Euphony
Euphony describes flowing and aesthetically pleasing
speech.
Poetry is often euphonic, as is well-crafted
literary prose.
Many languages have
phonological rules which promote euphony by making words easier to pronounce. For instance, languages often employ
elision, the dropping of sounds which make a word difficult to pronounce. On the other hand,
epenthesis occurs when a sound is added to a word for pronunciation purposes.
Contractions are a form of elision that eliminate awkward gaps between words. The
French language is, for the most part, an example of a euphonious language, and has a plethora of contraction rules that allow one word to flow into the next.
Poets and writers attempting to create euphony in their work draw on
literary devices such as
alliteration and
internal rhyme.
Translators often have difficulty in expressing the euphony of a text of another language.
The opposite of euphony is
cacophony, which refers to harsh sounds. Closely related to cacophony is
dissonance, which implies a combination of tones or sounds that clash together. The opposite of dissonance, similar to euphony, is
consonance. Dissonance and consonance have musical connotations whereas cacophony and euphony more often refer to speech.
