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Re: Rhyming Conlangs

From:laokou <laokou@...>
Date:Sunday, October 14, 2001, 4:13
From Irina Rempt:

> From: Jim Grossmann wrote:
> > Making rhymes: Though I know of one conlanger who used Word Net > > to generate an artificial lexicon of hundreds of thousands of > > words, most artificial vocabularies tend to be smaller than natural > > ones, and this can create fewer opportunities for words to rhyme by > > conincidence. > > Also, some languages have, for grammatical reasons, only a very > restricted set of endings that can rhyme. Valdyan suffers from that, > because it's an inflected language with SOV word order, putting the > inflected finite verb at the end of the sentence more often than not. > Valdyan popular poetry tends to go aaaa or aaba: > > Hanleni halsen varyenan laynat > Daysinen verein idanla le listat > Havien hinla laziena forat > Culea rachleni arlea a chalat?
See, this is where rhyming poetry screws me up. In a recent post of mine, I submitted this: Öçek Avíathsen lü, Chak haransash, Zhö chak lönsash, Sa frens pöbrísen nü. "lü" and "nü" are clear rhymes, but there is the fortuitous additional "-sen" before each of those to reinforce the rhyme. Meanwhile, "haransash" and "lönsash" rhyme only on the last syllable (but it *feels* like a rhyme). In other words, I guess, would "syncopation" and "lenition" be considered rhymes in English (I doubt it) as opposed to "syncopation" and "alien nation"? And is "syncopation"/"oration" or "syncopation/occupation" considered a better rhyme? I don't think the Romance languages have these issues (German seems to play). Are these masculine/feminine rhyme issues? How many syllables back does one need to go for a "great rhyme" (the Valdyan song is to die from, but does it [endings in '-at'] rhyme? [singing allows for near-rhymes]). Has my American English background, from bad greeting cards to limmericks so overwhelmed my perception that other rhyme schemes are inconceivable? Slightly skittish of rhyme I am Kou

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Irina Rempt-Drijfhout <irina@...>