[Janice D. Soderling]

Not to forget Esa-Pekka Salonen and Erkki Salmenhaara .

Ah, Maryann beat me to it. The beauty of Finnish.

[Will Gourley]

Peter's point about the attractiveness/ugliness of a word as a function of its meaning is interesting. Can language be pure music with "meaning" only in the rhythm and tone? "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe" for example. Linguists among us probably could help with the question.

I find Swahili is musical because of its syllabic alliterative rhythm: kidogo kijiji;
samaki, nyama na ndizi;
ziwa Manyara na Momella;
wakubwa wadudu; bomba la maji .
A non-Swahili speaker can hear the song without knowing the meaning (that one phrase means "huge bugs," for example). On the other hand, could "death" sound appealing, or at least neutral, spoken by a beautiful woman (or man) in some context?
I'm off to luxuriate in my mzuri sana mchumba.
Kwa heri.

[Jesse Anger]

Tone and inflection can also make a soft word hard or a beautiful one ugly.

It's a pointless conversation after a point.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Can language be pure music with "meaning" only in the rhythm and tone?

I posit that language is never "pure music" because the human brain strives to impart meaning to language sounds that it hears or reads.

Even music is endowed with meaning. By the composer, the performer, the listener.

[David Anthony]

Humph.
Words are not beautiful: it's the use of words that can be beautiful.
But some languages are more beautiful than others: Welsh, for example.

[Skip Dewahl]

Originally Posted by Allen Tice

I think that you are just envious of P.R.'s .... reputation. Still, that's OK.

What, the reputation of having bloodily torn earrings off Zsa Zsa's lobes?

[Allen Tice]

Skip, I never knew that he was supposed to have done that to Zsa Zsa. Not a gentlemanly way to suggest to a lady that her earrings were upstaging him, certainly. Extremely bad taste. How little do I know about her, and him! It's not even remotely funny, what you describe.

As to beautiful words, sounds are arbitrary bearers of meaning, but insofar as we judge poems (or any other art), we judge them on equally arbitrary human-based criteria such as sonority, precision, throatyness, onomatopoppaea, roundyness, etc; and I wonder what the speakers of 'click' languages think about the grandeur of French, for example.

I like the word cembalo. It is very much the same as a Greek santouri. I like its sound very much (two links: A, and B, and C), and I like to spell it cymbalum. But most naive readers won't know what to do with the initial letter 'c', and will say 's' or maybe 'k'. If I write it for a random reader, how should I spell it? Help! Help!

[Ann Drysdale]

Allen - I'd say it with a sort ot "ts" at the beginning. I have long loved that music and enjoyed the links. A and B impressed me, but C left me helpless and I've saved it to my favourites. Have you seen the full-length animated film?

[Allen Tice]

Ann, thank you for taking your time to answer. I didn't know there was an animated feature.

In 'B', there is a performer's cadenza at 4:33.

My despairing latest form is: Tsymbalum. Other than sound, among the criteria I've labored over are how it would appear on the page and the avoidance of distracting visual or auditory associations: Dj, Djuna Barnes and lack of sibilance, too easily voiced: 'sludge'; Tchai, clumsy looking; Tcy, too much like TCBY [The Country's Best Yoghurt]; Ch, seemingly good, but often not incisive enough, also 'chaos'; Cs, unclear sound; Cz, 'czar'; Czy, crazy; Tzy, ditzy; and so on. We seem to agree. If only the Italian initial 'c' or the Czech č were options! The IPA ˈt͡ʃ looks like 'ts' though. Must avoid slurring it into 'tsar'. I'm unhappy with Tsymbalum, but failing the č or Italian sprezzatura, it might have to do.

Any other thoughts are highly welcome by PM or an open post here.

Back to other allegedly beautiful words.

[Michael Cantor]

The Japanese word "shibui" (quiet, understated, tasteful) has always been a favorite of mine, sonically and intellectually.