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Re: What's your favorite sounding word in any language?

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Saturday, December 20, 2003, 17:24
To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
Subject: Re: What's your favorite sounding word in any language?

At 20:26 18.12.2003, Isidora Zamora wrote:

>My favorite is probably the Danish word "marmalade" for the way that it >shows off the intervocallic allophone of /d/ in the Danish >language. Sorry, no transcription available, because the sound is so >unusual that there isn't any standard (nor, prehaps, any non-standard) >transcription of it.
Actually it's [D_o], where the diacritic indicates a 'lowered' articulation, in this case an approximant rather than a fricative. I would be tempted to transcribe [4_o], but that ain't what the Danish phoneticians do. Personally I think the sound merits its own sign, which should be an upside-down voiced dental fricative character (i.e. upside-down ð). Incidentally that Danish word, together with _chokolade_, are among my favorites too. Something with quintessential Danicity, like Dirk's quintessential Shoshoni word. Otherwise I'm wild about the sound of Icelandic. If I have to pick a favo I think it'd be _kalt_ 'cold' (adv.) which sounds what it means: [k_haKt]. Then there are others in other tungs... And my favorite sound sequences are [ndr] and [ndl] for reasons I don't really understand. I even designed the historical phonology of Sohlob so that these combos should occur, but then I ruined it again by inserting svarabhakti vowels, so that *rini-anra became *linandra and then became _linandar_, but the -ndr- still occurs in oblique forms. It means 'western river' and is probably my favorite Sohlob word, BTW, although Sohlob isn't usually that melifluent. The reason for the initial l- is a dialect pronunciation: it would be _rinandar_ in pure classical Central Sohlob, and _linal_ in the Western dialect, if the Westerners called the river by that name, which they don't. ---------- To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> Subject: Re: What's your favorite sounding word in any language? At 19:04 19.12.2003, Shreyas Sampat wrote:
>I'm a particular fan of the Gujarati /aNr`i/, "finger."
So that is what they made of Sanskrit _aNguli_! Now go fig what Angulimala means! It was the name of a bandit who was converted into a monk by the Buddha. /BP 8^) -- B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__ A h-ammen ledin i phith! \ \ __ ____ ____ _____________ ____ __ __ __ / / \ \/___ \\__ \ /___ _____/\ \\__ \\ \ \ \\ \ / / / / / / / \ / /Melroch\ \_/ // / / // / / / / /___/ /_ / /\ \ / /'Aestan ~\_ // /__/ // /__/ / /_________//_/ \_\/ /Eowine __ / / \___/\_\\___/\_\ Gwaedhvenn Angeliniel\ \______/ /a/ /_h-adar Merthol naun ~~~~~~~~~Kuinondil~~~\________/~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~ || Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda kuivie aiya! || "A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)

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Joe <joe@...>