Kordofan will always be to me a euphonious word.
-Before the Wind Changed, Ina Beasley, memoir of a colonial administrator in Sudan
Lane collected words far more euphonious than that, especially those called by grammarians onomatopoeic reduplicative quadriliterals. In Kordofan I might have asked KhairAllah for a cup of Um al-Bulbul or to scare off Abu Jamjama, Mother of the Nightingale and Father of the Skull, for the millet beer that makes you sing like a bird and the vulture whose head is bald as a bulb. And you might even say, Iftah Ya Simsim, Open O Sesame, when asking him to tell a camel thief story…but as for words like Hamham and Waswas, Mumble and Whisper, or Zilzil and Ghalghal, Shake and Penetrate, or ‘Ash’ash and Shakshak, Settle and Prickle, or even Silsil and Sarsar, Chain and Creak, I doubt that KhairAllah read the same dictionary as I.