{"id":2504,"date":"2014-09-08T09:15:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T13:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/?p=2504"},"modified":"2020-10-02T13:15:35","modified_gmt":"2020-10-02T17:15:35","slug":"romantic-languages-not-necessarily-romance-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/2014\/09\/08\/romantic-languages-not-necessarily-romance-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Romantic Languages: Not Necessarily Romance Languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Itchy<\/a>Today I\u2019m going to completely disagree with my own comic.<\/p>\n

I made the above strip a while back and thought I could mine some easy chuckles from a common stereotype. But now that I\u2019m older, wiser, and more proficient in all of the above languages, I\u2019ve come change my tune. Not only that, I\u2019m going to crusade on behalf of those languages which I believe have been wrongly maligned by simplistic labels and bad first impressions. Any\u00a0language can be\u00a0romantic\u2014not just the so-called romance languages!<\/p>\n

Of course, the \u201cromance\u201d in the term \u201cromance language\u201d doesn\u2019t refer to how effective it is in attracting members of the opposite sex; rather, it just means it\u2019s a language rooted in Latin, the language of the Romans<\/em> (it\u2019s embarrassing how recently it was that I found this out myself). Yet there\u2019s this pervading opinion that French, Italian, and Spanish are the world\u2019s prettiest-sounding languages\u2014apart from my own unscientific questioning of friends and relatives, the Kings of Romance seem to dominate most of the top-10 lists I can find on the web as well. They\u2019re cited as being \u201cmelodic,\u201d \u201cflowing,\u201d \u201ccheerful,\u201d and \u201ceasy on the ears.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the bottom of most lists, grumbling and grouching, are usually German, Russian, and the other Slavic languages. (Strangely, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese tend to vacillate on people\u2019s lists between ugliest and prettiest. Not sure what that\u2019s about.) They\u2019re cursed with being \u201cguttural,\u201d \u201charsh,\u201d and \u201clike someone is choking on potatoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, apart from this being a completely subjective topic, I believe it\u2019s unfair. In fact, I\u2019d go so far as to say that most of this is just the influence of popular culture. Paris, Barcelona, Venice: these are routinely cited as our planet\u2019s most romantic cities. Italian and Spanish men are well-known for being aggressive pursuers of love, while the women are widely regarded as fiery and passionate. Thanks in no small part to Pep\u00e9 Le Pew, the French are stereotyped as smooch-heavy seducers. All this, in my opinion, leads to romance tongues\u2019 reputation for romance.<\/p>\n

In fact, while these languages certainly can<\/em> be romantic, they can just as easily not. French talk radio (like talk radio anywhere) reminds me of someone trying to swallow marbles. The pitter-patter of Italian can quickly become a nagging, fiery rat-tat-tat. And Spanish has so many accents across the world that I\u2019m sure each one occupies a space on someone else\u2019s \u201cugly\u201d list.<\/p>\n

German and Russian, on the other hand, can be mightily sexy. This all depends on what game you\u2019re playing, of course, but there\u2019s something to be said for those commanding tones, don\u2019t you think? And I\u2019m sure if we could find Looney Tunes cartoons in Serbian, Pep\u00e9 Le Pew would sound just the same.<\/p>\n

Any beautiful person with a winning smile and a killer line can seduce you, it doesn\u2019t matter which language they\u2019re speaking. Confidence, assertiveness, charisma, and humor play a much bigger role in attracting the opposite sex than whether your tones are nasal or guttural.<\/p>\n

Likewise, if a large, nasty person with a bad attitude and a bone to pick is verbally assaulting you in a so-called \u201cromance\u201d language, you\u2019re not going to place it very high on your list.<\/p>\n

Okay, fine, let\u2019s hear it: what do you<\/em> think are\u00a0the most and least beautiful languages around? But more interesting, perhaps \u2013 have you been seduced by German? Have you been turned off by Italian? Where have you seen the stereotypes inverted?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

Today I\u2019m going to completely disagree with my own comic. I made the above strip a while back and thought I could mine some easy chuckles from a common stereotype. But now that I\u2019m older, wiser, and more proficient in all of the above languages, I\u2019ve come change my tune. Not only that, I\u2019m going…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":4449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[542801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2504","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2504"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2506,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions\/2506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}