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Description
CLICK ME, I'M FUNNY (honestly, I am)

"The german language is so aggressive"
"Why does everything in german sound so angry?"
"Tell someone you love them today, cause life is short. But shout it to them in GERMAN, because life is also terrifying"
"Why do germans always scream that much?"
"German sounds so harsh and hard"

I heard of those on the net a lot of time, but I was quite shocked, when I was confronted with this even here in Japan.
Both japanese and foreigners of other countries say that german sounds very brutal, aggressive and loud. I actually frown a lot when I hear that.

Some facts:
It is true, that german belongs to the more harsh sounding languages.
German has (usually, bavarian is a big exception as well as some other dialects in part) a very clear pronouncation in comparison to more "flowing" languages like french or italian.
German is also very fond of consonants, resulting in often putting three consonants at the beginning and end of the word before even the first vocal appears.
And we also tend to "Auslautverhärtung", being that the last consonant is ALWAYS a harsh one. A d becomes a t and a b becomes a p. A lot of german words work like that, making especially the ending of words often sound a bit more harsh.

BUT
Russian is a lot more extreme in the usage of consonants. I actually heard once of a village with the name KRCHZP or something. It had not even one vocal in it and I had tried for weeks to say that name.
Dutch, danish and english are very closely related to the german language (to the point where mothertongues can partly understand people of the other languages without any knowledge of the words), resulting in them also sounding quite harsh in comparison to flowing languages, even though they have some different aspects like english with the soft th-sound and dutch with it's soft sounding ch-sounds.
Languages like japanese have a lot of vocals, but they use soft and hard consonants in the same ammount, resulting in harsh words like Seppuku and soft words like Tadaima.
And Latin, even though it is dead, is a very hard pronounced language.

But still, german is supposed to be one of the most harsh languages.
Maybe because most people know german from videos of politician speeches (or, even worse, Hitler speeches, because he constantly screamed). Or because the internationally famous music bands of germany are mainly metal or something like Rammstein and Tokyo Hotel.
Or - what reminded me of - because of the punctuation. German doesn't have a fixed order for subject, object and verb (the verb can stand at first, second or last place, even at second and last place at the same time) and subject and object are sometimes hard to differ between. We also use things like pre- and postpositions, meaning that we add little words to the verb or noun to give it a new meaning. Often resulting in ambigius sentences that can only be clearly defined by the punctuation in speech.
"Das Auto wird das Hindernis umfahren" can mean "The car will evade the obstacle" or "The car will ride over the obstacle". The only way for a german to differ this is by listening. Because if the speaker says UMfahren (making um a little to a lot louder), then it will be riding over. By keeping it the same, it will be evading. And since many sentences work like that, german has some kind of melody in how loud or soft things are said.
Other languages usually only use a pattern like this when being angry (WHY did you BAStard DO this to me?!), and since germans also do it when angry (maybe even more, since we still need to respect our speaking pattern), it might lead to the "Germans always sound so angry".

Anyway, I had to laugh and cry when I found the clip of a Scrubs-actress "speaking" german:
CLICK ME
She literally (and for no obvious reason) screams and over-pronounces the words sentences "Hot chocolate milk with whipped cream for breakfast" and "I love you", making it sound ridicoulus for germans, but probably normal to most other people, "because german sounds so aggressive".

Some more facts 1:
That actress actually says a totally weird sentence in the middle where she claims afterwards to say something like "I like the wave of your hair".
She actully says "I love your big, wonderful wave with a big red hair xxxxx"
With two extra jokes.
One is that the "with a" has the wrong conjugation, making it sound weird anyway.
And that "kunne" or what she says at the end is definitly anything but german :'D
Maybe she wanted to say "Kopf" (head) or "Körper" (body) or Konter (counter attack), but kunne is a wonderful example of made up words that are supposed to sound german xD

Some more facts 2:
When some of the japanese or foreign people here asked me to speak german, they were actually highly confused, because - despite having a loud voice - I speak quite soft due to my dutch and english influence. I also try to speak quietly in public.
So they were probably like "that can't be german, it sounds too nice" :'D

Description
CLICK ME, I'M FUNNY (honestly, I am)

"The german language is so aggressive"
"Why does everything in german sound so angry?"
"Tell someone you love them today, cause life is short. But shout it to them in GERMAN, because life is also terrifying"
"Why do germans always scream that much?"
"German sounds so harsh and hard"

I heard of those on the net a lot of time, but I was quite shocked, when I was confronted with this even here in Japan.
Both japanese and foreigners of other countries say that german sounds very brutal, aggressive and loud. I actually frown a lot when I hear that.

Some facts:
It is true, that german belongs to the more harsh sounding languages.
German has (usually, bavarian is a big exception as well as some other dialects in part) a very clear pronouncation in comparison to more "flowing" languages like french or italian.
German is also very fond of consonants, resulting in often putting three consonants at the beginning and end of the word before even the first vocal appears.
And we also tend to "Auslautverhärtung", being that the last consonant is ALWAYS a harsh one. A d becomes a t and a b becomes a p. A lot of german words work like that, making especially the ending of words often sound a bit more harsh.

BUT
Russian is a lot more extreme in the usage of consonants. I actually heard once of a village with the name KRCHZP or something. It had not even one vocal in it and I had tried for weeks to say that name.
Dutch, danish and english are very closely related to the german language (to the point where mothertongues can partly understand people of the other languages without any knowledge of the words), resulting in them also sounding quite harsh in comparison to flowing languages, even though they have some different aspects like english with the soft th-sound and dutch with it's soft sounding ch-sounds.
Languages like japanese have a lot of vocals, but they use soft and hard consonants in the same ammount, resulting in harsh words like Seppuku and soft words like Tadaima.
And Latin, even though it is dead, is a very hard pronounced language.

But still, german is supposed to be one of the most harsh languages.
Maybe because most people know german from videos of politician speeches (or, even worse, Hitler speeches, because he constantly screamed). Or because the internationally famous music bands of germany are mainly metal or something like Rammstein and Tokyo Hotel.
Or - what reminded me of - because of the punctuation. German doesn't have a fixed order for subject, object and verb (the verb can stand at first, second or last place, even at second and last place at the same time) and subject and object are sometimes hard to differ between. We also use things like pre- and postpositions, meaning that we add little words to the verb or noun to give it a new meaning. Often resulting in ambigius sentences that can only be clearly defined by the punctuation in speech.
"Das Auto wird das Hindernis umfahren" can mean "The car will evade the obstacle" or "The car will ride over the obstacle". The only way for a german to differ this is by listening. Because if the speaker says UMfahren (making um a little to a lot louder), then it will be riding over. By keeping it the same, it will be evading. And since many sentences work like that, german has some kind of melody in how loud or soft things are said.
Other languages usually only use a pattern like this when being angry (WHY did you BAStard DO this to me?!), and since germans also do it when angry (maybe even more, since we still need to respect our speaking pattern), it might lead to the "Germans always sound so angry".

Anyway, I had to laugh and cry when I found the clip of a Scrubs-actress "speaking" german:
CLICK ME
She literally (and for no obvious reason) screams and over-pronounces the words sentences "Hot chocolate milk with whipped cream for breakfast" and "I love you", making it sound ridicoulus for germans, but probably normal to most other people, "because german sounds so aggressive".

Some more facts 1:
That actress actually says a totally weird sentence in the middle where she claims afterwards to say something like "I like the wave of your hair".
She actully says "I love your big, wonderful wave with a big red hair xxxxx"
With two extra jokes.
One is that the "with a" has the wrong conjugation, making it sound weird anyway.
And that "kunne" or what she says at the end is definitly anything but german :'D
Maybe she wanted to say "Kopf" (head) or "Körper" (body) or Konter (counter attack), but kunne is a wonderful example of made up words that are supposed to sound german xD

Some more facts 2:
When some of the japanese or foreign people here asked me to speak german, they were actually highly confused, because - despite having a loud voice - I speak quite soft due to my dutch and english influence. I also try to speak quietly in public.
So they were probably like "that can't be german, it sounds too nice" :'D