English Listening - Is English Beautiful?

Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast. Hey English learners, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 283 of the Listening Time Podcast. I hope your English learning is going great and I hope that your listening comprehension is improving as you listen to and practice with these episodes. Today, I'm going to talk about the topic of beauty in language. Specifically, I want to answer the question, "Is English beautiful? Is it a beautiful language?" Of course, this is subjective, meaning this is based on my own opinion and anyone can have an opinion on this and say whatever they want and that's perfectly fine because this is not a true or false or correct or incorrect type of topic. It's just based on opinion. So, I'll talk a little bit about English and my thoughts regarding whether or not it's a beautiful language. I'll talk about some other languages and compare English in terms of beauty and I'll just give my opinion and my thoughts overall. This might not be a super organized episode. I'm just going to talk about things that come to mind when I think about English and its beauty or lack thereof, meaning it not having beauty. I want to encourage you if you are becoming more comfortable with these normal episodes, you should try my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak at normal speed, not slowly like in these episodes. With those advanced episodes, you'll train your listening and start to be able to understand faster English. So, the link to sign up is down below and if you want, you can also check out my US Conversations podcast in which I talk to different English teachers from all over the US. It's very educational. It's great practice for your listening because we have normal authentic conversations at normal speed and also you can find a teacher using that podcast because those teachers who I talk to, they give classes online. So, you can use that podcast to get to know different teachers, choose one who you like and take classes with them. So, that link is down below. Okay, let's talk about English and whether or not I find it beautiful. Well, for me, it's hard to view a language in terms of its beauty when I speak the language. When I have a good level in that language or in this case, if it's my native language. For me, it's always easier to judge a language on its beauty if I don't speak the language or I don't speak it well at all. That's easier for me. I think maybe because when it's a language that I speak, it's a little harder to just focus on the sounds of the language. I'm focusing more on the communication aspect, right? The meaning of what is being said or what I am saying. However, when it's a language that I don't speak, then I can't understand it or sometimes I can understand a little bit because it's a language that is similar to a language I speak. But in that case, if I can't speak it, I can just focus on how the language sounds and I can judge it more in terms of its beauty. Like, that language sounds nice or I don't really like the sound of that language. So it's hard for me to judge the beauty of English because I speak this language and I don't really pay attention to how nice it sounds when people speak it. There is an exception though. When I hear people speak English that have a different accent, then I can focus a little more on how beautiful it sounds or if it doesn't sound very beautiful. I think because it feels different, it feels like a different type of language than the English that I speak. So in that case, I can focus more on its beauty or lack thereof. I think that's maybe why many people in the US like the sound of British English. A lot of people here think that British English sounds beautiful or classy, elegant, something like that. Maybe because we don't speak British English, it sounds different and we can pay attention to the sounds and judge the beauty of the language based on its sounds because they are different sounds that we don't make when we speak English. Not everyone here likes British English but I have always thought that British English sounds very nice and of course there are many different accents within the UK, within British English of course. But in general, I've always thought that many of these accents sound pretty nice. Maybe it's because I love British literature from the 1800s and early 1900s. This is actually my favorite type and period of literature and because of that, I have listened to many audiobooks of books written in that region at that time and they always have a British narrator narrating those books and so I hear British voices, narrating novels and it sounds very nice. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I personally like the sound of British English. So I do think that British English sounds nice but American English, my accent, I can't really say that I find it super beautiful because it's hard for me to judge because I don't really focus on that. But let me mention a few different elements of American English and English in general that might make people think that it's not quite as beautiful as some other languages. One thing is the consonants in English. I feel like consonants are a little bit more prominent in English versus in some other languages and perhaps I'm wrong here. Perhaps it's like the same number of consonants used in English as in many other languages probably but it feels like consonants are more prominent. You hear them more. There are more clusters, consonant clusters we call them where you have like three consonants in a row, three consonant sounds in a row and I feel like when you have a lot of consonants like that the language often doesn't seem as beautiful. In my opinion and I think in many people's opinion a language can sound more musical, more light and beautiful. If it features more vowels, or the vowels are more prominent than the consonants, and you don't have as many clusters, I think that that is the case. So hearing a lot of consonants in a row with vowels that aren't very prominent, or there aren't as many vowels, might make English seem less musical, less beautiful. And another thing is that we have a lot of reduction in English. We reduce words, syllables, sounds. We reduce them, that's part of our system, our stress system in English. And when we have a lot of reduction, you can hear the consonants probably even more and hear the vowels even less, because oftentimes we reduce these vowels. So let me give you an example sentence right here. Let me just say a sentence, and you can hear what I'm talking about. You probably hear a lot of the vowels reduced, and you might hear the consonants a little more prominent in this sentence, we're just watching them attack. So I said that sentence in a very fast, reduced way, not everyone will say it just like that, but you might hear it said like this, we're just watching them attack, right? There's not a whole lot of music there. The vowels aren't very prominent in most of those words, or there's just one prominent vowel, I should say, like the A in watching and the second A in attack. Those are really the only two prominent, loud, stressed vowels in that sentence. The other vowels aren't really stressed or prominent, and so you hear a lot of consonants and reduction, and not a lot of music, so to say. This is what happens all the time in English. We reduce vowels. If you want to learn more about that, if this is new for you, and you want to dive deeper into this and understand reduction in English better, make sure to check out my listening practice training and my pronunciation training that I have in my membership, that link is down below. If you sign up for that, you'll learn all about reduction and see tons and tons of examples of this in English, and it'll also help you reduce your words more like us. So because of this reduction, I think that English might sound a little less musical and less beautiful, and so let me compare that to like Italian or Spanish, which are usually two of the languages that people point to as being beautiful languages. Why do people think that Italian and Spanish sound beautiful? Why do so many people want to learn these languages because they sound beautiful? And there are others that are similar to these languages as well, I'm just using these two because typically people point to these two as being beautiful languages. Well the main reason why I think these languages sound beautiful to most people is because you hear a lot of this pattern, consonant vowel, consonant vowel, consonant vowel, meaning you hear a lot of consonants followed by vowels, and then you hear that again, and it creates this, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, type of sound, and it just sounds lighter, it sounds like it's flowing like water or air, and it just sounds more musical. I don't know how to describe it better, but I think some of you might know what I'm talking about. Let me compare two words, two cognates, meaning it's like the same word in the two languages, just a different ending or whatever. Let me say the word in Spanish first, and then I'll say it in English, and you can hear the difference, analítica. So you hear the musicality in that word, da, da, da, da, da, da, you hear vowel consonant, vowel consonant, vowel consonant, which sounds pretty nice to many people's ears, da, da, da, da, da, people like that. Now let me say the same word in English, analytics. That's a lot less musical, really you don't hear the vowels all very prominently. You have maybe two of them that are a little bit more prominent, but you hear more consonants in there. It doesn't end with a vowel, so it might sound less musical in this case. I think that's one of the major factors when it comes to people considering a language beautiful is that consonant vowel structure. I don't speak Japanese, but at least from what I hear, I also kind of hear a lot of consonant vowel, consonant vowel structure, and many people find Japanese beautiful as well. So perhaps that's one of the reasons. So that's a big factor, in my opinion. Another factor is I think that English's consonants are just a little bit heavier or harsher, like harder consonants than, for example, consonants in Spanish or in Italian. Like think of the letter D, the letter P, the letter T, these sounds in English that really pop right when we say, da, da, da, they sound pretty sharp and harsh compared to these same letters in Spanish, for example, they're very light in your mouth. This is one reason why English speakers have an accent when speaking Spanish because their consonants are too hard and that's why Spanish speakers have an accent when speaking English because their consonants are too light. So that's a big difference and I think having light consonants makes the words that you say sound lighter, a little bit less harsh and maybe a little more musical. So I think that's another factor, another reason why people might not think English sounds as beautiful as Spanish or Italian. If you think of other languages as well that have like hard consonants, these are typically languages that people don't find as beautiful. So I do think that how hard and heavy and harsh the consonants are can make a language seem more or less beautiful. I think in general light consonants make words sound lighter, they don't feel as harsh, this might make the language sound more musical and more beautiful overall. But that's just my opinion but I think that many people feel this same way. And then talking a little more about the stress system in English, remember that I mentioned that when talking about reduction. Another element is that I think that syllable timed languages often sound more beautiful than stress timed languages. Many of you don't know what I'm talking about here, let me just explain this really quickly. languages are syllable timed, meaning there isn't really a big difference in the length of the different syllables. Like in one word, most of the syllables are a pretty similar length. You hold them, you say them for a similar amount of time. Versus in a stress-time language, this is the opposite. The syllables that are stressed are often much longer than the syllables that are not stressed and those syllables that are not stressed often get reduced. So they just sound different, these types of languages. I think that syllable time that languages often sound more musical. There's more even spacing between syllables. You hear more of that type of music when someone speaks. Versus syllable time, you might hear something like it might sound a little bit more like that. The syllables might be more bunched up. Like if there are two or three unstressed syllables in a row, they might bunch up and sound really fast and there isn't a lot of space between them. I usually use this phrase to demonstrate this. Let me say it to you. Unfortunately, no. You have a lot of syllables there. Unfortunately, no. That's six syllables, but only two of them are stressed. So the rest of them are really fast. Unfortunately, no. And so there's not a lot of music there. It's not the same as a syllable timed language that has just more musical flow from one syllable to the next. So I think that's another factor. And one other factor, I think, is that we often associate languages with places. And that makes sense because certain places speak certain languages, right? English-speaking countries might not seem like the most romantic countries or exotic interesting countries. And I think because of this, people might view English as a little bit less romantic or less beautiful, right? I'm not insulting any English-speaking country. I think that these are amazing destinations to travel to. But I think in general, people don't think of English-speaking countries as very romantic type places versus let's say Italy. Italy is a country that many people find romantic and interesting in that way. And so the Italian language might also seem romantic, beautiful, interesting in that same way, right? Spain is another one. When people think of Spain, they often think of a country of passion and a country that is beautiful and romantic in a way people think like that when they think about Spain. And the same thing goes for Greece. People have that same feeling. And so they might think of Greek in that same light meaning in that same way. They might find it more romantic sounding or whatever. So I think that that also plays a role. It's maybe not the biggest factor, but I think we do associate languages with feelings and places and ideas maybe. And so because of that, we might feel like a language is a little more beautiful if it comes from a country that we think is beautiful and vice versa, meaning the opposite is also true. If a language comes from a country that we don't find very romantic, then we might not find the language very romantic either, right? So that's just something else that might influence it. But I think that overall English's elements, its sounds, its system, don't make it the most beautiful language in my opinion. However, I know that this is subjective. I know that this is just my opinion. You might think the exact opposite. And that's great. I hope you find my language beautiful. I know that many of you like my style of speaking English. I know that a lot of you prefer to listen to me speak than other people, but I don't think that's because I sound very beautiful when I speak English. I just think that you find my style easier to understand clearer. I think that's why you might like listening to me. But hopefully some of you find English beautiful. Hopefully you like its system, its sounds, and even though I don't find English to be an extremely beautiful language, I do think that its literature and its poetry sound very beautiful when I read well-written English literature, English novels, English poems. Then I do feel this sense of beauty. I admire the language, but it's more for the poetry and description that I'm reading and not so much because of the sounds, let's say. So I do find beauty in the English language, but less so in the sounds of English I would say. Okay, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and I know it was good practice for your listening, but for many of you you need something harder than this content and you need to start using my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak at normal speed. So if you want to start practicing with those and improving your listening, then click on the link below to sign up for those. And also check out my US Conversations Podcast so you can start practicing listening to real conversations between native speakers. That will be a great resource to help you take your listening to the next level and it's a great resource to help you find an English teacher to take classes with online. So if you want that, that link is also down below. Thank you all for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.