Re: Woody or tinny?

On Wed, 16 May 2001 02:38:52 -0500, Andrew Chaney <adchaney@...> wrote:

>Generally speaking consonents of the same degree of closure should not
occur
>in pairs (let alone triplets).  That is ovoid putting a stop next to
another
>stop or an affricate next to another affricate or a nasal next to another
>nasal, etc....
>
>Thus "act", "fact", "sixth", "world", "furled", "hurled", and so on are all
>less than desirable.
>
>Also, consonent clusters involving more than two consonents are tedious.
This is a good rule; you just put into words something I've always felt
subconsciously.

Generally, English manages to produce a few really ugly words with bad /r/
combinations. My most hated word sequence, which I unfortunately have to
use sometimes, is "word order". I usually paraphrase to "order of words",
though that's only a tad better.

I agree with Björn that "genre" is a sucker of a word. Usually I have to
say it twice for people to understand, especially non-native speakers,
because it sounds like a word from an entirely different language, I think,
(which is of course the case, in a sense - it's a recently borrowed French
word which hasn't been digested well enough).


As to nice-sounding words, that's always been a big question for me.
The "beaty formula" has always been one of my Holy Grails in linguistics.
Chacun son goût, but certainly we should be able to gauge patterns in
people's phonic tastes, just as make-up experts, fashion designers, music
composers, and candy manufacturers know the general trend in people's taste.

Personally I don't like labial stops, nor any sounds produced past the
velum, except perhaps [h]. I like balancing of sounds with different modes
of articulations. I don't like voiced obstruents. Rather front than back
vowels, though low or mid central is nicest, IMO.

So I like words like Icelandic [t_hala], Spanish [mira], Latin {ambulare},
Japanese [anata]. Plus lots and lots of similar words.

Regards,
Óskar

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