2438) [N]o language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself. [...] For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist's desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.

I will not attempt to say now what I mean by calling a language as a whole 'beautiful,' nor in what ways Welsh seems to me beautiful; for the mere recording of a person and if you will subjective perception of strong aesthetic pleasure in contact with Welsh, heard or read, is sufficient for my conclusion.

The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature. Thought it may be allied to some of the elements in the appreciation of verse, it does not need any poets, other than the nameless artists who composed the language. It can be strongly felt in the simple contemplation of vocabulary, or even in a string of names.

[...] Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful,' especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful that, 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.

The nature of this pleasure is difficult, perhaps impossible, to analyse. It cannot, of course, be discovered by structural analysis. No analysis will make one either like or dislike a language, even if it make more precise some of the features of style that are pleasing or distasteful. The pleasure is possibly felt most strongly in the study of a 'foreign' or second-learned language; but if so that may be attributed to two things: the learner meets in the other language desirable features that his own first-learned speech has denied to him; and in any case he escapes from the dulling of usage, especially inattentive usage.

[...] My cradle-tongue was English (with a dash of Afrikaans). French and Latin together were my first experience of second-learned language. Latin [...] seemed so normal that pleasure or distaste was equally inapplicable. French has given to me less of this pleasure than any other language with which I have sufficient acquaintance for this judgement. The fluidity of Greek, punctuated by hardness, and with its surface glitter, captivated me, even when I met it first only in Greek names, of history or mythology, and I tried to invent a language that would embody the Greekness of Greek (so far as it came through that garbled form); but part of the attraction was antiquity and alien remoteness (from me); it did not touch home. Spanish came my way by chance and greatly attracted me. It gave me strong pleasure, and still does - far more than any other language. [...]

Gothic was the first to take me by storm, to move my heart. It was the first of the old Germanic languages I ever met. [...] I have, in this peculiar sense, studied ('tasted' would be better) other languages since. Of all save one among them the most overwhelming pleasure was provided by Finnish, and I have never quite got over it.

[...] It would not be much use if I tried to illustrate by examples the pleasure that I got [from Medieval Welsh]. For, of course, the pleasure is not solely concerned with any word, any 'sound-pattern + meaning' by itself, but with its fitness also to a whole style. Even single notes of a large music may please in their place, but one cannot illustrate this pleasure (not even to those who have once heard the music) by repeating them in isolation. It is true that language differs from any 'large music' in that its whole is never heard, or at any rate is not heard through in a single period of concentration, but is apprehended from excerpts and examples. But to those who know Welsh at all a selection of words would seem random and absurd; to those who do not it would be inadequate under the lecturer's limitations, and if printed unnecessary.

Perhaps I might say just this - for it is not an analysis of Welsh, or of myself, that I am attempting, but an assertion of a feeling of pleasure, and of satisfaction (as of a want fulfilled) - it is the ordinary words for ordinary things that in Welsh I find so pleasing. [...] A translation is of no avail. For this pleasure is felt most immediately and acutely in the moment of association: that is in the reception (or imagination) of a word-form, which is felt to have a certain style, and the attribution to it of a meaning which is not received through it.

J.R.R. Tolkien
"English and Welsh" (lecture, 10/21/55)
Angles and Britons: O'Donnell Lectures (1963) and
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983)

[Note: In a thread of messages (c.4/1/1997) on the Usenet newsgroup alt.usage.english (AUE), other suggestions were made of words that were considered "pretty" and "ugly":

Pretty: boondoggle, brook, Cambodia, cinnamon, clarity, crystal, crystalline, curmudgeon, ephemeral, floofy, fox, huge, moose, porcine, tequila.

Ugly: amenorrhea, autochthonous, carcass, cunt, diarrhea, doiley, drudge, dungeon, epistle, fungus, garter, Gingrich, kumquat, loquat, moist, mucus, peeve, phlegm, prepubescent, smegma, split, splotch, swing, synecdoche, syzygy, yarn.

As may be apparent from this list, it is very hard to evaluate the sound of a word divorced from its meaning, especially when the connotations are negative. Reference was also made in this thread to the Monty Python sketch in which "good" words were said to be "woody", and "bad" ones "tinny".]

2439) Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.

J.R.R. Tolkien
"A Secret Vice" (lecture, 1931)
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983)