... 'Ello Guv'nor. 'Ows your belly full o' spots? I'm 'ere on the frog and toad waiting for the camel because my moggy's at the vet. Can't go up the apples and pairs with 'im (or 'er) afterwards mind. That's what my father's people spoke like in his native Hoxton before a war broke out and he as a baby migrated south to Battersea.
I would guess all languages have this, isn't that so? Surely isn't unique for English; the "bourgeosie" will always act snorty and nosey to distinguish themselves from the "lower-class paria". "Lavatory" is a French loan-word. What is nice about German is that they always "germanise" all their loan-words. Meeeeh. I would not say English is particularly beautiful.
'Loo' is slang and only peasants use the word 'toilet'. 'Lavatory' is just fake and pretentious (no one really says that!). Just say 'bathroom' if you have to use a word at all. In a real fancy setting you would just say "excuse me" and leave the table (although you should try not to leave before the meal is over).
I mean, it isn't, as far as we know we don't really know where it came from, just that it appeared in the English language (and referred to toilet) in the 1940s. >when someone on the internet is trying to school you on British meal etiquette and you can't tell if they're being serious or not
It is a dumb word imo and sounds like children's language to me. I am dead serious. I myself rarely use the word "bathroom". I tend just to go without saying anything.
I used to work with a German woman that felt that German was the ugliest, I thought it sounded awesome though. I have no personal experience with most of the other European languages to comment.
Aye, it does sound like it, but that's because it's a more polite word, which is why it has links to the middle class, it is neither harsh (ie bog) or ostentatious (ie lavatory) I see. I've lived through pretty much all the classes besides higher/elite so far, and in different parts of the UK, and from what I can tell, "bathroom" is standard middle-class English. I personally just say "excuse me, I have to pop to the bathroom/loo", but that's as I'm only eating with my immediate family, I'm a little more eloquent when with the higher middle-class part of my extended family, but I am more brutal when I'm with the working-class part of my extended family. I more or less just adapt to the context.
I jave a huge problem with Polish: And Dutch is just cancer: Albanian is kind of gross too imo (sh*t video but did not have the endurance to find a good video where people speak it. It is very easy to get the wrong feel of a language by listening to an artist with a great voice or a pretty face lol, so prefer sharing spoken variants):
North Korean South Korean sounds nicer. Sounds less like she wants to rip off my head compared to North Korean.
This thread was named "European" just to narrow things down, but who cares - let's make it worldwide! Yeah, North Korean sounds really authorian and South Korean sounds more chill. However, I do not really like the way South Korean (and Japanese women too for that matter) speak; they tend to over-emphasise their femininity and speak like little girls. Some Turkish women do this too. Ugh.
Kimiko Sensei was alright. Subarashii. I only now just noticed that European bit in the thread title.
Any of the Balkanoid languages annoy me. Turkish, too, and yes, Dutch is pretty awful. I'm on the fence re German, as it appears to me that there is more than one 'German' language; I despise the way they compound words in the academic,technical, and science fields, but then there is a German that is pretty grand when it comes to opera. Je Taime is the name of one of my favorite songs by Jackie Evancho, from here Awakening CD. Have no idea what it means or what the lyrics translate into, and probably don't want to know. When it comes to music vocals Gaelic, French, Spanish, and Italian are the best to my ears.
You're not the first user to post Dutch in here @Strasser... I've been there/The NL/Amsterdam.... Nothing wrong with Dutch... Hagelslag.
I know; I've read the thread ''' So have I, and we had family friends here who were Dutch immigrants. I like it better than most Asian and Slavic languages, but the topic was European languages. No way Dutch sounds better than French, Spanish, or Italian, or the other Euro languages, including German, to most people who aren't Dutch.
Hungarian, Turkish and Finnish (that has been mentioned earlier) may not be the most beautiful languages from a phonetic point of view; zi can see why some find them to sound ugly, but I like these languages primarily because of grammatical reasons - aglutinations fascinates me.
But Swedish is tough to learn and Germany's the language. English is easier to learn in forum specially.
Swedish is probably only difficult to learn because of the inconsistency in spelling, grammar and pronounciation. For example the "sh"-sound can be spelled with everything from sk, sch, tj and sj to stj, ch, ti and gi. Also, we have the semi-random habit of spelling the same sound with either a 'ck' or only a 'k', and just as you think it makes sense, you find a word that contradicts the rule and as a whole, Swedish spelling is absolutely atrocious. Conjugation of verbs is alao utterly random without no clear rule on when to do what or which verb goes with which conjugation.