Beautiful Languages

[lapinschous]

Originally Posted by Matevz91

Anyway, I don't really hear the difference, but I love the way she spoke back in 2000-2003.

Yeah everyone loved her voice back then , because the accent made her sound like she was stumbling on every word, she was speaking a very childish french and her accent was still cute not yet laughable. Now that she's gotten mature, I must say that mylène did a good job inciting her to hide her accent or it would have been very hard for her to succeed in mainland france.

If you want to transpose this to english, it's the equivalent of a mix between hardcore english cockney and the way poor black people from popular city areas talk in the us.

[Jenny_HRO87]

I hope the Corsican accent is not that kind of accent people can't take seriously or make fun of?

I'm sure she's talking more in her "old" accent now she's back home, even if I'm also sure that she'll go on hiding it in public... I never really noticed a difference between now and then but I never really paid attention either, I should rewatch some old Lili videos...

Sometimes when you move you just start to adopt a new way of talking even if you don't realise it... I had this for example when I moved away for a bit less than 3 years to do my training... when it was nearly over I already sometimes caught myself thinking differently... sounds odd but when it comes to the time of the day we have two ways in Germany to say "quarter past ..." and "quarter to..." which always causes endless discussions and all my collegues and classmates who didn't know this version from home just couldn't get it! On the other hand... I could always understand perfectly (and their version was new to me either!) what they meant but they never understood me! (and it isn't so hard!) And at the end of my training I caught myself thinking in the "wrong" way and I was like "noooooo how can you?" and when I went back it took a while to erase this info from my brain.

Originally Posted by lapinschous

Must agree! I remember when I was 8 I had my first german class and they gave us audio cassettes and the voice of the girl sounded so pure and smooth when she was saying "I liebe dich" for the pronuntiation practice that I kept replaying the same sentence for days! ^^

it's actutally "Ich liebe dich" but nevermind but I'm glad to hear that at least some people think that German isn't ugly In my ears "Ich liebe dich" sounds a bit more beautiful than "I love you" (while je t'aime is the most beautiful out of those three), perhaps it's because that there is one more syllable and it takes a moment longer to say it or something.. but the "ich" might sound not so nice to foreign ears

anyway, talking about ways to say "I love you"... when I was in Paris in January my friend and I we went to Sacre-Coeur and accidentally ran into a very beautiful wall. It's a wall full of ways so say "I love you" in different languages... I took a photo of it but it's not that great... also I concentrated more on the German bits...



I kinda regret now that I didn't take a picture of the whole wall....

http://www.lesjetaime.com/english/index.html

(I also found two German versions of "I love you" there and funnily it weren't even the standard versions of saying it... the first was "Ick liebe dir" (which is a version in a dialect people for example in Berlin would use... so not totally incorrect) and the other was "Ich ha di lieb" which was firstly spelled wrong (it's "Ich hab dich lieb") and secondly - a quick German lesson sorry - even if it means "I love you" when you translate it back to English it doesn't mean the same as the "real" I love you (Ich liebe dich) in German... it's more the way to say "I love you" to your mum or dad, to your brother/sister or to your best friend... it's more than "I like you" but it doesn't mean the same as when you say "I love you" to your boyfriend (well you can say it to your partner too)... but you say it to a person that is very dear to you and that love and means a lot to you, that you would miss a lot.. I think it's mostly said by kids to their parents (or vice versa) and for example by girls to their best friends because if a guy would say that to his best friend it would sound really weird... anyway, I thought this wall was really really lovely



ok this was a long post with a lot of not interesting and totally not necessary babbling about myself but it took ages to type it so it can stay here until someone complains about it.

[ptjmwa]

Originally Posted by lapinschous

Yeah everyone loved her voice back then , because the accent made her sound like she was stumbling on every word, she was speaking a very childish french and her accent was still cute not yet laughable. Now that she's gotten mature, I must say that mylène did a good job inciting her to hide her accent or it would have been very hard for her to succeed in mainland france.

If you want to transpose this to english, it's the equivalent of a mix between hardcore english cockney and the way poor black people from popular city areas talk in the us.

haha. That's not racist at all.

[lapinschous]

Originally Posted by Jenny_HRO87

I
it's actutally "Ich liebe dich" but nevermind but I'm glad to hear that at least some people think that German isn't ugly

Argh!! Forgive me!!! I meant Ich of course... Typing error ^^'


But actually I don't know why many people dislike germanic sounding languages like Flemmish , Dutch or German ... I find them really interesting, the way it sounds heavily depends on the voice of your interlocutor .

As my uncle used to say, the voice of a beautiful girl will always sound enchanting no matter what language she's speaking .

[Lili4ever]

I used to hate German grammar. All those artikels confused me a lot. Spent 6 years learning it, but know almost nothing. And i am hitting my self in the head for that. I could be fluent in German, if i was not lazy fuck. I like that sounds are very clear. It makes it so easy to learn pronunciation.
Right now i am learning Danish and my god, it must be the ugliest language a world has ever seen. The grammar doesn't look to difficult, but pronunciation and the way to talk. It's like people intentionally try to talk more difficult. They are just mumbling something so fast, that you are left scratching your head. It is really the least elegant language i have ever heard. I find it very hard to motivate my self to learn it, but i most to, if i want to find a better job

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by Lili4ever

I used to hate German grammar. All those artikels confused me a lot. Spent 6 years learning it, but know almost nothing.

I learned english and german from the 1st grade on elementary school, and I can tell... we all forgot or never used 95% of all... german could be much easier, without the all grammatical things

[Sagittarius]

What do you think about the Polish language? Have you ever had some contact with this language? Polish people do not really like German for obvious reasons we have aversion. For me, the German is little hard and stiff. I really like the French, and I would like to learn it once. French is probably the most beautiful language in the world, I don't say this because of Alizee. Many Poles also likes French. English also sounds to me a little stiffly.

[Jazzmin]

IMHO English is the most beautiful language, seriously. I looove to listen to all those various vowels :P .

Originally Posted by Marka

Sorbian and Slovenian are one of the few languages in the world that have dual next to singular and plural. Being a Slovene myself, I consider it natural to use dual when I speak with someone in my own language, but I have noticed that more and more people of my generation (and younger generations) in my country are starting to use plural instead of dual, using the latter only when they want to stress that only two persons will do something (for example, when they talk about having a date or having sex ). Anyway, I see dual as something intimate and personal and I don't care if younger generations think that its outdated.

In Polish there used to be dual too but it's been archaical since I-don't-know-when. It remained in some proverbs, though. And also this knowledge is useful if you read Polish medieval texts .

When it comes to outdated manners, the Polish pluperfect is quite dead. But roughly 30 years ago people still spoke with it. Or rather had spoken.

[Wizard]

Originally Posted by lapinschous

Yeah everyone loved her voice back then , because the accent made her sound like she was stumbling on every word, she was speaking a very childish french and her accent was still cute not yet laughable. Now that she's gotten mature, I must say that mylène did a good job inciting her to hide her accent or it would have been very hard for her to succeed in mainland france.

If you want to transpose this to english, it's the equivalent of a mix between hardcore english cockney and the way poor black people from popular city areas talk in the us.

Interesting discussion! Her Corsican accent may be the reason why I struggled at first to understand what she was saying in her earlier video clips, circa early 2000s. I learned French in the formal setting of high school and university classroom, with some immersion, and tend to rely on how I learned it, so it was a struggle. Now, I seem to be getting used to her intonations and mannerism, so it's easier to understand her. Thanks for sharing this!