The own emotional connotation is personal to the speaker. It would not be something every speaker of the language physically felt and couldn't get away from. A speaker might absolutely love that he has a specific native language, while another one hates the same fact. They had very different upbringings and use their languages in very different ways. Those languages would not have the same emotional connotation. So, it's not something that can be generalised from individual subjective opinions of various single people.

What really fascinates me is the "rhythmic feel" of language rather than emotional connotation.

• Latin can feel fluid and slow ("howwayyou")
• Spanish can feel broken and rapid ("rat-a-tat")

There doesn't have to be any "objective" difference in "expressiveness" or so on, but merely the patterns and sounds of the language can make it feel very different.

Personally I would say it's based mostly on experience, as well as expectations from languages already familiar. Certainly, though, different languages feel different.

The (emotional, semantic, etc) content is absolutely not in the signal!

Yet from our own subjective perspectives, we can certainly point to what about the signal gives us a certain feeling.
Arguably this is true also for things like phonemes and "meaning" in language. Those aren't in the signal either, technically speaking.

All true



I think the distinction here may be between what is conventional in a speech community and what is unique to an individual. While phonemes are generally conventional for all speakers of a speech community (eg, ~dialect), the impression that different languages have on each of us is not generally defined by a speech community. Of course there may be exceptions to that-- political associations can often make groups believe that a certain language sounds "ugly".

Really? That happens for native Spanish speakers too? When I visited Greece for a few days years ago I kept having the same reaction-- felt like my Spanish was terrible because I couldn't understand a word

I do wonder if evolution of language is in any way related to the environment of the times.

Perhaps romance languages are a reflection of a culture heavily invested in matters of the heart.

English has one of the largest vocabularies ever, so perhaps that is a reflection of the times focused on a desire to understand, decipher, or even obfuscate.

Something such as a Hackney, which is a working class migratory language may have less of a romantic feel with it, and more of a heart pounding ruffian feel with it.

Then again, that's stretching things a little and overlooking things such as societal privilege and so on, and origins of the various working classes who combined in the area and what the feel of their languages prior might be.