What is the most beautiful language in the world?
This is very subjective, of course, but everyone has an opinion, and I'd like to hear yours. If we gather up enough opinions, we can have a reasonable general consensus.
To participate in the Most Beautiful Language Survey, just fill out the form at the bottom of the page and include your choice for Most Beautiful Spoken Language and for the Most Beautiful Written Language.
Most Beautiful Spoken Language - Results and Top 10 List
Most Beautiful Written Language - Results and Top 10 List
The Most Beautiful Language Survey
Here are some of my favorites. I think Italian and Spanish rank very highly as beautiful languages. This is a fairly common opinion, though. I also really enjoy hearing Swedish and Icelandic.
Or how about Hawaiian. It has a very poetic sound to it. I think because it has a limited number of consonants and a whole lot of vowels. It is a very flowing language.
I have always found the Celtic languages to sound very magical to me, particularly Welsh. Lately, I have studied a little Cornish. I always wanted to study a Celtic language and decided upon this one when I saw it for the first time. I really liked the look of the language. Words like 'howldrehevel' (sunrise) and 'hedhyw' (today) almost give it a sing-song quality. Almost as if a child invented a secret language.
As far as a written language, I think there is no form of writing more beautiful than traditional Chinese. Each word with its own symbol. Each symbol a tiny piece of art in itself. I'm sure this is also a common opinion. Japanese would be a fairly close second to me.
Top 10 Most Beautiful Spoken Language List :
1 Italian
2 French
3 Spanish
4 Portuguese
5 Chinese (Mandarin)
6 English
7 Russian
8 Finnish
9 Japanese
10 Arabic
Italian was chosen as the most beautiful spoken language by nearly 19% of the participants, with French close behind. Spanish and Portuguese followed on the list.
The Romance languages dominated the survey, with over 50% of the total votes for a language in this family, including the four mentioned above, along with Latin and Occitan.
Next comes Chinese(Mandarin), followed by English. A sizeable portion of the visitors to the site are not native English speakers, and many of the votes for English came from them.
Russian, a surprising Finnish, Japanese and Arabic round out the top 10. Apparently the many visitors to the Hardest language to Learn Survey who appreciate the difficulty of learning Finnish also make it a point to stop by and complete this survey as well.
Other languages with their admirers are Hebrew, Ukrainian, German, Latin, Persian, Greek, Icelandic, Welsh, Hawaiian, Dutch, Hungarian, Estonian, Irish and Polish. A considerable number of other languages also got a few lone votes here and there, but not enough (yet) for me to include them on this list.
Top 10 Most Beautiful Written Language List :
1 Arabic
2 Chinese
3 French
4 Japanese
5 Greek
6 Spanish
7 Hebrew
8 Russian
9 Korean
10 Italian
This is a more eclectic group than the Spoken Language part of the survey, as participants tend to favor different or exotic alphabets and writing styles.
The Most Beautiful Written Language in the World was Arabic, chosen by 18% of those who filled out this part of the survey (some chose a Spoken Language but neglected to choose a favorite Written Language).
Chinese was second with about 13% of the votes. French, a language written with the Latin alphabet, was a surprising third.
Japanese, Greek, Spanish and Hebrew were all very close in the running for fourth place. Russian, Korean and Italian rounded out the Top 10.
Other notable languages with several votes each were English (a surprise to me), Georgian, Persian, Hindi, Tibetan, German, Sanskrit and Old English (Anglo-Saxon). There were many others that don't yet have enough votes to be considered on this list.
If there is another language you don't see in these results that you think is the Most Beautiful Language in the World, either spoken or written, then by all means gather up some reinforcements and have them fill out the survey!
Note that there is an entry for Most Beautiful Spoken Language and one for Most Beautiful Written Language as well.
There is also an entry for your first name and email address. This is entirely voluntary. You can leave those blank if you like. Keep in mind that if you do include your name and email, I will include your entry in a giveway of a language learning product when I randomly choose the winner!
Back to Language Learning Surveys
'Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.'
-Rita Mae Brown
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