Re: Rhyming Conlangs

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

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Prurio modo viri qui in arbore pilosa est.
                        ~~Elvis

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