When I hear people say that German is a harsh language I always thought they were referring to literally how it sounds.
Hard sounds versus soft sounds and all of that. I haven't heard A LOT of German but I would agree that it has a lot of hard sounds to it where as something like say French has a lot of soft sounds. Even compared to English in my experience it has a lot of harder sounds. I don't know if "hard sounds" is the right way to phrase it, but it's the only way i can think to put it.
It doesn't make it an ugly language or anything, it doesn't devalue it's worth. It just often sounds harsh or a little jarring to those who haven't heard it very much or grew with a softer sounding language.
Granted I have no idea who you're referring to in your post, and no idea what their intentions were when they said what they said. But that's just always how I thought of it.
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chiming
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Date: 2009-11-04 07:19 pm (UTC)From:Hard sounds versus soft sounds and all of that. I haven't heard A LOT of German but I would agree that it has a lot of hard sounds to it where as something like say French has a lot of soft sounds. Even compared to English in my experience it has a lot of harder sounds. I don't know if "hard sounds" is the right way to phrase it, but it's the only way i can think to put it.
It doesn't make it an ugly language or anything, it doesn't devalue it's worth. It just often sounds harsh or a little jarring to those who haven't heard it very much or grew with a softer sounding language.
Granted I have no idea who you're referring to in your post, and no idea what their intentions were when they said what they said. But that's just always how I thought of it.