.
For mainland mandarin I don’t like the back of the throat sound. But Taiwanese mandarin is also overall more slurred which is a bad point.
I love drawn-out vowels in Brazilian Portuguese..
Are you talking about m without needing a vowel, ng without needing a vowel, or nn (nasalized vowels)?
I think ng without needing a vowel doesn’t sound particularly good. Not a fan of nn either.
I have no idea. Probably ‘hey ah’
It’s just an acknowledgement of hearing or agreeing with something, like uh-huh. There aren’t even characters for them.
The actual way to write is probably hennh-ah (perhaps 哼啊 would be the Hanji), so what you don’t like is probably nasalized e. Technically both uh in uh-huh are also nasalized, and you seemingly have no problem with nasalized ʌ.
Yea thats it. I don’t know if its nasally i just don’t like the sound of it.
Don’t love nasalization myself, but when we are analyzing whole words or whole sentences, familiarity starts to cloud objectivity.
hennh–ah to me is associated with elders who are really fluent, and it may even be connected to indigenous languages, so when I hear people say it right, it just fills me with warmth.
That’s why I feel it’s more objective if we break it down to individual sounds.