Insane Question

Why does "ceiling" rhyme with "feeling"?  I find myself confused by "ing" as
an ending (gah, there it is again); why do so many words end with it and is
there a catalogue of the various ways that they're allowed to?  I was
contemplating this morning the problem of trying to make a song or poem
rhyme, as I listen to A-Teens songs (an activity some may suggest, not
without reason, will invariably lead to insanity...)  It's bad enough that
"hesitation" and "imagination" rhyme (and I don't know the grammatical term
for that kind of word, either -- all the "ations" out there, I mean), but
"ing" is the thing that's bugging me at the moment.

BTW, A-Teens songs are highly addictive.  Consider yourselves warned.  Of
course, the concept was taking ABBA songs and having them sung by four cute
Swedish teenagers, so addictiveness was a given.

(This is the song that struck me as impossibly difficult to rhyme in
translation, unless you go ahead and make every word constructed in the same
way as the "ings" and "ations" are [so they'll all rhyme regardless of the
root word or the particular sound], and that was what led me to realizing I
don't know what the "ings" are all about in any case...
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ateens/upsidedown.html)

Meanwhile, I'm going to try and find a place that will list all the "lys"
out there (or rather, ways that words are allowed to end with them, and the
rules to accompany them).  That should be easy, I'm pretty sure it's just an
adverb thing.

Sarah Marie Parker-Allen
lloannna@surfside.net
http://www.geocities.com/lloannna.geo
http://lloannna.blogspot.com

"Give 'em the old flim flam flummox;
Fool and fracture 'em;
How can they hear the truth above the roar?"
-- Razzle Dazzle/Chicago

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