Newsgroups: alt.politics.ec,sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!news.sprintlink.net!noc.netcom.net!netcom.com!donh
From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: most BEAUTIFUL language?
Message-ID: <donhDAv4p6.FFx@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <3sf4q6$9on@chleuasme.francenet.fr> <3sk7eb$m3u@top.MTS.Net> <3so5m0$oah@gatekeeper.iis.ch.swissbank.com> <3sqa6s$1aa0@news.gate.net>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 03:07:53 GMT
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Sender: donh@netcom6.netcom.com

ffff@gate.net skribis en lastatempa afisxo <3sqa6s$1aa0@news.gate.net>:

>Are some languages objectively more beautiful than others? More pleasing
>to the ear, that is.  Is there any international consensus, for example, that
>French or Italian are the most beautiful?  They sure SOUND beautiful to me.
>But is that because there is something about my native English that conditions
>me to find the sounds of French lovely.  Would a Chinese speaker, for example,
>find French ugly and Arabic more beautiful?
>
I suspect that linguistic "beauty" is largely a subjective matter. I have 
never heard anybody else call Danish beautiful (unlike its two 
Scandinavian neighbors Norwegian and Swedish, it's spoken in the back of 
the mouth, something like German, rather than the front), but I have 
always found it quite beautiful -- possibly due to the source(s) from 
whom I first heard it spoken.

>If humankind were to go off and colonize the stars, which language would we
>take? The most beautiful language? Or some efficient artificial language like
>Esperanto or Lojban?  If the planet were to hold a vote on the most beautiful

Are these two categories mutually exclusive? I don't think so (and I 
could quote reasons like the one I used above, at least for Esperanto...).

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
http://www.webcom.com/~donh
