著者

小栗 敬三

出版者

横浜国立大学

雑誌

横浜国立大学人文紀要. 第二類, 語学・文学 (ISSN:0513563X)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, pp.8-14, 1962-03-30

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By euphony is meant the harmonious arrangement of words with special emphasis upon pleasing sound and rhythm. Rhythm (in verse and prose) is too big a subject to be dealt with in this paper. Repetition of identical (or similar) sounds is sometimes pleasing to the ear (e.g. rime, alliteration, assonance and consonance), although abuse of the same technique and "words that rime where rime is not intended" will produce unpleasant effects. In Japanese as in English, a marked tendency toward the avoidance of harsh sounds and combinations of sounds hard to pronounce can be observed. In fact, appeal of the euphonious sounds is universal in all the languages of the world. Let me quote a Japanese proverb as an example of euphony. "Tanki wa sonki." (It does not pay to be short-tempered. Out of temper, out of money.) "Sonki" (a word never used, except in this proverb) is created out of "son" (loss, disadvantage) so as to rime with "tanki" (short [quick, hot] temper). (cf. "Health is wealth.") Pleasing sound is an important element of proverbs, political slogans or commericial catch-words. This is true of Japanese as of other languages. F. O. Colby says "the word physicists is one of the unloveliest sounding words in English"-this remark is interesting because it shows that the word has an unpleasant sequence of sounds not only for foreigners but also for native speakers (and specialists) of English. One thing which has caused me to write this article is a pair of words with-s's and-s' (e.g. Keats's and Keats'; Dickens's and Dickens')-how to distinguish each pair in usage and pronunciation. English and American people may write-s's, yet in pronunciation (at least, in their daily speech) they prefer-s' (an apostrophe has no connection with pronunciation cf. boys, boy's, boys',), especially in such words as Moses' and Ulysses'. The same preference for ease of pronunciation results in such forms as for Jesus' sake (instead of Jesus's) and axes, crises (instead of absurd axisis, crisisis). I have come to learn that an egg is a more pleasing combination of sounds than a egg ahd also learned that in French this phonetic phenomenon (liaison) is much more remarkable. I now write an apple without any conscious choice of the articles a, and an-write quite unconsciously and automatically, whereas my students do not-often they do not not notice their a apple until the mistake is pointed out by the teacher. Such problems as n-linking, (e. g. mine eyes), r-linking, and avoidance of the same sounds and of hiatus (e. g. r-dissimilation) are also to be included in euphony. I have come to no conclusion. I cannot by any means boast of a new and original view of euphony. Yet to me this is a subject full of linguistic and phonological interests-a subject on which I should like some day to write more extensively and (I hope) more systematically.