Re: Woody or tinny?

Bjorn Kristinsson wrote:

> This made me wonder, people on this list generally seem to have a preference
> for how a word should sound, and then I presume there must be a preference
> for how they should NOT sound. So, can you name me some words (natlang
> probably, conlang if you've got them) that you find particularly ugly?
I haven't thought too much about this, but the word "turkeyburger" would most
certainly be on my list (all those /r/ sounds), as well as any word ending in an
"x".  I'm also not fond of words with too many sibilants in them, or words which
feature a stressed low front vowel (especially a nasalised one).  "Scratch" and
"ranch" are quite ugly.

One of my favourite words in English is "leukemia".  Too bad the meaning is at
such odds with the sound...

My conlang Tokana has, of course, an extremely large number of words which I
find euphonious, but there are a few clunkers in there as well--words which,
though they may have sounded nice to me once, no longer appeal to me, but are
too entrenched in the language to get rid of.  Two I can think of off the top of
my head are "misla" (= "change, turn") and "skona" (= "look at").

Matt.

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