Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[TD1]

Make it Tayga, and colour me content.

[Helgoland]

But then the joke no longer works...

[TD1]

A joke no longer works. A new one does.

[Putnam]

...It's an old poem. Most words ending with "y" at the time ended in an "ai" sound.

For example, from John Keats' Lamia:

And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him
The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim
Into forgetfulness; and, for the sage,
Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage
War on his temples. Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

Also fuck that poem lmao

So yeah, symmetry, philosophy, eye, aye, pry, lie, electrify, all rhymed.

[Arx]

...It's an old poem. Most words ending with "y" at the time ended in an "ai" sound.

This is a matter of contention that is almost impossible to prove one way or another.

[TheBiggerFish]

...It's an old poem. Most words ending with "y" at the time ended in an "ai" sound.

This is a matter of contention that is almost impossible to prove one way or another.

No it isn't!

Historical linguistics!

And stuff!

[Arx]

Nobody's managed it yet. There's really very little in the way of recordings of pronunciations.

[Tack]

If all Witchers can do magic, can everyone do magic or is magic mutated into them?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The only magic Witchers typically do are the Signs, which are like base process magic. Even that takes them years to learn, Geralt is just prodigy-level at them because he's the son of a witch. Actual capital-M Magic seems to require either genetics or...unsavory deals, and makes the Signs look like child's play.

[hops]

That's, uh. ASMR, I'm pretty sure. Something related, at least.

So you're saying that they got ASMR from ASTHMA

read it out loud

[Avis-Mergulus]

Nobody's managed it yet. There's really very little in the way of recordings of pronunciations.

Actually, a systematic deviation from rhyme would be about as conclusive a proof as any proof in humanities can be conclusive, since we know that 18th - century Western poetry shares its basic rules regarding rhyme with contemporary Western poetry (from 18th - century meta writings regarding poetry). So we have two competing hypotheses: one, that these words were pronounced differently, and two, that basic rhyming rules did not apply to these words, and to them specifically. I'll leave it to you to determine which is more likely.

And for written languages, even those that have a systematized and rigid orthography, pronunciation can be restored through error analysis, for example. There are a lot of methods through which older pronunciations can be restored with a high degree of certainty, see here, for instance. The key words are 'high degree of certainty', of course, but that's really just how it works. Less wrong and all that.

[Frumple]

... I mean, when it comes to likelihood, here. We are talking english. And poetry. Reason would say the words are pronounced differently but reason has very little to do with the subject being discussed :V

[Arx]

So we have two competing hypotheses: one, that these words were pronounced differently, and two, that basic rhyming rules did not apply to these words, and to them specifically.

Nope, you missed one: that the poet intentionally misrhymed it to be jarring for effect, consistent with the fact that the tiger's fearful symmetry cannot be framed and the alterations in the final stanza.

It's suddenly a lot less obvious which one is more likely, isn't it?

[Avis-Mergulus]

So we have two competing hypotheses: one, that these words were pronounced differently, and two, that basic rhyming rules did not apply to these words, and to them specifically.

Nope, you missed one: that the poet intentionally misrhymed it to be jarring for effect, consistent with the fact that the tiger's fearful symmetry cannot be framed and the alterations in the final stanza.

It's suddenly a lot less obvious which one is more likely, isn't it?

You missed the word 'systematic' in my post. It's the third one from the beginning. We would have to suppose that multiple poets, all independently of one another, decided to misrhyme those words and those words specifically. We have Putnam's example, that shows that Blake was not the only one who did it with those words, and I am sure others can be found.

And in any case, I was referring more to methodology in general than this concrete example. A systematic deviation from rhyme is conclusive proof that something was pronounced differently as far as any proof in humanities is conclusive.

Edit: this does not necessarily mean that this was so during Blake's time specifically - he might have been emulating earlier examples, like Shakespeare, who also did it. But that it was so some time in the past is very likely.ъ

Edit Edit: May have come of as assholish. Sorry. Your statement that Blake might have done it for effect is not mutually exclusive with my statement that 'symmetry' was pronounced differently in the past. In fact, it might have been a sort of double brainy git move on his part, where he got his jarring effect, but also masked it with a kind of tongue-in-cheek historical reference. That sounds like something he would do, anyway.

[Tack]

Signs are child's play.
Geralt is genetics.

Thanks!