Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 April 23

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April 23

\ˈsɛl.ə ˌdɔː\

Is there an equivalent of the English "cellar door" (a word or phrase that is beautiful purely in terms of its sound, see Phonaesthetics#Cellar_door) in other languages? Thanks! --79.55.55.107 (talk) 20:34, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

"Selluh doh"? --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:07, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Schmetterling!  --Lambiam 07:26, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

What sounds beautiful is very subjective, so it's certainly possible that many languages (probably every language) has some words that people would consider nice-sounding regardless of what they mean. I wonder if what you're asking is more like whether other languages have words that are widely cited as being "beautiful", in the way "cellar door" has been in English.

Anyway, the case of "cellar door" in English is more about people repeating a neat-sounding claim they read somewhere, rather than actually coming to their own conclusion about the word out of the blue. Most people don't just decide on their own that it's a beautiful word; they see someone say "cellar door is a beautiful-sounding word even though its meaning is very pedestrian" in a movie or column, they think "oh, that sounds plausible and like something a smart person would say", and they go on to repeat that claim to others. The Geoff Nunberg column cited in the article you linked explains this in much the same way. rʨanaɢ (talk) 00:30, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. I'm asking if there was any literary discussion from reputable sources (for example from Dante, Goethe or Dostoevsky) about examples of "cellar doors" in their languages. I apologize if my question was ambiguous. --79.55.55.107 (talk) 04:16, 27 April 2022 (UTC)