Re: Insane Question

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen wrote:

>Could you, umm, explain what you mean by "too many vowels in stressed
>syllables"?  What exactly is too many?  And why would that make rhyming
>difficult?  (can you guess why I have trouble rhyming...)
>
No-no, he said 'too many *different* vowels in stressed syllables'. If a
language only has /i/, /u/ and /a/ in stressed syllables, there's going
to be a lot more rhymes than in a similar language which allows /I/,
/I:/, /e/, /e:/, /&/, /&:/, /a/, /a:/, /O/, /O:/, /o:/, /u/ and /8:/,
and /i;/, /0;/, /&i/, /ai/, /8u/, /oi/ and /&u/ in stressed syllables,
isn't it?

(BTW... that collection of vowels was valid for my dialect of English;
your milage may vary; /O:/ is only valid for 'gone'.)

Tristan.

>>-----Original Message-----
>>Behalf Of John Cowan
>>
>>
>>You don't have to go *that* far (*shudder*).  To make rhyming fairly
>>easy, what you need is to not have too many different vowels in stressed
>>syllables.  English and French have far too many, which is what makes
>>them painful to rhyme.  (Old French was much better; so is Spanish.)
>>
>>

http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Movies
- What's on at your local cinema?