Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 July 12
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July 12[edit]
Japanese rhymes[edit]
Watching on Youtube songs from children movies, especially from Disney, in multiple languages I noticed that all European localizations utilize some kind of rhyme, while in Japanese they apparently do not. It looks like they just vocalize the translated text along the melody but they don't seem to me to use anything similar to our concept of rhyme. I find it an interesting difference. Is it a common practice also in other media? It it somehow "culture-bound"'?
Here are two examples from Youtube:
Prince Ali:
German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvmwwYw8ZA4&ab_channel=TungilG
Italian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLW56niWR6g&ab_channel=FlamSparks
Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Bvf2RLlcU&ab_channel=BoBalderson
This is Halloween:
Dutch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2_ZjfVkTLo&ab_channel=FlamSparks
Russian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRfcMW09HZI&ab_channel=Furry
Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITbjEAWyy4I&ab_channel=Yuuki
79.34.237.101 (talk) 12:41, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Old English didn't have rhyme; it had poetic verse lines divided into half-lines, internally connected by initial alliteration of key words. Rhyme was introduced into Middle English, mainly under French influence. AnonMoos (talk) 13:50, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- The Japanese pop songs and anime openings I have heard rarely use rhyming in a systematic manner, possibly as they tend to focus more on melody than rhythm. J-Rappers do, of course, but it seems to be a rather recent phenomenon. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:42, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- I.e. even traditional Japanese poetry largely seems to have evaded rhyming, there were strict meters but rhymes and alliterations were of little importance. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:47, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- Alliterative half-lines — it's a general Germanic concept, not just Old English; the Poetic Edda poems generally use this structure, for example. The half-lines alliterated with each other, without regard to alliteration between lines. For example, Alliterative_verse#English alliterative verse quotes this bit from The Battle of Maldon:
I've bolded the alliterative syllables. Nyttend (talk) 22:10, 12 July 2023 (UTC)Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cēnre,
mōd sceal þe māre, swā ūre mægen lȳtlað
- Alliterative half-lines — it's a general Germanic concept, not just Old English; the Poetic Edda poems generally use this structure, for example. The half-lines alliterated with each other, without regard to alliteration between lines. For example, Alliterative_verse#English alliterative verse quotes this bit from The Battle of Maldon:
- I.e. even traditional Japanese poetry largely seems to have evaded rhyming, there were strict meters but rhymes and alliterations were of little importance. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:47, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- According to this book, Japanese poetry relies on the assonance of morae. Trying to understand that made my head hurt, so it must be bed-time. Alansplodge (talk) 22:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
- That book mostly seems to be about Japanese sound symbolism, with poetry only mentioned incidentally. Anyway, looking up the example poem in tanka, I have a hard time finding any deliberate examples of alliteration or assonance, that don't seem to be coincidental due to the small Japanese phonemic inventory. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)