GLASGOW is the most beautiful sounding city name in the UK, according to a new study.
Commissioned by hotel chain Premier Inn, the research concluded that Scotland’s largest city has the most beautiful name to pronounce of any in the UK.
Edinburgh also made the top ten, coming in at number nine.
Liverpool came in second for the UK, with Belfast coming in third.
On a global scale however, Glasgow was pushed into seventh place.
Instead, the Japanese capital of Tokyo topped the list, followed by India’s Mumbai and Canada’s Vancouver.
READ MORE: Alyn Smith: State of the Union address shows Europe is leaving the UK behind
Premier Inn said that the conclusions of the study leant on the linguistic theories proposed by James Adelman and others in their 2018 paper “Emotional sound symbolism: Languages rapidly signal valence via phonemes”.
Adelman argued in the paper that “emotional sound symbolism” – the idea that human languages signal emotions via individual phonemes – was present in the five languages studied: English, Polish, Spanish, Dutch, and German.
The academic claimed to have “hypothesized and demonstrated that phonemes that are uttered most rapidly tend to convey negativity rather than positivity”.
As such, phonemes that are uttered more slowly are argued to promote positivity to a listener.
Adelman wrote that “sound symbolism was perhaps best illustrated by [Wolfgang] Köhler (1929): when shown a rounded object and an angular object, and asked which is ‘takete’ and which is ‘baluma’, the vast majority of people agree that the angular object should be called ‘takete’.
“In fact, phonemes systematically convey a range of physical properties such as size and shape … and more general syntactic categories such as nouns and verbs.”
READ MORE: Stephen Flynn says PM has 'thrown in the towel' on net zero in letter to Rishi Sunak
Premier Inn said its study had attributed a “valence figure to each phoneme included in each [city] name” to draw its conclusions.
The firm said of its study: “It is no surprise that Glasgow lands firmly as the loveliest UK city name. Nestled along the banks of the River Clyde, Glasgow is a city with a rich industrial heritage and vibrant cultural scene.
“In its early history, Glasgow was known as ‘Glaschu’ in Scottish Gaelic, which derived from the Gaelic words ‘Glas’ meaning ‘green’, and ‘chu’ meaning ‘hollow’, while various translations through the centuries have awarded the city the nickname ‘Dear Green Place’.”
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel