4 ms·
There is also another interesting unwritten rule of the English language at play here. The rule goes like this: In a series of words which differ only (or most
by edzillion 4y ago
There is also another interesting unwritten rule of the English language at play here. The rule goes like this:
In a series of words which differ only (or mostly) by the vowel used, the order should be e, i, a, o
- tic tac toe
- flim flam
- ding dong
- king kong
If you doubt it, try saying the opposite and hear how odd it sounds: The clock went 'Tock Tick'
- Anon4Now 4y agoBingo bango bongo, I never noticed that. I tried saying 'fee fi fo fum' backwards and it took me about 10 times to get it right. There's almost a musical cadence to the usual order that just sounds off key when said backwards.
- rippercushions 4y agoThis is language-dependent. The Japanese syllabary is sorted in the order a-i-u-e-o, which is weird to the Western ear, but as ubiquitous as A-B-C in Japan.
- jihadjihad 4y agoIt's probably not unwritten. It's similar to how we conjugate irregular verbs like "sing/ring" or "beget". The topic in linguistics is called vowel gradation [0]. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophony https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophony
- doomrobo 4y agoYup! It's called ablaut. English has ablaut reduplication for children's words like kitty-cat or sing-song
- SoftTalker 4y agoBada bing a counter example?
- russdill 4y agoI think the a sound in ba and da just isn't included in the list.
- JustLurking2022 4y agoNot really, unlike the other examples the words differ by more than just the vowel sound.