zompist bboard

Posted: **Thu Jun 23, 2016 3:58 am**

"Most English-speaking people ... will admit that cellar door is "beautiful", especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant." - J. R. R. Tolkien, English and Welsh, 1955.

This phenomenon won't be new to almost everyone here. The term "cellar door", in its British English pronunciation, something like /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/ is largely considered to be the most beautiful word or combination. Some uses (mostly re-spelled) are found here.

So, as conlangers, has anyone here deliberately used or deliberately avoided "cellar door" in their conlangs? Do you agree with it being at all "beautiful"?

Posted: **Thu Jun 23, 2016 9:56 am**

Well, "cellar door" doesn't do much for me; but I have my own "cellar doors" as well. I have to fight that tendancy sometimes, because it can lead to an SAE-ish feel to the languages. Not that I think there's anything wrong with it, but my conlangs are supposed to be spoken on another planet. Deliberatly avoiding "cellar doors" leads for me to a more alien sound, which is more fitting.

Posted: **Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:02 am**

Ars Lande wrote:Well, "cellar door" doesn't do much for me

Me neither. It sounds like "salad or" or something.

Posted: **Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:58 am**

Well, as much as I idolize Tolkien, I actually strongly disagree with him in that I find "throaty sounds" highly agreeable, and indeed my three favorite groups of sounds do not occur phonemically in English: uvular fricatives, ejectives, and implosives. Oddly enough, I have no conlangs that include all three sounds: I have a couple languages with both uvular fricatives and ejectives, I have one language with both ejectives and implosives, but I have no languages with all three or with both uvular fricatives and implosives. Of course, I'm also not a huge fan of Welsh, preferring Irish and Gaulish when it comes to Celtic languages. You'll rarely find me disagreeing with the dear professor, and despite what I just said I find both Sindarin and especially Quenya very aesthetically pleasing, but this is one of those rare exceptions.

Posted: **Thu Jun 23, 2016 7:10 pm**

Well I love hearing Arabic's /q/, /ʕ/, /ɣ/, and /ħ/ in songs and in every day words, so I'm against Tolkien on this one! The word /qal.ʕa/ 'citadel, castle' and /ʕajn/ 'eye' are exceptionally beautiful imo

Posted: **Fri Jun 24, 2016 4:32 am**

I do like the words "cellar door", but I'm not sure I'd have /selador/ or whatever in any of my conlangs, other than by accident. A general aesthetic appreciation of the words is one thing, but there's also the matter of conforming the word to the general "feel" of the language - and I'm not sure /selador/ would really fit into most of mine that well. In native Viksen words, for example, /l/ is lost between vowels and /s/ palatalises before /e/, so you'd only get selador if it were a relatively recent loan.

Posted: **Fri Jun 24, 2016 5:38 am**

I feel the euphonic appeal of the word. In Tautisca, a word pronounced [sɛlə dɔ̝ː] would be impossible - the language has no shwa.

Posted: **Sat Jun 25, 2016 9:17 pm**

Rui wrote:
-Klaivas- wrote:
Xhin wrote:Tolkien once remarked how beautiful-sounding the mundane phrase cellar door was.
Only because it's like gone door, more door and area door... a symbol of his own arrogance

Posted: **Sun Jun 26, 2016 1:36 pm**

ObsequiousNewt wrote:
Rui wrote:
-Klaivas- wrote:
Xhin wrote:Tolkien once remarked how beautiful-sounding the mundane phrase cellar door was.
Only because it's like gone door, more door and area door... a symbol of his own arrogance

Gondor, Mordor and Eriador all have rhotic Rs, and so don't really fit the /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/ thing.

Posted: **Sat Jul 09, 2016 3:59 am**

I've got a WIP conlang based on "pashmina" پشمینه‎‎ being my "cellar door".

Posted: **Sat Jul 09, 2016 7:38 pm**

dyolf wrote:Gondor, Mordor and Eriador all have rhotic Rs, and so don't really fit the /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/ thing.

Did J.R.R. have a rhotic or non-rhotic accent?

Αυτοβοτα wrote:pashmina

Oh, yeah. That's a good one. A lot of nasals and labials.

Honestly, I have a mad love for thorn clusters.

Posted: **Sat Jul 09, 2016 10:09 pm**

2+3 clusivity wrote:
dyolf wrote:Gondor, Mordor and Eriador all have rhotic Rs, and so don't really fit the /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/ thing.
Did J.R.R. have a rhotic or non-rhotic accent?

Non-rhotic, I'm pretty certain.

Posted: **Sun Jul 10, 2016 3:34 am**

Zaarin wrote:
2+3 clusivity wrote:
dyolf wrote:Gondor, Mordor and Eriador all have rhotic Rs, and so don't really fit the /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/ thing.
Did J.R.R. have a rhotic or non-rhotic accent?
Non-rhotic, I'm pretty certain.

Why does it matter? Tolkien spoke with a non-rhotic, near enough RP accent. I don't see how that affects his intended pronunciation of places in Middle-Earth.

Posted: **Sun Jul 10, 2016 7:01 am**

No, but it would affect the pronunciation of cellar door that he found so attractive.

Posted: **Mon Jul 11, 2016 12:38 am**

Exactly. "Cellar door" is pretty meh in rhotic dialects, or downright gross depending on the pronunciation of /3`/.

Posted: **Mon Jul 11, 2016 1:29 am**

Yng wrote:No, but it would affect the pronunciation of cellar door that he found so attractive.

This one: /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/ (or near it) I imagine. But one can't just assume that he intended all of the -or words in Middle-Earth to reflect his affection for /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/. Anyway, his point about "cellar door" wasn't that he found it to be the most beautiful sound, just that it is regarded as such and that Welsh, for him, contains more "cellar doors" than English, and I, for one, agree; I mean the phrase "gweithio'n galed" is beautiful when you disregard its meaning, so is "Ynys Môn", "noswaith" and lots of other Welsh words. For me Welsh has some of the nicest sounding words I've ever heard (yes, nicer than French).

Posted: **Mon Jul 11, 2016 1:46 pm**

dyolf wrote:
Yng wrote:No, but it would affect the pronunciation of cellar door that he found so attractive.
This one: /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/ (or near it) I imagine. But one can't just assume that he intended all of the -or words in Middle-Earth to reflect his affection for /sɛlə dɔ̝ː/. Anyway, his point about "cellar door" wasn't that he found it to be the most beautiful sound, just that it is regarded as such and that Welsh, for him, contains more "cellar doors" than English, and I, for one, agree; I mean the phrase "gweithio'n galed" is beautiful when you disregard its meaning, so is "Ynys Môn", "noswaith" and lots of other Welsh words. For me Welsh has some of the nicest sounding words I've ever heard (yes, nicer than French).

I fell in love with Welsh English thanks to Merrill in Dragon Age 2, but personally I find Welsh itself to be one of the less attractive Celtic languages--and overall I prefer the Goidelic branch to the Brythonic. For the same reason, I find Sindarin less pleasant sounding than Quenya. Icelandic and Old English are among the more attractive Indo-European languages, IMO, but I think Biblical Hebrew has the most "cellar doors" for me--but I'm very partial to ejectives. I'd also rank Yucatec Maya up there for the same reason.

Posted: **Mon Jul 11, 2016 5:48 pm**

Zaarin wrote:I fell in love with Welsh English thanks to Merrill in Dragon Age 2

Ah yes, Eve Myles

Posted: **Mon Jul 11, 2016 6:00 pm**

Zaarin wrote:personally I find Welsh itself to be one of the less attractive Celtic languages--and overall I prefer the Goidelic branch to the Brythonic. For the same reason, I find Sindarin less pleasant sounding than Quenya.

Overall I'd say that I find Goidelic to be 'rounder', more like a soft cushion, but a bit overly smooth, and Brittonic to have slightly more edge to it to make just that bit more satisfying to me. Brittonic also (perhaps somewhat stereotypically) feels more like you'd use it in everyday conversation, while Goidelic (and to a lesser extent Irish English) doesn't for some reason.

Posted: **Mon Jul 11, 2016 8:38 pm**

I love hearing Artifexian's videos on conworlds and conlangs. He speaks some nonstandard dialect of Irish English that is just fun to hear.

Posted: **Tue Jul 12, 2016 10:58 am**

dyolf wrote:
Zaarin wrote:I fell in love with Welsh English thanks to Merrill in Dragon Age 2
Ah yes, Eve Myles

I hated the game, but Merrill was adorable--mostly thanks to Eve Myles' charming voice and acting.

Frislander wrote:
Zaarin wrote:personally I find Welsh itself to be one of the less attractive Celtic languages--and overall I prefer the Goidelic branch to the Brythonic. For the same reason, I find Sindarin less pleasant sounding than Quenya.
Overall I'd say that I find Goidelic to be 'rounder', more like a soft cushion, but a bit overly smooth, and Brittonic to have slightly more edge to it to make just that bit more satisfying to me. Brittonic also (perhaps somewhat stereotypically) feels more like you'd use it in everyday conversation, while Goidelic (and to a lesser extent Irish English) doesn't for some reason.

The people of Ireland would beg to differ. :p Well, at least on the "Irish English" part.

Posted: **Wed Jul 13, 2016 7:53 pm**

I'm probably in the minority but I love rhotic accents and hate non-rhotic ones. Non-rhotic accents always feel as if the end of the word just trails off: "sellaah daaah" is just ugly as hell. I like words with rhotics and voiced continuants: rain, river, more, bizarre, etc.

dyolf wrote: I mean the phrase "gweithio'n galed" is beautiful when you disregard its meaning, so is "Ynys Môn", "noswaith"

So was it a conscious decision to make a fluttery sounding language have such a brutish looking orthography? Half the words look like Klingon to me.

Posted: **Wed Jul 13, 2016 8:29 pm**

"rain" still has a rhotic sound in non-rhotic dialects.

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2016 2:58 am**

Abi wrote:I'm probably in the minority but I love rhotic accents and hate non-rhotic ones. Non-rhotic accents always feel as if the end of the word just trails off: "sellaah daaah" is just ugly as hell.

That's only if you have the cot-caught merger, so only applies to the US: in the UK, the standard pronunciation would be more like "sella daaww", with not much variation dialectally.

Posted: **Thu Jul 14, 2016 3:53 am**

Abi wrote:So was it a conscious decision to make a fluttery sounding language have such a brutish looking orthography? Half the words look like Klingon to me.

then you probably don't really know what klingon looks like

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