# How Humans Respond to Certain Phones (especially gutturals)



## TheFriendlyArab

I don't want to make this an argumentative essay but I'm curious about the observations others make about this. Also I don't mean to descriminate. If I give an opinion about a language it doesn't reflect on the speakers of the language. What I want to talk about is how humans view (or "hear", I should say) different phones.

We've all heard the oft-repeated phrase: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" but what about the _ear_? When I see complaints about how a language sounds the word "guttural" is almost always thrown in there as if it is synonymous with "cacophonous" (unpleasant to the ear). For example one may hear one say about a language: "Eww (or any other onomatopoeia for the sensation of disgust), I hate that language, it's so guttural." What I'm trying to ask is, are there sounds that people unanimously agree are unpleasant-sounding? In other words, can we consider the hearing of certain sounds to be analogous to a sensation of pain that is felt when being struck on the body (which all humans can agree is unpleasant)?

I guess I should clarify which phones I mean to fall under the category of "cacophonous sounds". I don't know the scientific terms unfortunately (palatal, pharyngeal, alveolar, etc.) but do all humans consider certain words that contain phones made more towards the back of the mouth and the throat to sound displeasing in terms of how they are heard? And comparitively do we find words that contain more "flow" and sounds made at the front of the mouth (lips and teeth) pleasant in sound? Let's take a word such as the Arabic word عقل. It doesn't have a negative meaning. It means "mind" or "intellect". This word would commonly be romanized as "'aql". If you're not familiar with how this word sounds then look it up. I will try to explain with my very limited vocabulary. This first consonant is made way at the back of the mouth in the throat and is commonly compared to the sound of gagging. The second is a cluster with what can be called the Spanish "L". I think I can best describe the feeling of pronouncing this word as trying to swallow my own tongue. I think this word doesn't sound very pleasant when spoken (but rather pretty when written), do you?

Many other phones like the "ach-laut" in German (also present in other languages like Arabic and Dutch) are considered unpleasant to hear. 

So back to my main question: Do all people not like a language being spoken because of it's use of "throaty" phones?


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## LilianaB

I think the beauty of sound may also be in the listener's ear. I personally like gluttural languages, and I also like the _r_ spound -- the more rolled the better. Some people may find those sounds unpleasant. I also like some tonal languages, or at least tonal to a certain extent, such as some Scandinavian languages, Lithuanian, or Mandarin. I believe the statement might be true about sounds, not just about things people perceive with their eyes.( The first two languages I mentioned just have some tonal features, but I find it pleasant). _Auch-laut_ sounds pleasant to me. I also like the -_ingen_ endings, -_us_ endings, -_as_. I also like umlaut and things like multiple *ä*_._ I aslo find all Native American languages phonetically very pleasant, but I am not really sure which sounds I like the most_.       



_


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## Alderamin

I like this kind of sounds, the "throaty" ones, and I believe they're the most beautiful among others, but I don't like to listen myself when I pronounce them. 
I don't have a good throat for spelling it, as well as it happens the same to me with the Arabic letter _hamza_ which I find so powerful.
I believe that every language has nice sounds, some of them have more impact in our ears than others.


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## berndf

TheFriendlyArab said:


> When I see complaints about how a language sounds the word "guttural" is almost always thrown in there as if it is synonymous with "cacophonous" (unpleasant to the ear).


I keep hearing this comment from English native speakers but I can't recall having ever heard this from native speakers of any other language, even those completely lacking post-velar consonants, like Italian, e.g. I wonder what is feature of English that makes people dislike post-velars.

I would be interested to hear from an English speaker who shares this feeling why they perceive post-velars as "ugly" and what Italian native speakers feel.


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## Gavril

TheFriendlyArab said:


> I don't want to make this an argumentative essay but I'm curious about the observations others make about this. Also I don't mean to descriminate. If I give an opinion about a language it doesn't reflect on the speakers of the language. What I want to talk about is how humans view (or "hear", I should say) different phones.
> 
> We've all heard the oft-repeated phrase: "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" but what about the _ear_? When I see complaints about how a language sounds the word "guttural" is almost always thrown in there as if it is synonymous with "cacophonous" (unpleasant to the ear). For example one may hear one say about a language: "Eww (or any other onomatopoeia for the sensation of disgust), I hate that language, it's so guttural." What I'm trying to ask is, are there sounds that people unanimously agree are unpleasant-sounding? In other words, can we consider the hearing of certain sounds to be analogous to a sensation of pain that is felt when being struck on the body (which all humans can agree is unpleasant)?
> 
> I guess I should clarify which phones I mean to fall under the category of "cacophonous sounds". I don't know the scientific terms unfortunately (palatal, pharyngeal, alveolar, etc.) but do all humans consider certain words that contain phones made more towards the back of the mouth and the throat to sound displeasing in terms of how they are heard? And comparitively do we find words that contain more "flow" and sounds made at the front of the mouth (lips and teeth) pleasant in sound? Let's take a word such as the Arabic word عقل. It doesn't have a negative meaning. It means "mind" or "intellect". This word would commonly be romanized as "'aql". If you're not familiar with how this word sounds then look it up. I will try to explain with my very limited vocabulary. This first consonant is made way at the back of the mouth in the throat and is commonly compared to the sound of gagging. The second is a cluster with what can be called the Spanish "L". I think I can best describe the feeling of pronouncing this word as trying to swallow my own tongue. I think this word doesn't sound very pleasant when spoken (but rather pretty when written), do you?
> 
> Many other phones like the "ach-laut" in German (also present in other languages like Arabic and Dutch) are considered unpleasant to hear.
> 
> So back to my main question: Do all people not like a language being spoken because of it's use of "throaty" phones?



I think that [x] and other back fricatives -- with the exception of , of course -- sound "foreign" to many, if not most monolingual English speakers. Before I began studying foreign languages, I remember thinking that it was a challenge to pronounce the "ach-laut" in certain Scottish place names, despite how common it is across the world's languages.

If [x] and similar sounds signify foreignness/unfamiliarity for some English speakers (and speakers of other languages that lack these sounds), then it may not be much of a further step to consider these sounds unpleasant, laughable, etc., unless you have a (positive) interest in learning foreign languages. But that's just my theory.


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## olaszinho

Arabic is one of my favourite languages, I like its guttural sounds and generally back fricatives are not unpleasant to my ears.


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## LilianaB

Hi. Gavril I am not sure about that. I think liking certain sounds versus finding them not as appealing has not that much to do with whether these sounds are familiar or not. I like many sounds in Hebrew (and in Arabic -- since some are similar, although I am not exposed to that language that much), even though I don't know those languages almost at all, and most of the sounds are foreign to the languages I speak. I think is has to do more with musical taste, and individual sensitivity rather than familiarity.


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## berndf

Gavril said:


> If [x] and similar sounds signify foreignness/unfamiliarity for some English speakers (and speakers of other languages that lack these sounds), then it may not be much of a further step to consider these sounds unpleasant, laughable, etc., unless you have a (positive) interest in learning foreign languages. But that's just my theory.


That would be my initial response too. We know this from music taste that pleasantness/unpleasantness is very strongly correlates with familiarity/unfamiliarity of sounds. And there is a good biological reason for this: In the wild sounds alert animals to danger. Animals can classify familiar sounds as meaning danger or not meaning danger. An animal cannot know if an unknown sound means danger or not so it will always feel uncomfortable when hearing an unfamiliar sound.

But then Italians should have this negative reaction to post-velars as well, even more because that don't even have the /h/. But I never heard this reaction from Italians and olaszinho just confirmed my observation. So, there should other reasons involved.


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## LilianaB

I think musical taste is something first of all genetic -- even if they chained me to the chair, I would personally listen to certain types of music I have been familiar with from an early age. I think it is just something very individual. I don't like certain sounds I am very familiar with. Tolkien had some interesting theories regarding that -- unfortunately I cannot find that particular essay on the internet.


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## Hulalessar

LilianaB said:


> Tolkien had some interesting theories regarding that




I was going to mention Tolkien. I have read the suggestion that his Elvish languages were influenced by Finnish - a language he was enchanted by. By contrast the Black Speech, of which there is only one example, looks pretty guttural:


_Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,_
_ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul._


Whilst on the subject of conlangs it is interesting to note that Klingon has quite a few guttural sounds.


So something seems to be going on, but if it is restricted to some native English speakers I do not have an explanation. I say "some" because I feel confident it does not apply to native English speakers raised in Scotland, Ireland and Wales. All three Celtic languages spoken have /x/ which is  pronounced by non-Celtic language speakers in those countries in the names of both people and places, not to mention that /x/ is a feature of Scots and many (?all) varieties of Scottish English.


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## TheFriendlyArab

So is it safe to say that there are certain sounds that exist in human language that can be perceived differently depending on the person? This should be case just based on olaszinho's answer alone. It just sort of aggravates me that people generally think certain languages sound ugly when I think it depends totally on the speaker and the way he/she is speaking (yelling, whispering, speaking with an angry tone, etc.) Another thing that kind of annoys me is when I hear people say French sounds "sexy" or "alluring" or that it sounds like music when people speak French in everyday conversation. I guess to really test this we would need the same person (that way the voice is not a variable) to speak French and then Arabic (or the other way around) and see if there's a difference in the perceived pleasantness in the sound.


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## Gavril

One problem with asking a question like this on Wordreference is that most regular users of this forum are already interested in foreign languages, and I think this makes us more likely to react positively to sounds not present in our native language(s), rather than uneasily or indifferently (as a monolingual speaker who is not interested in foreign languages might react).

I'm not saying that uneasiness is the default response to an unfamiliar pronunciation, but I think it's more common than many language enthusiasts realize.


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## LilianaB

TheFriendlyArab said:


> So is it safe to say that there are certain sounds that exist in human language that can be perceived differently depending on the person? This should be case just based on olaszinho's answer alone. It just sort of aggravates me that people generally think certain languages sound ugly when I think it depends totally on the speaker and the way he/she is speaking (yelling, whispering, speaking with an angry tone, etc.) Another thing that kind of annoys me is when I hear people say French sounds "sexy" or "alluring" or that it sounds like music when people speak French in everyday conversation. I guess to really test this we would need the same person (that way the voice is not a variable) to speak French and then Arabic (or the other way around) and see if there's a difference in the perceived pleasantness in the sound.



I believe all sounds are perceived differently by different people, from the esthetic point of view. Just exactly the same way as some people like red whereas others like blue. What makes some people happy, may irritate others. Not everybody likes classical music or heavy metal, or both.


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## osemnais

I know some people who think /œ/ /ø/ /y/ /ç/ all sound funny.


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## francisgranada

olaszinho said:


> Arabic is one of my favourite languages, I like its guttural sounds and generally back fricatives are not unpleasant to my ears.


Ciao. How do you like the this sound in Spanish, e.g. in gente, prójimo, ojo, hoja, hijo, Gijón?


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## Frank78

LilianaB said:


> I believe all sounds are perceived differently by different people, from the esthetic point of view.



Right but I don't think it is just an "esthetical" question. Some people can't stand high frequencies, especially when they last longer, others get an uncomfortable feeling at VERY low frequencies, e.g. the lowest sound of an organ is at 16 Hz. Most people don't hear it but feel it in their guts. 

Of course this is far beyond the frequency range of human voice. 

I personally can't stand American English spoken by girls with a high voice. It makes my ear bleed.


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## iobyo

Are the uvular and pharyngeal consonants maybe calling to mind sounds reminiscent of eating, coughing, etc. for speakers of those languages that don't have them?

I can think of a few caricatures of so-called guttural languages in movies where the character, for example, has a fish bone stuck in his throat.


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## LilianaB

" Right but I don't think it is just an "esthetical" question. Some people can't stand high frequencies, especially when they last longer, others get an uncomfortable feeling at VERY low frequencies, e.g. the lowest sound of an organ is at 16 Hz. Most people don't hear it but feel it in their guts. "

I might actually hear it. And yes, you are right it might be very hard to physically listen to very high sounds. 


"I personally can't stand American English spoken by girls with a high voice. It makes my ear bleed." 

You might be referring to Minnie Mouse, Frank. Not too many American women, especially in the part of the country where I live, speak in high voices. It might be even hard to find a few.       Re: post 16


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## olaszinho

francisgranada said:


> Ciao. How do you like the this sound in Spanish, e.g. in gente, prójimo, ojo, hoja, hijo, Gijón?



Szia!
Sorry for replying so late, but I hadn't read your post before now.
I really like this sound in Spanish, but I have to say that it is not  completely alien to most Italian speakers. As you know, there is a similar sound in Tuscan and plenty of Italians often imitate the way the Tuscans speak, because the Tuscan "gorgia", so this phoneme is called in Italian, is considered  funny and pleasant.


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## Youngfun

olaszinho, Tuscan gorgia uses the aspirate , not the guttural [x] of Castillan Spanish or Arabic.


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## merquiades

I once knew an American lady who specifically said she decided to take Italian in high school because it was the only language offered that didn't have guttural sounds:  German (ch), Spanish (j) French (r) Hebrew?.  She couldn't bear hearing them let alone pronouncing them.  I think it definitely is because they are lacking in English and do sound foreign to monolingual people. 
Though I am used to guttural sounds, I have to admit, I don't find Dutch to be that pretty. I need to be more exposed to Arabic to have an opinion.
I've also heard people say they don't like Portuguese because of the high volume of "sh" sounds or French for the /y/ and /ø/sounds.
People love their own languages, don't they?

The tones in Chinese put me off, add the alphabet and I have the impression it is next to impossible to learn.  That leads me to avoid the language completely.  It's probably a misconception.  I hear chinese and can even pick out that people say "Well, sure" a lot.  

I don't care for California valley girl talk.  It also hurts my ear.  I'm not sure if that's what you are referring to too, Frank?


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## Roy776

merquiades said:


> People love their own languages, don't they?



Not all people  I for example can't stand the sound of German, although I hear it everyday. I prefer Polish and (American) English over it. I love the Polish hissing sounds and the nasal vowels. I think they make the language sound softer (although I know many people who'd say the exact opposite about Polish). I also find Dutch nicer to listen to than German, probably due to the German "ach" sound being so common in it.


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## LilianaB

I think the aspirated _ch_ sound is the best sound in German.  Your post, just proves Roy, that finding sounds pleasant in various languages is something very individual, and may not be really solely the result of similarity between the sounds of someone's L1 and other languages.


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## merquiades

Roy776 said:


> Not all people  I for example can't stand the sound of German, although I hear it everyday. I prefer Polish and (American) English over it. I love the Polish hissing sounds and the nasal vowels. I think they make the language sound softer (although I know many people who'd say the exact opposite about Polish). I also find Dutch nicer to listen to than German, probably due to the German "ach" sound being so common in it.



I used to dislike German, not for /x/ but more for the /ç/sound, the glottal stop, the aspirations but also for the complicated syntax and the long compound words, but I have made my peace with it.  I know I find certain dialects more pleasant to ear than others.  I was told once here I'd like Schwaebisch.  So now I just have to be able to learn German after 3 or 4 tries.  I agree Slavic languages are sweet.  As for American English, I like some dialects more than others.


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## LilianaB

I like all American English varieties -- even the most unusual. My favorite languages otherwise, are Swedish, Lithuanian and Native American languages. (Some others too, like certain varieties of German and Spanish, especially when spoken with the Flamenco rhythm --just a metaphor), Old Norse and Icelandic, Mandarin. But I really find many languages very interesting. These just top my list, which would be quite long.


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## olaszinho

Youngfun said:


> olaszinho, Tuscan gorgia uses the aspirate , not the guttural [x] of Castillan Spanish or Arabic.




Hello, Youngfun.
As far as Tuscan gorgia is concerned, some manuals of phonetics report the guttural (x) instead of the aspirate (h), being the X sound the result of the aspiration of K. However, you may be right. When I pronounce that sound in Spanish it seems to me that it is much more guttural. Besides, I'd like to say that some varieties of Spanish only possess the aspirate (H), for instance in the Dominican Republic. As for Arabic, it has three different guttural sounds....similar to the "jota" in Spanish.

Once I was chatting with a Jewish guy from Israel and he said that he preferred Italian to Spanish because Italian lacks guttural sounds, as a consequence, Italian is much sweeter, in his opinion. To be honest, I cannot judge my language but I do like our numerous geminate consonants.


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## francisgranada

olaszinho said:


> ... Once I was chatting with a Jewish guy from Israel and he said that he prerrered Italian to Spanish because Italian lacks guttural sounds, as a consequence, Italian is much more sweeter, in his opinion...


That's why my question #15 (thanks for your answer ). In fact, opinions of this kind, I have heard also here. The reason may be also some "pattern" or "presumption" behind, i.e. in a Latin based language one would not "expect" so many gutturals (especially not in words like caja, projimo, hijo), while in the Semitic language they seem to be "obvious". 

An other example: for some people of the generation of my grandparents, the Italian pronounciation of _g_ and _c_ before e/i seemed to be "vulgar" and not pleasant with regard to the Latin, but also to the French (being this an "aristocratical" language in the past). So I think that whether the gutturals are cosidered unpleasant or not, it may depend also on the context or the concrete language, the prestige of the language, etc... and not only on the sound itself.

P.S. The Tuscan gorgia sounds also unpleasant, especially for the Italians themselves (as far as I know). Probably not because of the proper sound (h) itself, but because they appear in an "unexpected" place (I think the "h" doesn't sound unpleasantly for Italian ears in Latin or English words). Or not?...


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## olaszinho

P.S. The Tuscan gorgia sounds also unpleasant, especially for the Italians themselves (as far as I know). Probably not because of the proper sound (h) itself, but because they appear in an "unexpected" place (I think the "h" doesn't sound unpleasantly for Italian ears in Latin or English words). Or not?...

As I was saying in my previous post, I personally love the Tuscan gorgia, futhermore, I know lots of Italians who like it as well. You know, tastes differ...
The Italians do not pronounce the H in Latin. Only scholars or professors are used to pronouncing Latin according to its supposed original pronunciation.  In my view, we ought to open a new thread about this interesting topic, I mean how Latin is pronounced in different countries. I'm not only referring to the H but also c, g, v sounds and so on.


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## francisgranada

olaszinho said:


> ... I personally love the Tuscan gorgia, futhermore, I know lots of Italians who like it as well. You know, tastes differ...



So am I, but only in Tuscan context (e.g. listening Benigni speaking about Dante). So what I want to say, is that not the "h" instead of "c" is what I like, but rather I like the "taste" of the Tuscan dialect itself when spoken by a native Toscano.


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## Ben Jamin

olaszinho said:


> P.S. The Tuscan gorgia sounds also unpleasant, especially for the Italians themselves (as far as I know). Probably not because of the proper sound (h) itself, but because they appear in an "unexpected" place (I think the "h" doesn't sound unpleasantly for Italian ears in Latin or English words). Or not?...
> 
> As I was saying in my previous post, I personally love the Tuscan gorgia, futhermore, I know lots of Italians who like it as well. You know, tastes differ...
> The Italians do not pronounce the H in Latin. Only scholars or professors are used to pronouncing Latin according to its supposed original pronunciation.  In my view, we ought to open a new thread about this interesting topic, I mean how Latin is pronounced in different countries. I'm not only referring to the H but also c, g, v sounds and so on.



Such discussion has already been carried out at the Latin forum.


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## Cenzontle

berndf said


> I keep hearing this comment from English native speakers but I can't  recall having ever heard this from native speakers of any other language


—which supports my suspicion that many English-speakers may associate "guttural", consciously or unconsciously, with the *gutter*, the unclean part of the street where trash collects and questionable fluids flow.  Look at definition "2b" in [Merriam-]_Webster's Third International Unabridged Dictionary_:  "being or belonging to a sound or utterance or a language or a speaker having sounds that are strange, unpleasant, or disagreeable."  Yes, there are other definitions that refer to the throat, but this one does not, at all.  In other words, I think there are English-speakers who don't know the etymological meaning of "guttural" with reference to the back of the mouth, and who use it to mean simply "harsh".

Compare the fate of the loanword "guerrilla" in English.  In Spanish, it was a type of warfare, but on entering English it became an individual with arms and legs.  In fact, with schwa in the first syllable and English lateral L, it sounds exactly like "gorilla".  Is it any wonder that an English-speaker who exalts "freedom-fighters" is unable to sympathize with "guerrillas"?


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## LilianaB

I think many people not familiar with  linguistics to at least some extent, would not know what _gutteral_ meant, not to say that they would associate the word with those particular sounds or the gutter.


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## olaszinho

*GUTTURAL* (noun)
  The noun *GUTTURAL* has 1 sense: *1.* a consonant articulated in the back of the mouth or throat


*Classified under:*
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
*Synonyms:*
guttural; guttural consonant; pharyngeal; pharyngeal consonant

The use of the word "guttural" as a noun or adjective is quite common in linguistics, even in English.


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## berndf

*Moderator note: Thank you for returning to the issue described in the original question (perception of guttural sounds). Giving examples of all kinds of sounds which could sound funny the speakers of certain languages let this thread slide off into anecdote telling rather than a focused discussion. I suggest we concentrate on gutturals here except if also looking as other sounds should become relevant in the context of a specific explanation attempt.*


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## berndf

I suspect the discussion is complicated by a misperception of certain sounds by many English speakers. They often describe also German as a very guttural language whereas in my experience the vast majority of speakers use only one guttural sound (most of the times) and that is the /h/ which exists as frequently in German as in English. The only other candidates for gutturals in German are the _ach_-Laut and the "r" which most speakers most of the times realize as [x] and [ɣ] rather than [χ] and [ʁ]~[ʀ], i.e. as velar and not as guttural sounds. I once read the ordinary "k" being described as guttural by an English speaker which is obviously wrong, especially if you compare it to Arabic ق /q/, the true guttural version of "k".


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## Ben Jamin

Beauty of a language is in the “ear of the listener”. There is certainly no universal rules that can be applied to define language sounds beautiful to speakers of all languages. The speakers of languages with many pharyngeal or velar consonants will certainly like other languages with the same features, those that have many consonant clusters will have no objections to the same sounds in other languages, the same applies to sharp hissing sounds, central vowels, strongly rounded (umlaut) vowels. Also the intonation of the language is important. Both Danes and North Germans, for example, have a natural intonation which sounds “aggressive” to speakers of some languages, while Estuary English makes a “vulgar” impression on others.


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## merquiades

Berndf said:
			
		

> the ach-Laut and the "r" which most speakers most of the times realize as [x] and [ɣ]



What you describe here are the IPA symbols for Spanish like in the difference between "Ajo" and "Hago".   Would that mean that German "Ach" and "R" are pairs and the distinction is only that one is devoiced and the other is voiced?   When "R" starts a word like "Rom" does it also have this weak sound?


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> Both Danes and North Germans, for example, have a natural intonation which sounds “aggressive” to speakers of some languages



The way people speak also plays a part. In my part of Spain it is socially acceptable to speak in a loud voice in situations where it would be unacceptable in other cultures. In Thailand it is the opposite; there they do not care if you are gay, but just hate people who speak other than softly. However, in both countries emphasis is placed on using the correct formulae.



Ben Jamin said:


> ...while Estuary English makes a “vulgar” impression on others.



I said in another thread:

"An experiment a few years ago involved playing recordings of different varieties of English to Russians with no knowledge of English. None was perceived to be more pleasing to the ear than any other. "Brummie" (the accent of Birmingham) and "Scouse" (the accent of Liverpool) often perceived by the English to be "ugly", were not rated differently to BBC English and Southern Irish English, generally perceived by the English to be easy on the ear. It is perhaps no coincidence that Brummie and Scouse are spoken in cities that are possibly not considered entirely desirable places to live in."


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> What you describe here are the IPA symbols for Spanish like in the difference between "Ajo" and "Hago".   Would that mean that German "Ach" and "R" are pairs and the distinction is only that one is devoiced and the other is voiced?   When "R" starts a word like "Rom" does it also have this weak sound?


Yes, the _ach_-Laut is the unvoiced counterpart of the "r". Some dialect also have a fricative "g", e.g. "fragen" is /fʁa:ɣən/. In my mind, these /ʁ/ and /ɣ/ sounds are not distinguishable for most speakers. But judge for yourself. I here the "r"s in the two samples of the word "raten" here both as [ɣ], not as [ʁ].


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> Yes, the _ach_-Laut is the unvoiced counterpart of the "r". Some dialect also have a fricative "g", e.g. "fragen" is /fʁa:ɣən/. In my mind, these /ʁ/ and /ɣ/ sounds are not distinguishable for most speakers. But judge for yourself. I here the "r"s in the two samples of the word "raten" here both as [ɣ], not as [ʁ].



Yes, I clearly hear the fine difference.  The second is closer to "Ágata" or "a gatas" in Spanish.
I think both versions of this "guttural" R can be found in French too.  I always considered it "weak" or "strong" speakers. 
Anyway this answers my question why French speakers pronounce German ach-Laut as R:   Schumarer,  Haltenbar.  Give it voice and it can be an approximate.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Give it voice and it can be an approximate.


Exactly.


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## myšlenka

Assuming that guttural sounds are universally perceived as ugly and unpleasant, we should expect language users in general to avoid them. A quick search in the UPSID database reveals that the sound represented as /x/ in IPA occurs in about 20% of the languages registered in the database. The corresponding voiced sound /ɣ/, which sounds much softer in my ears than /x/, occurs in 12% of the languages in the database. If the starting assumption is true, we would expect the opposite situation with the voiced sound being more frequent than the voiceless one.

 Someone also mentioned Tolkien and his constructed languages, in particular Elvish and Black speech. Elvish contains nice and soft sounds whereas Black speech contains ugly and guttural sounds and I think that this is the way Tolkien wanted these languages to be perceived. Not because guttural sounds are ugly in themselves, but because Tolkien knew his audience. In my opinion, the map of Middle earth looks too much like Europe to be a coincidence. Assigning nice and soft languages to the people in the west and Black speech to the areas to the south-east made it a lot easier for his (main) audience to identify with the good guys.

Or... maybe I am totally wrong


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## LilianaB

I personally doubt it. Tolkien was a linguist, so I don't really think he perceived any languages or sounds as ugly, although he might have identified with certain languages more than with others. His real native language (the language a person identifies with on a deeper level) was Middle English. I don't think he would make generalizations about his audience like that, since one of his ideas was that someone's real native language was a language on an often unexpressed level (that the person might not have even spoken). So the native language of his closest audience might not have been English.(according to his ideas).  

It is a beautiful language, in a fact, although there is not that much written in its pure form. He did not write poetry in it, because people can only write poetry in languages they identify with, or perhaps the speakers of that language were not portrayed as a poetic kind. It does not mean, however, that he considered this language ugly. Also people like Tolkien hardly ever care what their audience thinks about their works, or identifies with.


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## myšlenka

I didn't say that Tolkien perceived languages or sounds in a specific way. I know he was very fond of languages in general. However, it would not make sense to let the orcs of Mordor speak clear English while the hobbits spoke Black speech.

I suppose this is a side point in the discussion anyway


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## LilianaB

Welcome to the forum. I just think he wanted the language to be in accord with the nature of the Hobbits. They were not overly poetic beings in his books, I think. (more on the hash side)


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## Youngfun

In Mandarin Chinese the standard phoneme is /x/, with  as allophone. 
But in the Southern pronunciation, (and in my pronunciation) it's always .

Maybe people have in mind the Northern German pronunciation of _ch_ which I also perceive as extremely guttural, but I've heard that this sound is pronounced much softer in the South.
In Italy this sound has been popularized by the commercial of a notorious drug, in which a German lady pronounced _acht_ with a very strong guttural _ch_.
But I think that Dutch is more guttural than German.

*Moderator note: Comment about uvular "r" moved to new thread.*


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## Erick404

<...>

Now, I think there are also stereotypes and prejudice involved in how we perceive language. For example, France was a major power in Europe for centuries, and most westerners (well, perhaps not the British ) associated anything from France with elegance and beauty. I believe this influences people to find the same of the French language (which I find pretty ugly, by the way). 

And of course, German. Germany was loathed by much people after the World Wars, and it also extended to the language (or even languages that sound _similar_ to it). I've seen countless people mentioning "Hitler", "Auschwitz" or something like that when someone talks about German (and trying to make it sound funny).


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## Youngfun

<...>



Erick404 said:


> Now, I think there are also stereotypes and prejudice involved in how we perceive language. For example, France was a major power in Europe for centuries, and most westerners (well, perhaps not the British ) associated anything from France with elegance and beauty. I believe this influences people to find the same of the French language (which I find pretty ugly, by the way).
> 
> And of course, German. Germany was loathed by much people after the World Wars, and it also extended to the language (or even languages that sound _similar_ to it). I've seen countless people mentioning "Hitler", "Auschwitz" or something like that when someone talks about German (and trying to make it sound funny).


Agree 

<...>


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## TheFriendlyArab

So there's no language that people universally agree is _unpleasant_ to hear, but what about _pleasant_. I don't think I've ever heard someone say Italian is hard on the ears, but maybe there's someone who does. My main complaint is that if people dislike how a certain language sounds when spoken than that is major obstacle for creating entertainment in that language. More specifically, I wanted to make Arabic dubs of some videos I've seen but I don't want people to judge its quality based on the "pleasantness" of the language being spoken but rather on the quality of the acting.


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## TheFriendlyArab

merquiades said:


> I once knew an American lady who specifically said she decided to take Italian in high school because it was the only language offered that didn't have guttural sounds:  German (ch), Spanish (j) French (r) Hebrew?.  She couldn't bear hearing them let alone pronouncing them.  I think it definitely is because they are lacking in English and do sound foreign to monolingual people.



This especially pains me to hear. Profound and beautiful things can be said in any language with serenity (unless there's a language that has yelling and anger as part of its core features) and individual sounds shouldn't cause so much loath (that spelled right?) for a language. I compare it to my local sheik reciting Qur'an during prayer to an angry man yelling in Arabic on Al-Jazeera. It's the same language but it sounds completely different.


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## LilianaB

I can assure you that there is no single language in the world that all people would find pleasant. I strongly believe that the language experience is something very individual.

It can be influenced by various types of prejudices and associations, but there is something more essential that makes a person like a certain language as opposed to not like it. I think I naturally like all Germanic languages, including German, but sometimes when you watch too many war movies, certain phrases or even the whole language can become an unpleasant experience because it may be associated with war and death, in those contexts. I can imagine how people who went through certain unpleasant and tragic experiences in their lives may have a negative attitude towards languages, and find them unpleasant. However, there is something beyond those experiences, if you heal from them (some people may never heal, if they went through a lot, even if they forgive), which will tell you which sounds or languages you really like as opposed the ones you are indifferent to, or perhaps that may even get on your nerves -- to put it lightly. It all has to do with sound, and the sensitivity to sound -- I personally cannot tolerate high-pitched sounds that well.


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## Youngfun

In Italy the only dialect (or regional language) that I find guttural is Calabrian.

Some people have a negative impression for Calabrian and Sicilian, because of the association of them with mafia and 'ndrangheta.


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