Re: Aesthetics

Michael Poxon wrote:
> Ooh, interesting!
> Aesthetics (personally) is everything. For me, it's not the sounds
> themselves but the relationship between them, though there are some
> sounds I just don't like. /f/ for instance, especially when word-final.
That's also a sound I tend to avoid; I almost eliminated /f/ from Minza
entirely, making [P] an allophone of /x/ (like /h/ in Japanese), but I'd
become accustomed to certain words having /f/, and I noticed the word
for "soup" had become homophonous with "louse", so I went back to /f/
being a distinct phoneme (now with [f] and [P] as allophones).

One of the issues I've had with Minza is that it reached a point where I
was unsatisfied with the look and sound of it. So Minza's been going in
circles, back and forth, over the last year or so, as I try to zero in
on something I like better. So aesthetics are certainly a factor, but I
don't have a clue what works and what doesn't until I try it, and even
then, I can't figure out why I prefer one form over another.

> I think a lot of our likes and dislikes have identifiable historical
> roots. For example, is a dislike of nasalised vowels related to a
> tyrannical French teacher? Many people say they "Don't like German"
> because it reminds them of... well, it's obvious. Personally I love
> German, I can't help associating it with Beethoven's 9th!
I associate nasalized vowels with Brazilian music -- samba, bossa nova,
etc, so I think of them as pleasant sounds. But German has some harsh
sounds and awkward clusters. Yes, it's the language of Bach, Beethoven,
and others, but aesthetically it doesn't appeal much to me. On the other
hand, Navajo is full of awkward clusters and harsh sounds, but I like
the sound of it.

 > Some sounds I
> think are brilliant because of their strangeness. I remember one night
> last year when a couple of African ladies got on the bus and started
> speaking (I would guess) Xhosa, complete with clicks. Terrific!
Clicks are pretty cool sounds, as are lateral fricatives.