Re: Poetry in conlangs, was Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, etc.

On Monday, February 9, 2004, at 11:25 PM, Doug Dee wrote:

> In my high school English class, we read The Odyssey in a verse
> translation,
> and our teacher remarked that the translation was in iambic pentameter
> because
> English naturally tends to flow into that form.  The original in Greek
> was in
> some other meter (some kind of hexameter?)
Dactylic hexameter   :)

>  because that was natural for
> ancient Greek.
That has actually been questioned. But IMO it ain't unnatural for it. But
it has been claimed that Greek inherited it from, presumably, Minoan
culture. But how on earth anyone can tell beats me.

> This inspires some questions for those of you who write poetry in your
> conlangs:  have you discovered that any particualar meter seems to work
> well in your
> language?
I think this is the way to go. It's apparent even from the emails on this
list that different languages have different ways of expressing rhythm. It
should IMO come out of the language itself.

> Can you discover this by some means other than trying to write a
> lot of poetry?  Conversely, has anyone ever designed a language with the
> intent
> of making it suitable for a particular poetic form?  How did that work
> out?
Personally (and I know it's a personal view), I don't think that is such a
good approach. A language designed for, say, the Classical meters is going
to enable even a mediocre versifier to churn out hexameter after hexameter
with even greater regularity than Ovid of old. And pretty boring stuff it'
s likely to be. I don't think a language designer would've come up with
the Classical Latin situation where a language adopted a metrical system
unsuited for it and adapted by exploiting the very difficulties in making
that adoption.

> (Sadly, my own languages are not nearly complete enough for me to address
> these myself.)
Nor, sadly, are mine  :=(

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

Replies