Re: Fave Conlangs WAS: Silindion
| From: | Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, March 26, 2002, 6:14 |
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At 1:52 am -0500 25/3/02, J Y S Czhang wrote:
>In a message dated 3/24/02 07.11.45 AM, ray.brown@FREEUK.COM writes:
>
>>Nothing inexplicable - Tolkien kept ugly sounds like /Z/ for things like
>>Sauron's 'Black Tongue' :)
>
> Purely subjective that. I like that sound a lot.
...which is also purely subjective. Didn't you notice the smiley?
[snip]
Surely the point is that all this stuff on this thread and the
'beautifullest phonology' one is a bit pointless in that whether individual
sounds are 'beautiful', 'aesthetic' or whatever *is* purely subjective.
In any case, we don't speak in a sequence of discrete sounds; it's the
overall effect that makes one language sound more or less melifluous than
another. And that has as much to do with intonation and other
suprasegmental features as it does with the mere phonemes.
>
> OBCONLANG: Maybe a better conlang-ish question regarding aesthetics is:
>how an orthographic spelling system can be stylistically adaptable
>(user-friendly) and what is - subjectively - the most intriguing?
> Of course this list has already covered scripts. I am talking more about
>the merits of various spelling systems in alphabetic languages, i.e. Spanish,
>Finnish and urban, creolized Tok Pisin being very close to phonetic, while
>English and Gaelic (esp'ly Gaelic! ::wince::) are very, very much otherwise!
Gaelic actually has rules and is considerably more consistent than English
(which ain't hard) - it's just that rules are quite different from those of
the (over)familiar western European languages. That it has its own
idiosyncratic system makes it one of the more intriguing IMHO.
Personally, I think the best spelling systems are those that are phonemic -
not over exciting, perhaps, but it sure makes life easier for learners,
including its own L1 youngsters.
Ray.
Ray.
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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
[J.G. Hamann 1760]
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