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Most prosodic language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5813 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 1 of 19 26 December 2009 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||
I was browsing through an old "Teach Yourself Arabic" today, and came across this passage.
I'm not at all convinced that's a fair statement about Arabic (anything this hard to pronounce could never sound monotonous!), but either way, the passage got me thinking. Are some languages just generally more conducive to poetry (or artistic prose, for that matter)? I'm not so much referring to expressive or rhetorical power, although obviously those are important factors. Specifically I'm curious about prosodic features: rhythm, intonation, stress, common consonant structures, ease of rhyme/consonance/assonance, etc. Any thoughts on the matter? This honestly isn't something I know a lot about; I'm not completely convinced it's something that's quantifiable. Personally, I would be willing to bet that someone could do some amazingly beautiful things with Swahili's noun classes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5471 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 2 of 19 26 December 2009 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I was told by a native Scottish Gaelic speaker that Gaelic follows a poetic kind of rhythm though I don't how how true that is.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 19 27 December 2009 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm fairly sure that diffeent language have different possibilities based on their phonetic and grammatical possibilities. But also that this isn't an absolute limitation. For instance Roman authors like Vergil had a hard time trying both to honor the sound patterns of their own Latin and those of their Greek models. But when - as in the Latin case - the efforts run counter to the logical way of using a certain language, the attempt will result in a style that may be developed further, until everybody sees the coupling between the language and the style as a qjuite natural thing.
Old Norse is characterized by at least two sound-realted features: alliterations and a pencheant for short, concise sentences (reinforced by the possibility to leavy out the subject). Alliterations, which are used instead of end-rhymes, could really be used in any language, but here it is used to establish a rhythm. The snappy, often subjectless sentences goes well with the impression of the old Vikings, and this is probably a major reason why this poetry is still seen as worldclass literature. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 5988 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 19 30 December 2009 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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In music at least, some languages are absolutely better than others. Some languages are also better for certain genres. English is a good language for pop songs; it has lots of small words you can manipulate, which leads to more creative and intricate rhyming. In Italian, however, 99% of the words end in a vowel and there are much fewer suffixes, so everything rhymes a little too easily and Italian pop songs end up sounding trite or a little childish (at least to my ears). The liquid R's in English are also more flexible, you can hide them in ways that are more difficult with a trilled or guttural R.
Opera is the opposite. The greater number of vowels in Italian complement the longer notes in opera, and the consonant endings in English sound too harsh. Holding a trilled/guttural R for a while sounds much more dramatic in opera (think recitatif), while holding an English R sounds like a motorboat. I always wonder about Chinese pop music, would you write the lyrics or the melody first? What do you do when you write a descending melodic line, but your lyrics call for a rising tone? Writing good lyrics is hard enough as it is; having to account for a tonal system would be a nightmare. --Carlonove Edited by carlonove on 30 December 2009 at 9:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5569 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 5 of 19 30 December 2009 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Which is why tones are ignored in Chinese music. Try watching Chinese pop videos on YouTube (like, say, this one) and you'll find that they're all subtitled, because they don't sing the tones and it can be very difficult or downright impossible to figure out the lyrics otherwise. Chinese has enough homophones with the tones! Edited by Levi on 30 December 2009 at 11:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 6 of 19 31 December 2009 at 12:24am | IP Logged | ||
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SOV languages are too easy to rap in. Almost every sentence can be a rhyme if the rapper wanted to. For example, Epik High's "Love Love Love," most of the rhymes end in 적(jeok.)
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6770 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 7 of 19 31 December 2009 at 11:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Doesn't Cantonese opera match tones with melody?
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 19 31 December 2009 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Mandarin music generally ignores tones. To my ears, that makes it very hard to listen to, as the singers all sound
like Americans wih bad Mandarin pronounciation. I can't stand Mandarin music of any genre. Cantonese music, however, will take tones into consideration. I don't know Cantonese yet, but I imagine I'd like it a whole lot more. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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