How does German sound to your ears?

[Chocky 1,223]

 

my linguistics professor said German and English were not "romantic" languages, I opine to disagree.

 

'Romance' languages refer to a certain branch of the Indo European language family, they include French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portugese and Corsican. Your linguistics professor was not claiming that these languages are more 'romantic' than others, but maybe you knew that being a student of linguistics, and you were just being facetious?

[Bipa 5,814]

I am getting mightily tired of hearing German TV news announcers talk (in German) about the upcoming Winter Olympics in "Wankuver". :rolleyes:

[jmforge 50]

 

I thought the dialect was called Kölnisch? Anyway, my Dutchman would beg to differ.

 

To me, Dutch seems like a drunken combination of some kind of German and a fair number of English words with extra vowels thrown in for emphasis. Of of my favorite observations about Geramn was made by an American comedian a number of years ago. I can't remember who it was, but he basically said that a German about about the only person in the world that can make a train arrival announcement sound like a formal declaration of war.

With that said, the weirdest Germanic dialect that I have heard is Letzebuergesch. Those folks really seem to have a problem deciding exactly what language they want to speak. I mean "D'Fra ass grouss" doesn't sound like "the woman is tall" to me. Sounds more like a description of J-Lo. :D

[dessa_dangerous 13,315]

 

I always liked this scene in "Scrubs" where Sarah Chalke compares speaking German as she impersonates ... an "evil, old, house-kraut."

 

pretty sure she said "evil, old Hausfrau", but "evil old House-Kraut" is way funnier.

 

baaahahahahaha scuse me, I have to go call a couple of people House-Krauts and die laughing meanwhile

[PCDonkey 998]

@Schnutzel

 

Thanks for the scrubs, greenie for instantly cheering me up.

EAT YOUR SCHNITZEL OR NO PUDDING FOR YOU!!!

 

edit: oh my good god i've become a 'you tube quote from the bloody clip WHICH WE ALL JUST SAW commentator', that can't be good. I will be LOLing next.

 

Dylan Moran described German as sounding like "typewriters eating tinfoil being kicked down the stairs"

[estam 15]

 

I speak Spanish and Italian, and can dabble in Portuguese and French. THESE are beautiful languages... German is simply NOT in the same league.

 

A few sailors from different parts of the world argue about whose native language was the most beautiful.

The French guy: Just savour the wonderful sound of "papillon", it melts on your tongue...

The Englishman: Ah, that says nothing. But "butterfly"!, how lovely.

The Italian: No no, how about "farfalle", how suggestive - it seems to fly!

And the German: And what's wrong about "Schmetterling"?

 

 

I am getting mightily tired of hearing German TV news announcers talk (in German) about the upcoming Winter Olympics in "Wankuver".

 

Or Voshingtn.

[flint24 50]

Actually it sounds like they're speaking backwards. You know, when you play a tape of a person talking in reverse.

I think my first few years here I just tuned it out until I had to learn it in order to have any kind of life.

[Jonstoph 11]

don_riina clearly has some issues -- and none of them really have anything to do with German.

 

We can argue with each other about how German sounds till we're blue in the face, but at the end of day, I think it's a fairly whispery language (lots of multi-consonants and s, sch, pf, ch, tsch sounds that create either puffs or whispers of air when pronounced). I like it when the TV/radio newsreaders fade into a whisper at the end of sentences.

 

As with English, or any other language, when a person is drunk or loud or in a group of teenagers or a dictator at a rally, their speech will sound ugly.