Re: Aesthetics

Hi!

I was wondering: as we surely are guided by some aesthetic principles in our
conlanging, what are those principles we use? Maybe it's not a fecund
subject, but let's give a try : ). As it's all subjective, care is needed
when commenting, but it would be nice to hear what other people think is
beautiful, and about what I think... or rather feel.

1) On phonology, good vowels are [a@eEioOuy]; not sure about nasals. Good
consonants are velars, alveolars, and labials (both dental and bilabial).
Until recently I hated palatals... now I'm rather convinced that they are
allowed to exist ; ). Glottal stop sounds very rude. Bilabial fricatives are
prettier than labiodentals. I like aspiration. Alveolar tap is much better
than retroflex. Retroflex consonants are hard for me to pronounce, but I
think I like them, anyway...

2) On morphology, I can't help liking indoeuropean morphology, but the more
regular the better. Ancient Greek is a mess, not so Latin, Sanskrit just a
bit. I can't think about much more here...

3) On syntax, I can just think of parataxis versus hypotaxis. Parataxis is
beautiful, short, 'rhythmic', but hypotaxis, if not of Ciceronian style, may
be so too. About rhythmic, it's too vague a word, and here I mean the
reading memory, used to get the relationship between each phrase on a
sentence, is not too heavily used. Herodotus is just right, not too short,
not too baroque. BTW, I'm not still decided if indirect speech is neat or
just more complicated than useful.

Did anyone here ever wrote an 'aesthetic credo' before starting a conlang? I
think it's exactly what I will do, and then redo everything.

Edgard.

(After an epiphany on φθάνω, χθές and the like.)

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