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Phonaesthetics (from the , phone, "voice-sound"; and , aisthetike, "aesthetics") is the claim or study of inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound
Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception....
  of certain linguistic utterances. Poetry
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
 is considered euphonic, as is well-crafted literary prose
Prose

Prose is writing that resembles everyday Speech communication. The word "prose" is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to "straightforward"....
. Important phonaesthetic devices of poetry are rhyme
Rhyme

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes....
, assonance
Assonance

Assonance is repetition of vowel to create internal rhyme within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and Literary consonance serves as one of the building blocks of Poetry....
 and alliteration
Alliteration

Alliteration is the repeated occurrence of a consonant sound at the beginning of several words in the same phrase. Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant sound anywhere in a string of words, not just the initial sound as is in alliteration....
. Closely related to euphony and cacophony is the concept of consonance and dissonance
Consonance and dissonance

In music, a consonance is a harmony, Chord , or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance ? considered unstable . The strictest definition of consonance may be only those sounds which are pleasant, while the most general definition includes any sounds which are used freely....
.

The phrase cellar door
Cellar door

The English language compound cellar door plays a certain role in discussions of phonoaesthetics; a widely repeated claim first put forward by J....
 has some notoriety as the reputedly most euphonic sound combination of the English language (specifically, when spoken with a British accent).

From this meaning should be distinguished the closely related but different concept of phonaesthesia, which does not refer directly to aesthetic attributes of sound, but to phonetic elements that are inherently associated with a semantic meaning.






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Phonaesthetics (from the , phone, "voice-sound"; and , aisthetike, "aesthetics") is the claim or study of inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound
Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception....
  of certain linguistic utterances. Poetry
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
 is considered euphonic, as is well-crafted literary prose
Prose

Prose is writing that resembles everyday Speech communication. The word "prose" is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to "straightforward"....
. Important phonaesthetic devices of poetry are rhyme
Rhyme

A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes....
, assonance
Assonance

Assonance is repetition of vowel to create internal rhyme within phrases or sentences, and together with alliteration and Literary consonance serves as one of the building blocks of Poetry....
 and alliteration
Alliteration

Alliteration is the repeated occurrence of a consonant sound at the beginning of several words in the same phrase. Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant sound anywhere in a string of words, not just the initial sound as is in alliteration....
. Closely related to euphony and cacophony is the concept of consonance and dissonance
Consonance and dissonance

In music, a consonance is a harmony, Chord , or interval considered stable, as opposed to a dissonance ? considered unstable . The strictest definition of consonance may be only those sounds which are pleasant, while the most general definition includes any sounds which are used freely....
.

The phrase cellar door
Cellar door

The English language compound cellar door plays a certain role in discussions of phonoaesthetics; a widely repeated claim first put forward by J....
 has some notoriety as the reputedly most euphonic sound combination of the English language (specifically, when spoken with a British accent).

From this meaning should be distinguished the closely related but different concept of phonaesthesia, which does not refer directly to aesthetic attributes of sound, but to phonetic elements that are inherently associated with a semantic meaning. The term was introduced by J. R. Firth
J. R. Firth

John Rupert Firth , commonly known as J. R. Firth, was an England linguist. He was Professor of English at the University of the Punjab from 1919-1928....
 in 1930 "The phonæsthetic habits [...] and are of general importance in speech." Firth defined a phonaestheme as "a phoneme or cluster of phonemes shared by a group of words which also have in common some element of meaning or function, though the words may be etymologically unrelated."

Sub-phonematic euphony

In most languages, difficult to pronounce phonetic combinations will be adapted to allow more flowing speech, for reasons of ease of pronunciation rather than aesthetics
Aesthetics

Aesthetics or esthetics is commonly known as the study of senses or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste ....
. These adaptations will be sub-phonematic
Allophone

In phonetics, an allophone is one of several similar speech sounds that belong to the same phoneme. A phoneme is an abstract unit of speech sound that can distinguish words: That is, changing a phoneme in a word can produce another word....
 at first, but over several generations will lead to phonematically
Phoneme

In human language, a phoneme is the smallest posited linguistically distinctive unit of sound. Phonemes carry no semantic content themselves. In theoretical terms, phonemes are not the physical segment s themselves, but cognitive abstractions or categorizations of them....
 relevant sound change
Sound change

Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures . Sound change can consist of the replacement of one phoneme by another, the complete loss of the affected sound, or even the introduction of a new sound in a place where there previously was none....
s. Most of the euphony or mellifluous design of a formal language is pure coincidence
Coincidence

Coincidence is the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection. The word is derived from the Latin co- and incidere ....
, yet phonaesthetics relations with meaning can arise to frequent use and may even become cliché
Cliché

A clich? or cliche is a saying, expression or idea which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning, especially when at some earlier time it was considered distinctively meaningful or novel, rendering it a stereotype....
.

Examples

  • Cellar Door
    Cellar door

    The English language compound cellar door plays a certain role in discussions of phonoaesthetics; a widely repeated claim first put forward by J....
  • Fuzzy Wuzzy
    Fuzzy Wuzzy

    Fuzzy-Wuzzy can refer to:*Hadendoa, an East African tribe*Fuzzy-Wuzzy, a poem by Rudyard Kipling* Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels, the name given by Australian troops to a group of Papua New Guinean people who, during World War II, assisted and escorted injured Australian troops down the Kokoda trail...


Also See

  • sandhi
    Sandhi

    Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonology processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words....
     ("euphonic" rules in Sanskrit grammar)
  • vowel harmony
    Vowel harmony

    Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance Assimilation Phonology process involving vowels in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other....
  • assimilation (linguistics)
    Assimilation (linguistics)

    Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word . A common example of assimilation would be "don't be silly" where the and in "don't" become and , where said naturally in many accents and discourse styles ....
  • dissimilation
    Dissimilation

    In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonant or vowel sounds in a word become less similar....
  • elision
    Elision

    Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes, sounds may be elided for euphony effect....
  • epenthesis
    Epenthesis

    In phonology, epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially to the interior of a word. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence and anaptyxis ....
  • affection (linguistics)
    Affection (linguistics)

    In Celtic languages linguistics, affection is the fronting of vowels in the main syllable of a word caused by an original front vowel in a suffix which may or may not still be present in the modern language....
  • i-mutation
    I-mutation

    I-mutation is an important type of sound change, more precisely a category of regressive metaphony, in which a back vowel is fronted , and/or a front vowel is Raising , if the following syllable contains /i/, /i/ or /j/ ....


See also

  • cellar door
    Cellar door

    The English language compound cellar door plays a certain role in discussions of phonoaesthetics; a widely repeated claim first put forward by J....
  • English and Welsh
    English and Welsh

    English and Welsh is the title of J. R. R. Tolkien'svaledictory address to the University of Oxford of 1955, explaining the Walha.In a lengthy sidenote, Tolkien discusses his notions of "native tongue" as opposed to "cradle tongue", and of an inherited taste of language....
  • inherently funny word
    Inherently funny word

    The claim that words are inherently funny, for reasons ranging from onomatopoeia to phonosemantics to sexual innuendo, is well documented among people who work in humor....
  • phonosemantics
  • onomatopoeia
    Onomatopoeia

    Onomatopoeia is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, such as animal noises like "oink" or "meow", or suggesting its source object, such as "boom", "zoom", "click", "bunk", "clang", "buzz", "zap", or "bang"....
  • Japanese sound symbolism
    Japanese sound symbolism

    This article describes sound symbolic or mimetic words in the Japanese language. Most languages have such words; for example, "bang", "zap", "ding", "slither", "pop", etc....
  • glossolalia
    Glossolalia

    Etymology'Glossolalia' is constructed from the Greek language ???ss??a??? and that from ???ssa - glossa "tongue, language" and ?a?e?? "to talk"....
  • symphony
    Symphony

    A symphony is a musical composition, often extended and usually for orchestra. "Symphony" does not imply a specific form. Many symphonies are tonality works in four movement with the first in sonata form, and this is often described by music theorists as the structure of a "Classical period " symphony, although even some symphonies by the ac...
  • harmony
    Harmony

    In Western music, harmony is the use of different pitches simultaneously, and chord s, actual or implied, in music. The word is related to the word "harmonic" which implies related wavelengths of waves....
  • Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
    Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

    Vilayanur S. "Rama" Ramachandran is a neurology best known for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and psychophysics. He is currently the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, Professor in the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego, and Adjunct Professor of Biology at th...