feuervogel | (Reply)

Niederdeutsch & Plattdeutsch are very closely related to the *cough* dialect of German that evolved into modern Dutch.

My first German teacher was an American woman with a horrid accent - she couldn't pronounce Kuchen and Küche differently. My second German teacher came from Berlin. *THAT* was a transition, let me tell you, but it helped me learn a more native pronunciation. Then my college prof was from Kiel, so he had a very different accent, too. His spoken English had a British accent of sorts, which seems to be more common of northern Germans.

Yet all that was thrown into the wash when I lived in Hessen for a year and picked up their marble-mouthed accent.

It's possible that German doesn't sound musical because it sounds like English, with similar cadences and rhythm. The Romance languages are often cited as "prettier," possibly because the cadence is different and the word roots are different (except where English swiped various Latinate roots for fancy pants purposes, leaving the Germanic roots for the vulgar. cf excrement vs shit.)

ETA: All that, and I forgot to mention how awesome the Austrian accent is. It's rounder and almost drawled. Love it!