6 ms·

They kinda do rhyme with the right enunciation. How is that bad poetry or cheating? Language is complex and bending how you say things is part of good rhyme. I

They kinda do rhyme with the right enunciation. How is that bad poetry or cheating? Language is complex and bending how you say things is part of good rhyme. I imagine historical linguists are very familiar with this and factor it into their work.

ggm 5y ago
Patrick OBrien wrote historical Napoleonic naval fiction and got obsessive about verified facts from letters. He writes of a captain who cannot stand an "arriviste" lieutenant who stresses balcony on the first syllable not the last. These kinds of things exist right back to roman rhetoric, written accounts of the "nice" way to say things.
- gerikson 5y ago
  Calling Tom Pullings "arriviste" is a slander. He was already a master's mate (midshipman) at the beginning of the series, and advanced through a combination of excellent seamanship and Aubrey's patronage (not always a positive thing!). If anyone was "arriviste" it was the captain who complained who arrived at his station mainly through birth and class instead of seamanship.
  - ggm 5y ago
    It's his class which defines him, not his competency. The captain can't stand a man who breaks social class barriers, the question of his "rank" goes to the socialised meaning, not the naval one. Pronunciation was a class thing.
sellyme 5y ago
> They kinda do rhyme with the right enunciation. Which is a somewhat more positive way of saying that they rhyme with the wrong enunciation. Which is a totally valid way to construct lyrics in music - you have a bit of artistic leeway and the exact "correct" pronunciation isn't exactly important - but it's probably not too helpful for a listener who's trying to work out how those words were actually spoken in conversation. That said, I'd be far more concerned about a future linguist discovering Prisencolinensinainciusol.
- ggm 5y ago
  Future linguists are going to be dealing with americanised Korean and Chinese. Mandarin and Cantonese share orthography and not much else. I still don't understand how Portuguese and Spanish speakers can understand each other. Farsi speakers tell me Dari speakers (one of the Afghani languages along with Pashto) sound like they speak with a 16th century accent. Greek has Demotic and Katharevousa. Louis de Bernieres writes in "Captain Correli's mandolin" implying that the English officers in ww2 sounded to the Greek peasantry like Shakespearean actors, all taught Greek in boarding school, but only speaking "high" Katharevousa Greek, not the common Demotic. He does this by using archaic English writing. English code switching .. is that really that different yo? Yeet me out of here. Valley girl speak.. the list of dialect and pronunciation in contemporary US culture of the last 50 years is immense.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > I still don't understand how Portuguese and Spanish speakers can understand each other. I bet that without a relatively large amount of exposure they can’t and then suddenly it’s really obvious what the other person is saying. That’s my experience listening to Nigerian English. Didn’t realise the guy working next to me was speaking English with his compatriot for two weeks and then suddenly I understood. Written Portuguese and Spanish are very similar, like Norwegian and Danish levels of similar, or Scots and English.
    - szopa 5y ago
      One interesting thing about Portuguese and Spanish is that the comprehension isn't symmetrical: Portuguese speakers understand Spanish ones all right, but vice versa is a bit of a struggle.
      - lucian1900 5y ago
        That effect is far less strong with Brazilian Portuguese, which is much more easily understood by other Latin language speakers.

ggm 5y ago

Patrick OBrien wrote historical Napoleonic naval fiction and got obsessive about verified facts from letters. He writes of a captain who cannot stand an "arriviste" lieutenant who stresses balcony on the first syllable not the last. These kinds of things exist right back to roman rhetoric, written accounts of the "nice" way to say things.

gerikson 5y ago
Calling Tom Pullings "arriviste" is a slander. He was already a master's mate (midshipman) at the beginning of the series, and advanced through a combination of excellent seamanship and Aubrey's patronage (not always a positive thing!). If anyone was "arriviste" it was the captain who complained who arrived at his station mainly through birth and class instead of seamanship.
- ggm 5y ago
  It's his class which defines him, not his competency. The captain can't stand a man who breaks social class barriers, the question of his "rank" goes to the socialised meaning, not the naval one. Pronunciation was a class thing.

sellyme 5y ago

> They kinda do rhyme with the right enunciation. Which is a somewhat more positive way of saying that they rhyme with the wrong enunciation. Which is a totally valid way to construct lyrics in music - you have a bit of artistic leeway and the exact "correct" pronunciation isn't exactly important - but it's probably not too helpful for a listener who's trying to work out how those words were actually spoken in conversation. That said, I'd be far more concerned about a future linguist discovering Prisencolinensinainciusol.

ggm 5y ago
Future linguists are going to be dealing with americanised Korean and Chinese. Mandarin and Cantonese share orthography and not much else. I still don't understand how Portuguese and Spanish speakers can understand each other. Farsi speakers tell me Dari speakers (one of the Afghani languages along with Pashto) sound like they speak with a 16th century accent. Greek has Demotic and Katharevousa. Louis de Bernieres writes in "Captain Correli's mandolin" implying that the English officers in ww2 sounded to the Greek peasantry like Shakespearean actors, all taught Greek in boarding school, but only speaking "high" Katharevousa Greek, not the common Demotic. He does this by using archaic English writing. English code switching .. is that really that different yo? Yeet me out of here. Valley girl speak.. the list of dialect and pronunciation in contemporary US culture of the last 50 years is immense.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > I still don't understand how Portuguese and Spanish speakers can understand each other. I bet that without a relatively large amount of exposure they can’t and then suddenly it’s really obvious what the other person is saying. That’s my experience listening to Nigerian English. Didn’t realise the guy working next to me was speaking English with his compatriot for two weeks and then suddenly I understood. Written Portuguese and Spanish are very similar, like Norwegian and Danish levels of similar, or Scots and English.
  - szopa 5y ago
    One interesting thing about Portuguese and Spanish is that the comprehension isn't symmetrical: Portuguese speakers understand Spanish ones all right, but vice versa is a bit of a struggle.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      That effect is far less strong with Brazilian Portuguese, which is much more easily understood by other Latin language speakers.