First, I would like to comment that different
dialects of a language will
sound very different. I have been told that non-
English speakers, when given samples of
Irish English and (Standard)
American English, often believe they are not the same language.
Russian sounds like a foreign language played backwards on a phonograph to me.
Dutch seems a very funny-sounding and -looking language to me, and to most other English-speakers I know. Probably because of its close similarities to our language, it looks and sounds like some weird mutant English. It also has odd letter-combinations almost never found in English, such as "aa", "ui", and "ij", and certain letters and letter-combinations such as "j", "z", "oo", and "ee" that are much more common in Dutch than English.
Another note is that, while
German is often thought to be a very
harsh-sounding language, the "harsh"
consonants tend to be much less harsh in actual practice. The
getting-ready-to-spit sound that
English-speakers use to imitate the German
ch (as in "akhCHCHchchCHCHhhhhhht" "
eight") is not found in
German; rather, it's much like an English "h", but a bit further
forward in the mouth and with a bit more
constriction. Final R-sounds in
German are very soft, similar to
French and
British English. While
German doesn't quite have the vocal, almost
musical cadence perceived in
French or
Spanish, I found it to be a very
pleasant-sounding language, especially in the
dialect of
Berlin.
Krok7's fake written German looks to mea lot like a blend of Dutch and German.