Languages that are spoken very clearly?

[verdensrommet]

Which languages (in your opinion) are spoken very clearly? (That is, languages where words aren't often smushed together or where letters/words are cut off)

[Corinnebelle]

To whose ears? Aren't all languages like that to foreigners sometimes? But I suppose the Queen's English is more precise than like Cockney or street talk in New York.

[ShinyZoroark]

Serbo-Croatian, in my opinion. It sounds like they pronounce every letter.

[Corinnebelle]

In Hebrew apparently they pronounced every letter, but I don't hear it sometimes, and it is fast. French cuts off letters at the end of words, but do you just mean letters they are supposed to pronounce or any version of the event?

[ShinyZoroark]

In Hebrew apparently they pronounced every letter, but I don't hear it sometimes, and it is fast. French cuts off letters at the end of words, but do you just mean letters they are supposed to pronounce or any version of the event?

Exactly. French speakers skip many of the letters, whereas Serbo-Croatian speakers seldom do. The only example I can think of is when -ao becomes -o in colloquial speech, for example stigao -> stigo.

[Dodoa]

As far as I know it usually comes down to glottal stops (short obstruction of air flow by the vocal cords during speech like in uh-oh) between vowels that prevent them from flowing together. According to my quick Wikipedia "research" Serbo-Croatian uses them a lot beween words and so does (High) German. This makes these languages easy to understand, but difficult to speak for people who are not used to them.

[Sofia222677]

I think Italian qualifies. It belongs to the group of "syllable-timed" languages (every syllable is pronounced at roughly the same pace). The only silent letter is 'h' at the beginning of a word, and that's it. There's no vowel reduction, no glottal stop, no guttural sounds; it has only seven vowel sounds, and those vowels are "pure" (definition straight from the Internet: "A pure vowel is a vowel which does not change in sound quality - your mouth position does not change during the vowel".)

[MoniqueMaRie]

I think Italian qualifies. It belongs to the group of "syllable-timed" languages (every syllable is pronounced at roughly the same pace). The only silent letter is 'h' at the beginning of a word, and that's it. There's no vowel reduction, no glottal stop, no guttural sounds; it has only seven vowel sounds, and those vowels are "pure" (definition straight from the Internet: "A pure vowel is a vowel which does not change in sound quality - your mouth position does not change during the vowel".)

I completely agree with you. One of the reasons I love Italian is that the pronunciation rules are so logical.

[Stasia]

Bolivian Spanish is very good. While there are places where Spanish is pronounced way too fast, and/or "eating" the final consonants (which makes speech less clear), Bolivian Spanish is relatively slow and fully pronounced.

[Meli578588]

I understand accents pretty well because my family has them.

So, they all seem nice and clear.

[LICA98]

Latvian and Hungarian

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Swahili.