4 ms·

I notice that four of the seven authors with the smallest vocabulary are writing theater (Moliere, Shakespeare, Racine, Corneille). I think it's not a coinciden

by S4M 12y ago

I notice that four of the seven authors with the smallest vocabulary are writing theater (Moliere, Shakespeare, Racine, Corneille). I think it's not a coincidence, because writing in rhymes must be a hard constraint in the choice of words one can use.

pash 12y ago
A keen observation, and Wilde really makes it four and a half. But Shakespeare wrote mostly blank verse, and rhyming is not as much of a constraint on vocabulary in French due to the high commonality of word endings. If it's true that works for the stage tend to use fewer words, it might be because dialogue dominates; I imagine narrative, which consists more of description, naturally draws on a bigger vocabulary than even very stylized dialogue.
- mc32 12y ago
  I'd be interested in philosophical tomes being analyzed. They seem to contain an oversized amount of low frequency words.
- pothibo 12y ago
  How is french easier to rhyme than english? Do you have empirical evidence? Since I'm a french canadian who is lucky enough to speak the two languages, I find it difficult to believe. Remember that rap (rhyme and poetry) was popularized by poor english speaking people.
  - pash 12y ago
    For a discussion of the ease of rhyming in French versus English, see, e.g., this book [0]. Rhymes are widely considered to be easier to form in French; partly as a result, however, classical French poetry developed several additional stylistic constraints related to rhyming, such as the distinction between "feminine" and "masculine" rhymes of words with and without a final devoiced "e". I wonder what you would accept as "empirical evidence" of the relative ease of rhyming in different languages. The demand strikes me as typifying one of the obnoxious impulses of the Hacker News community (another of them on display elsewhere in this thread) to dress up a vapid criticism as scientific skepticism. You could, I suppose, try to do a combinatorial analysis of the ease of rhyming by writing a program to find rhyming pairs in a phonetic dictionary; just make sure your blog post about the results properly acknowledges the shortcomings of your analysis in its title. 0. https://books.google.com/books?id=ByVoAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA60&ots=5MIVrQ-Dtw&dq=ease%20of%20rhyming%20in%20french%20and%20english&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=ByVoAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA60&ots=...
    - pothibo 12y ago
      So basically you make a claim that french is easier to rhyme than english, then I ask you if you have any evidence and you retorqued with a condescending answer adding a link to a book you took 5 second to google and that you didn't read. You didn't read it because I just read it and while the first sentence would make it appear to back your point, it doesn't. First because he doesn't compare french to english but merely explain how the main accent is put on the suffix of words and that, in turn, makes it easy in french to build rhyme. And if you continue to the next page, he explains how french rhyme are not on the same level as their english counterpart "because most English rhymes involve the root rather than the inflectional ending or suffix [...]" Bottom line, you are wrong, and you try to pass as knowledgeable. You are a fraud.
blumkvist 12y ago
Rhyming is part of the problem. Playwrights' work has to be remembered by the actors by heart. Also, the ones you mentioned lived in the 16th century, when languages were not very sophisticated.
- nmyk 12y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "sophisticated". Languages in the 16th century were just as complex as they always have been. The vocabularies might be bigger or smaller compared to today. Certainly no one was saying "bae" back then (for instance), but no one calls each other "thou" today, either. EDIT: except for the older generations of Geordies, apparently.
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    What I mean is that in the 16th century there were much less words than today, or let's say the 19th century.
pcrh 12y ago
Perhaps the reason is not the necessity to rhyme, but to be popular; being prolix might be a deterrent to popularity. Even if so, I find the conclusion unexpected, as Shakespeare not only had a wide popularity in his day, but also coined many new words into the English language.

by S4M 12y ago

pash 12y ago

A keen observation, and Wilde really makes it four and a half. But Shakespeare wrote mostly blank verse, and rhyming is not as much of a constraint on vocabulary in French due to the high commonality of word endings. If it's true that works for the stage tend to use fewer words, it might be because dialogue dominates; I imagine narrative, which consists more of description, naturally draws on a bigger vocabulary than even very stylized dialogue.

mc32 12y ago
I'd be interested in philosophical tomes being analyzed. They seem to contain an oversized amount of low frequency words.
pothibo 12y ago
How is french easier to rhyme than english? Do you have empirical evidence? Since I'm a french canadian who is lucky enough to speak the two languages, I find it difficult to believe. Remember that rap (rhyme and poetry) was popularized by poor english speaking people.
- pash 12y ago
  For a discussion of the ease of rhyming in French versus English, see, e.g., this book [0]. Rhymes are widely considered to be easier to form in French; partly as a result, however, classical French poetry developed several additional stylistic constraints related to rhyming, such as the distinction between "feminine" and "masculine" rhymes of words with and without a final devoiced "e". I wonder what you would accept as "empirical evidence" of the relative ease of rhyming in different languages. The demand strikes me as typifying one of the obnoxious impulses of the Hacker News community (another of them on display elsewhere in this thread) to dress up a vapid criticism as scientific skepticism. You could, I suppose, try to do a combinatorial analysis of the ease of rhyming by writing a program to find rhyming pairs in a phonetic dictionary; just make sure your blog post about the results properly acknowledges the shortcomings of your analysis in its title. 0. https://books.google.com/books?id=ByVoAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA60&ots=5MIVrQ-Dtw&dq=ease%20of%20rhyming%20in%20french%20and%20english&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=ByVoAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA60&ots=...
  - pothibo 12y ago
    So basically you make a claim that french is easier to rhyme than english, then I ask you if you have any evidence and you retorqued with a condescending answer adding a link to a book you took 5 second to google and that you didn't read. You didn't read it because I just read it and while the first sentence would make it appear to back your point, it doesn't. First because he doesn't compare french to english but merely explain how the main accent is put on the suffix of words and that, in turn, makes it easy in french to build rhyme. And if you continue to the next page, he explains how french rhyme are not on the same level as their english counterpart "because most English rhymes involve the root rather than the inflectional ending or suffix [...]" Bottom line, you are wrong, and you try to pass as knowledgeable. You are a fraud.

blumkvist 12y ago

Rhyming is part of the problem. Playwrights' work has to be remembered by the actors by heart. Also, the ones you mentioned lived in the 16th century, when languages were not very sophisticated.

nmyk 12y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "sophisticated". Languages in the 16th century were just as complex as they always have been. The vocabularies might be bigger or smaller compared to today. Certainly no one was saying "bae" back then (for instance), but no one calls each other "thou" today, either. EDIT: except for the older generations of Geordies, apparently.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  What I mean is that in the 16th century there were much less words than today, or let's say the 19th century.

pcrh 12y ago

Perhaps the reason is not the necessity to rhyme, but to be popular; being prolix might be a deterrent to popularity. Even if so, I find the conclusion unexpected, as Shakespeare not only had a wide popularity in his day, but also coined many new words into the English language.