Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 September 22

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Language desk
< September 21 << Aug | September | Oct >> Current desk >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


September 22[edit]

rhymes[edit]

Howdy. There is an unwritten law in German poetry that you must never, ever, even under pain of death, rhyme Herz with Schmerz, because it's the most hackneyed rhyme in literary history (apparently Otfrid of Weissenburg was the first to do so anyway, around 870 AD: thaz min líaba herza / bi thiu rúarit mih thiu smérza; in 1985 Heinz Rudolf Kunze narrowly escaped the death penalty by going meta: Dein ist mein ganzes Herz / Du bist mein Reim auf Schmerz). Arno Holz also proscribes Sonne/Wonne and Brust/Lust; Liebe/Triebe and Mut/Glut are also frowned upon. This website informed me that there is a similar law in Turkish regarding bülbül/gül (ditto in Persian gul/bulbul). What about other languages, French, Russian, Nahuatl...? --Salonbolschewist (talk) 00:44, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

In the Tin Pan Alley of the 1st half of the 20th century, rhyming "moon" and "June" was considered quite trite and hackneyed (but I really would not call it a "law")... AnonMoos (talk) 02:48, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
See Has anyone ever actually used the moon/june/spoon rhyme in a song unironically?. Yes. Alansplodge (talk) 17:34, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Some material at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StockRhymes ... -- AnonMoos (talk) 02:54, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This song[[1] is implicit evidence that the "new" songs like "Shine On Harvest Moon" and "By the Light of the Slvery Moon" were considered inferior (by some) to the "old" songs. The generation gap is nothing new! Side note: Billy Murray sang a lot of Cohan tunes, and if Cagney had done the life story of Billy Murray instead of Cohan, he would have looked perfect for the role. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:54, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
West Germany, at least, abolished the death penalty in 1949. So presumably your comment is poetic license. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:41, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To be precise: The federal state of Hesse did abolish that penalty officially not before 2018. Till then however, it’s state law has had been overruled by DE’s federal law (since 1949). --84.190.197.71 (talk) 12:35, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This "unwritten law" was broken by Friedrich Rückert in Du bist die Ruh', to the delight of Schubertians everywhere (Schmerz/Herz and Brust/Lust in a single stanza). Which makes me wonder what the record is for cramming in as many such rhymes in as little space as possible... Double sharp (talk) 07:58, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

«Думаю, что со временем мы обратимся к белому стиху. Рифм в русском языке слишком мало. Одна вызывает другую. «Пламень» неминуемо тащит за собою «камень». Из-за «чувства» выглядывает непременно «искусство». Кому не надоели «любовь» и «кровь», «трудный» и «чудный», «верный» и «нелицемерный» и проч.» (Alexander Pushkin, Путешествие из Москвы в Петербург).

И вот уже трещат морозы

И серебрятся средь полей.

(Читатель ждет уж рифмы розы...

На, вот возьми ее скорей!)

(Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin) Burzuchius (talk) 15:28, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for the Pushkin, that's the kind of authoritative quote by a literary giant I was looking for. Meanwhile I found out that in Italian Cuore non può fare rima con amore: da secoli il buon senso lo proibisce a poeti e perfino a parolieri di effimere canzoni estive ([2]), nor can you rhyme amore and fiore, though Umberto Saba confessed that M'incantò la rima fiore amore/ la più antica, difficile del mondo. The most worn-out rhymes in French are apparently amour/toujours, désir/plaisir and sombre/ombre, but I haven't been able to find anything quotable by Corneille, Racine, Hugo or the like on that subject. In any case the French seem to be more laissez-faire when it comes to stock rhymes (the pairing funèbre/ténèbre occurs 11 times in Baudelaires Fleurs du mal and no fewer than 23 times in Hugos Contemplations, it seems...). Thanks also for Moon/June, that appears to be the best-known cliche in English. --Salonbolschewist (talk) 19:13, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
How about some translations, for us cretins who only speak English. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 01:13, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This looks like a quote from a self-published author, so not Pushkin level, but at least it shows the sentiment is widespread: " Un mot puis un autre - Trop facile pour être vôtre - Trop simple pour parler d'amour - Trop facile pour rimer toujours - Avec toi je voudrais inventer - Des mots nouveaux dans l'éternité - Des mots imprononçables - Des mots incomparables." - Julien Lucas- Cornuault (For Bugs, this is roughly: One word, then another / it is too easy to be yours / too easy to speak of love / too easy to rhyme it with always /I want to invent, with you / new words until eternity / unpronounceable words / incomparable words) 142.150.29.180 (talk) 14:08, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, one more French one, from 1881 (Wikisource). "… vous éviterez plus que la peste les accouplements de rimes avilies par leur banalité, tels que gloire et victoire, lauriers et guerriers, etc. Rien que d’y songer pour les proscrire, je sens les nausées du dégoût, et pourtant cette règle si essentielle n’est pas sans exception. Un grand poète, un homme de génie peut quelquefois, à force d’habileté, grâce à la façon ingénieuse et magnifique dont il les relie entre elles, ressusciter, réhabiliter, ramener à la lumière et remettre en estime près des honnêtes gens ces rimes usées, déshonorées, traînées dans la boue." 142.150.29.180 (talk) 14:16, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Throw your hands in the air like you just don't care... Matt Deres (talk) 21:45, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Since this is the English Wikipedia after all, here is a list of translations of the hackneyed rhymes suggested so far.

--Theurgist (talk) 00:25, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Don't chastise me for bringing up TV Tropes, once again, for it has an article on Stock Rhymes with plenty of English language examples, but also non-English ones. Ignoring the ones already mentioned, there are examples from Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, and Polish. ---Sluzzelin
Already linked to it above, but thanks. AnonMoos (talk) 00:11, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, missed it. ---Sluzzelin talk 05:54, 26 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2019_September_22&oldid=918955980"