Re: Rhyming Conlangs

>From: Patrick Dunn <tb0pwd1@...>
>Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 23:34:03 -0500
>
>On Sun, 7 Oct 2001, Ciege Engine wrote:
>
> > What, if anything specific, does a language need to
> > rhyme/make poetry?
> >
> > CJ Miller
>
>It needs to be spoken.
>
>More specifically, for rhyme to be a significant poetic device (note that
>in many languages it is not; it wasn't in English for a good long while),
>the language needs a certain number of words that sound similar in their
>final syllables.  This cannot be a very large number of words (say, all
>nouns end in -ano, for example) nor can it be very few words.
>
>Those languages that do not use rhyme simply use other devices; Hebrew,
>for example,k uses a metrical-musical line with idea rhyme.  Old ENglish
>used a four beat metrical line with alliteration.  Japanese uses a
>mora-based metrical line.
>
>We can see that far more important than rhyme as a poetic device, meter or
>*beat* is more essential to poetry.  So much so that one definition of
>poetry is "A metrical utterance."  That meter may be moric, as in
>Japanese, in which syllable lenth and count is determining factor of line
>length, or it may be tonal, as in Ancient Greek (also simultaneously moric
>to an extent), or it may be stress meter, as in modern ENglish.  There are
>probably other options I'm unaware of.
>
>What I am aware of is that every language on Earth has some sort of poetic
>register, some kind of poetry.
>
>--Patrick
>
I seem to recall that Somali uses some feindishly complicated meter that no
one was even able to discribe until the 80's or so.  I can't remember the
detaials and, unfortunately, my book of Somali poetry is back state-side.
The astounding thing is that the Somali verse tradition is (or was until
very recently) purely oral, as the vast majority of the population was
illiterate in any language and nearly everyone was illiterate in Somali.  So
all these feindishly complex meters were composed in shepherds' heads.
astounding what the human mind is capable of when it doesn't know that it's
doing something impossible.

Adam

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