Are Some Languages Naturally More Beautiful Than Others?

It ’s commonly order that some languages – lease ’s say French or Italian – are easier on the ears than others – mention no names ( German , plainly ) . But can a speech be intrinsically beautiful , while another might just be innately unpleasant ?

In a new field of study , researchers from the Russian Academy of Sciences and Lund University in Sweden carried out the first bombastic - scale , grumpy - cultural comparison of hundreds of languages in an endeavour to do a simple question : Do some oral communication go more beautiful than others ?

Generally speaking , they establish short evidence to affirm the title that some spoken language are view “ universally attractive ” across dissimilar cultures . Thebeauty of a languageis only in the ears of the observer , it seems .

Their sample ask 2,125 recordings of 228 languages from 43 speech family . The recordings of each speech werespokenby five to 11 different masses to control for personal vocal attractiveness . The languages were then play to 820 native talker of English , Chinese , or Semitic languages , who were demand to suggest how much they liked them .

Overall , there was little consensus among people of different finish about whichlanguagessound more pleasing . The researchers write that “ the scores by English , Chinese , and Semitic speakers were weakly correlated , ” which basically mean there was very little arrangement between the three mathematical group .

“ The most beautiful languages agree to Chinese speakers were Mandarin , English , and Japanese , whereas speakers of Semitic nomenclature preferred Spanish , English , Italian , and Arabic , ” the study author write .

That said , there were some outliers . Most raters , regardless of their finish or mother clapper , give way an “ outstandingly low ” rating to Chechen , a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by or so 1.7 million hoi polloi in the Chechen Republic of Russia . On the other final stage of the scale , there were amazingly gamy scores all one shot for Tok Pisin , an English - free-base Creole speech spoken throughout Papua New Guinea .

Beyond spoken communication , there was also clearly some fondness for certain types ofvoice . The finding understandably showed a taste for “ breathy female voice ” no matter of the spoken language they were speak , as opposed to gruff male voices .

“ While some type of human voice may be generally attractive , the language themselves were surprisingly uniform in terms of their esthetic appeal to the mean somebody in our sampling , ” the bailiwick authors conclude .

“ This initial determination promote an classless view of extant macrocosm languages , demonstrates the feasibility of grouchy - cultural phonesthetic research , and raise important interrogation about the role of esthetics in language evolution , ” they added .

The study is write in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ) .