AIDAN STINSON CERDDORIAETH 1

Meggie Duncan

It’s almost onomatopoeia, Or it must be phonesthemic2 , The Cymric3 word for music: Cerddoriaeth.

The phonaesthetic4 paragon cellar door5 Softened by the care Of rolling brook streams, now Enfold a tourmaline emblem In benediction on your tongue.

Waters branch, trace elements Infuse rainbow into stone, we breathe Pipe organ crystals With warm air and lifted soft palates.

Surely this is a hymn Incarnate in syllables.

1 IPA pronunciation: kɛrˈðɔrjaɨθ (“Cerddoriaeth”).

2 “A phonestheme is a particular sound or sound sequence that (at least in a general way) suggests a certain meaning” (Nordquist).

3 Welsh

4 Phonaesthetics (from the Greek: φωνή, phōnē, “voicesound”; and αἰσθητική, aisthētikē, “aesthetics”) is the study of inherent pleasantness or beauty (euphony) or unpleasantness (cacophony) of the sound of certain words and sentences (“Phonaesthetics,” Sensagent).

5 “The English compound noun cellar door has been widely cited as an example of a word or phrase that is beautiful purely in terms of its sound (i.e., euphony) without inherent regard for its meaning.” J.R.R. Tolkien referred to the phrase in his 1955 lecture “English and Welsh,” “in which he described his reverence for the Welsh language and about which he said ‘cellar doors [i.e. beautiful words] are extraordinarily frequent’”