Re: The beautifulest phonology

I must say that I agree with the general sentiment, that the language with
the "beautifullest phonology" is not necessarily going to be the most
beautiful language. The only reason I asked the question is to see what
everyone's favourite sounds were. I for one in all likelihood will not
make a language based on the phonology I presented; I prefer deriving my
langs from natlang ancestors, e.g. Dalmatian from Latin & vegliot,
Nyenya'a from Nenets and Japanese and Madzhi from Mansi.

---ferko

On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Kala Tunu wrote:

> i think too that culling phonemes into a grid and using the survivors only
> hardly makes a lang sound nice--although allophones may make up for phonetic
> dryness like in Tepa and Uatakassi. i also think that certain combinations of
> "ugly" phonemes sound nice and vice versa. for instance i don't like my own Tunu
> words with the shapes chVsV and mVbV but i don't mind sVchV and bVmV ones. i
> hate final -f and i don't like words with r- initials but i'm ok with vr-, etc.
> I think it's all about what your ear finds "balanced". and even then, an "ugly"
> word may sound pleasing when associated with other words within a phrase, and
> vice versa. there are conlangs that i think have beautiful words and make ugly
> phrases. that's why i need to read a text aloud to make my opinion about a
> conlang. and the more legible the better.
>
> Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
> >>>
> This I think is one of the serious weaknesses of this 'beautifullest
> phonology' approach (apart from beauty being a subjective criterion and, in
> this case, 'in the ear of the listener'), namely that we seem to be
> thinking of phonemes, or sets of phonemes, in isolation.
>
> To return to my cooking analogy, if I simply mixed together all the
> 'beautifullest foods' or, if you prefer, the 'most aesthetically pleasing
> to the taste buds' foods, I think the result would not be pleasant.  We
> would need a little sourness to counteract the overall sugary effect; we
> would need other flavors to spice the thing up.
>
> a few harsh sounds might add spice to the language  :)
> <<<
>
>
> Mathias
> www.geocities.com/kalatunu/index.htm
>