Greek Among Sexiest Languages in the World, Study Finds

According to new research conducted by the e-learning platform Preply, Greek is the fifth-sexiest language after Russian, French, Portuguese, and Italian.

Italian was rated the sexiest of all the world’s languages.

In the study, the heart rates of participants from diverse linguistic backgrounds were measured as they listened to flirtatious dialogue and pick-up lines in various languages.

Notably, participants listened to flirty excerpts from each language on a recording, not in person, leading to less bias in the results.

According to the study’s findings, it was Italian that got most participants’ hearts racing — while Dutch, ranked the least sexy language of any on earth — had the exact opposite effect.

Greek among sexiest languages due to musical quality, possibly cultural stereotypes

Linguist Aleksandra Stevanovic argues that languages with even distribution of vowels and consonants in their words, such as Italian and Greek, sound more musical to our ears, and therefore more attractive.

Languages including Dutch and German, with a lexical repertoire containing many consonants stacked together, and not separated by vowels, are perceived more often as “clunky,” rather than sexy.

However, cultural ideas may color how we perceive languages. The stereotypes of the Greeks and Italians as romantic and the French as sophisticated may certainly cause us to have a similar perception of their languages.

Stevanovic contends that anyone can have an alluring voice, regardless of whether or not you speak a “sexy” language and that lowering your pitch, speaking more slowly, and adding a husky element to your voice can make it more attractive.

The Greek Language: Beautiful and ancient

While some may not find the Greek language particularly sexy, its ancient roots certainly cannot be denied.

In fact, Greek is one of the world’s oldest languages that is still in use today.

“It is a language that has been spoken for forty centuries without interruption. It has also been written in the same way, using the same alphabet, for 28 centuries, and it has held on to the same spelling rules for 24 centuries,” noted prominent Linguistics professor and former Education Minister Georgios Babiniotis.

Although now spoken by only 13.4 million people in Greece, Cyprus, and throughout the diaspora, Greek once was the lingua franca of the ancient world, spoken for business, education, politics, art, and science, much like English today.

The sheer number of English words that come from Greek roots, estimated to be over 150,000, is evidence of the language’s persisting influence throughout time.

When studying medical terminology, the influence of Greek thought on modern science is particularly clear, as over three fourths of English words used in medicine come from Greek.

Not only is Greek a beautiful language, it is also filled with thousands of years of history and influence.