Celtic languages
Rhyming in the Celtic Languages takes a drastically different course from most other Western rhyming schemes despite strong contact with the Romance and English patterns. Even today, despite extensive interaction with English and French culture, Celtic rhyme continues to demonstrate native characteristics. Brian Ó Cuív sets out the rules of rhyme in Irish poetry of the classical period: the last stressed vowel and any subsequent long vowels must be identical in order for two words to rhyme. Consonants are grouped into six classes for the purpose of rhyme: they need not be identical, but must belong to the same class. Thus 'b' and 'd' can rhyme (both being 'voiced plosives'), as can 'bh' and 'l' (which are both 'voiced continuants') but 'l', a 'voiced continuant', cannot rhyme with 'ph', a 'voiceless continuant'. Furthermore, "for perfect rhyme a palatalized consonant may be balanced only by a palatalized consonant and a velarized consonant by a velarized one."In the post-Classical period, these rules fell into desuetude, and in popular verse simple assonance often suffices, as can be seen in an example of Irish Gaelic rhyme from the traditional song Bríd Óg Ní Mháille:
Here the vowels are the same, but the consonants, although both palatalized, do not fall into the same class in the bardic rhyming scheme.
Chinese
Besides the vowel/consonant aspect of rhyming, Chinese rhymes often include tonequality (that is, tonal contour) as an integral linguistic factor in determining rhyme.
Use of rhyme in Classical Chinese poetrytypically but not always appears in the form of paired couplets, with end-rhyming in the final syllable of each couplet.
Another important aspect of rhyme in regard to Chinese language studies is the study or reconstruction of past varieties of Chinese, such as Middle Chinese.
English
Old English poetry is mostly alliterative verse. One of the earliest rhyming poems in English is The Rhyming Poem.
As stress is important in English, lexical stress is one of the factors that affects the similarity of sounds for the perception of rhyme. Perfect rhyme can be defined as the case when two words rhyme if their final stressed vowel and all following sounds are identical.
Some words in English, such as "orange" and "silver", are commonly regarded as having no rhyme. Although a clever writer can get around this (for example, by obliquely rhyming "orange" with combinations of words like "door hinge" or with lesser-known words like "Blorenge" – a hill in Wales – or the surname Gorringe), it is generally easier to move the word out of rhyming position or replace it with a synonym ("orange" could become "amber", while "silver" could become a combination of "bright and argent").A skilled orator might be able to tweak the pronunciation of certain words to facilitate a stronger rhyme (for example, pronouncing 'orange' as 'oringe' to rhyme with 'door hinge')
One view of rhyme in English is from John Milton's preface to Paradise Lost:
A more tempered view is taken by W. H. Auden in The Dyer's Hand:
Forced or clumsy rhyme is often a key ingredient of doggerel.
French
In French poetry, unlike in English, it is common to have identical rhymes, in which not only the vowels of the final syllables of the lines rhyme, but their onset consonants ("consonnes d'appui") as well. To the ear of someone accustomed to English verse, this often sounds like a very weak rhyme. For example, an English perfect rhyme of homophones, flour and flower, would seem weak, whereas a French rhyme of homophones doigt ("finger") and doit ("must") or point ("point") and point ("not") is not only acceptable but quite common.
Rhymes are sometimes classified into the categories of "rime pauvre" ("poor rhyme"), "rime suffisante" ("sufficient rhyme"), "rime riche" ("rich rhyme") and "rime richissime" ("very rich rhyme"), according to the number of rhyming sounds in the two words or in the parts of the two verses. For example, to rhyme "tu" with "vu" would be a poor rhyme (the words have only the vowel in common), to rhyme "pas" with "bras" a sufficient rhyme (with the vowel and the silent consonant in common), and "tante" with "attente" a rich rhyme (with the vowel, the onset consonant, and the coda consonant with its mute "e" in common). Authorities disagree, however, on exactly where to place the boundaries between the categories.
Holorime is an extreme example of rime richissime spanning an entire verse. Alphonse Allais was a notable exponent of holorime. Here is an example of a holorime couplet from Marc Monnier:
Classical French rhyme not only differs from English rhyme in its different treatment of onset consonants. It also treats coda consonants in a distinctive way.
French spelling includes several final letters that are no longer pronounced, and that in many cases have never been pronounced. Such final unpronounced letters continue to affect rhyme according to the rules of Classical French versification. They are encountered in almost all of the pre-20th-century French verse texts, but these rhyming rules are almost never taken into account from the 20th century.
The most important "silent" letter is the "mute e". In spoken French today, final "e" is, in some regional accents (in Paris for example), omitted after consonants; but in Classical French prosody, it was considered an integral part of the rhyme even when following the vowel. "Joue" could rhyme with "boue", but not with "trou". Rhyming words ending with this silent "e" were said to make up a "double rhyme", while words not ending with this silent "e" made up a "single rhyme". It was a principle of stanza-formation that single and double rhymes had to alternate in the stanza. Virtually all 17th-century French plays in verse alternate masculine and feminine Alexandrin couplets.
The now-silent final consonants present a more complex case. They, too, were traditionally an integral part of the rhyme, such that "pont" rhymed with "vont" but not with "long"; but spelling and pronunciation did not coincide exactly—"pont" also rhymed with "rond". There are a few rules that govern most word-final consonants in archaic French pronunciation:
- The distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants is lost in the final position. Therefore, "d" and "t" (both pronounced /t/) rhyme. So too with "g" and "c" (both /k/), "p" and "b" (both /p/), and "s", "x" and "z" (all /z/). Rhymes ending in /z/ are called "plural rhymes" because most plural nouns and adjectives end in "s" or "x".
- Nasal vowels rhyme whether they are spelled with "m" or "n". ("Essaim" rhymes with "sain" but not with "saint")
- If a word ends in a stop followed by "s", the stop is silent (therefore "temps" rhymes with "dents"). In the archaic orthography some of these silent stops are omitted from the spelling as well (e.g. "dens" for "dents").
German
Because German phonology features a wide array of vowel sounds, certain imperfect rhymes are widely admitted in German poetry. These include rhyming "e" with "ä" and "ö", rhyming "i" with "ü", rhyming "ei" with "eu" (spelled "äu" in some words) and rhyming a long vowel with its short counterpart.
Some examples of imperfect rhymes (all from Friedrich Schiller's "An die Freude"):
- Deine Zauber binden wieder / Alle Menschen werden Brüder
- Freude trinken alle Wesen / Alle Guten, alle Bösen
- Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod; / und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
Greek
- See Homoioteleuton
Ancient Greek poetry is strictly metrical. Rhyme is used, if at all, only as an occasional rhetorical flourish.
The first Greek to write rhyming poetry was the fourteenth-century Cretan Stephanos Sachlikis. Rhyme is now a common fixture of Greek poetry.
Hebrew
Ancient Hebrew rarely employed rhyme, e.g. in Exodus 29 35: ועשית לאהרן ולבניו כָּכה, ככל אשר צויתי אֹתָכה (the identical part in both rhyming words being / 'axa/ ). Rhyme became a permanent - even obligatory - feature of poetry in Hebrew language, around the 4th century CE. It is found in the Jewish liturgical poetrywritten in the Byzantine empire era. This was realized by scholars only recently, thanks to the thousands of piyyuts that have been discovered in the Cairo Geniza. It is assumed that the principle of rhyme was transferred from Hebrew liturgical poetry to the poetry of the Syriac Christianity (written in Aramaic), and through this mediation introduced into Latin poetry and then into all other languages of Europe.
Latin
In Latin rhetoric and poetry homeoteleutonand alliteration were frequently used devices.
Tail rhyme was occasionally used, as in this piece of poetry by Cicero:
But tail rhyme was not used as a prominent structural feature of Latin poetry until it was introduced under the influence of local vernacular traditions in the early Middle Ages. This is the Latin hymn Dies Irae:
Medieval poetry may mix Latin and vernacularlanguages. Mixing languages in verse or rhyming words in different languages is termed macaronic.
Portuguese
Portuguese classifies rhymes in the following manner:
- rima pobre (poor rhyme): rhyme between words of the same grammatical category(e.g. noun with noun) or between very common endings (-ão, -ar);
- rima rica (rich rhyme): rhyme between words of different grammatical classes or with uncommon endings;
- rima preciosa (precious rhyme): rhyme between words with a different morphology, for example estrela (star) with vê-la (to see her);
- rima esdrúxula (odd rhyme): rhyme between proparoxytonic words (example: ânimo, "animus", and unânimo, "unanimous").
Russian
Rhyme was introduced into Russian poetry in the 18th century. Folk poetry had generally been unrhymed, relying more on dactylic line endings for effect. Two words ending in an accented vowel are only considered to rhyme if they share a preceding consonant. Vowel pairs rhyme—even though non-Russian speakers may not perceive them as the same sound. Consonant pairs rhyme if both are devoiced. As in French, formal poetry traditionally alternates between masculine and feminine rhymes.
Early 18th-century poetry demanded perfect rhymes that were also grammatical rhymes—namely that noun endings rhymed with noun endings, verb endings with verb endings, and so on. Such rhymes relying on morphological endings become much rarer in modern Russian poetry, and greater use is made of approximate rhymes.
Spanish
Spanish mainly differentiates two types of rhymes:
- rima consonante (consonant rhyme): Those words of the same stress with identical endings, matching consonants and vowels, for example robo (robbery) and lobo (wolf), legua (league) and yegua (mare) or canción (song) and montón (pile).
- rima asonante (assonant rhyme): those words of the same stress that only the vowels identical at the end, for example zapato (shoe) and brazo (arm), ave (bird) and ame (would love), relój (watch) and feróz (fierce), puerta (door) and ruleta (roulette).
Spanish rhyme is also classified by stress type since different types cannot rhyme with each other:
- rima llana (plane rhyme): the rhyming words are unaccented, for example cama (bed) and rama (branch), pereza (lazyness) and moneda (coin) or espejo (mirror) and pienso (I think).
- rima grave (paroxytone rhyme): The rhyming words are accented on the last syllable, for example: cartón (cardboard) and limón (lemon), jeréz (sherry) and revéz (backwards). Grave words that end in a single same vowel can be asonante rhymes for example compró (he/she bought) and llevó (he/she carried), tendré (I will have) and pediré (I will ask), perdí (I lost) and medí (I measured).
- rima esdrújula (odd rhyme): The rhyming words are accented on the antepenult. For example mácula (stain) and báscula (scale), estrépito (noise) and intrépido (fearless), rápido (fast) and pálido (pallid).
Polish
In Polish literature rhyme was used from the beginning. Unrhymed verse was never popular, although it was sometimes imitated from Latin. Homer's, Virgil's and even Milton's epic poems were furnished with rhymes by Polish translators. Because of paroxytonic accentuation in Polish, feminine rhymes always prevailed. Rules of Polish rhyme were established in 16th century. Then only feminine rhymes were allowed in syllabic verse system. Together with introducing syllabo-accentual metres, masculine rhymes began to occur in Polish poetry. They were most popular at the end of 19th century. The most frequent rhyme scheme in Old Polish (16th - 18th centuries) was couplet AABBCCDD..., but Polish poets, having perfect knowledge of Italian language and literature, experimented with other schemes, among others ottava rima (ABABABCC) and sonnet(ABBA ABBA CDC DCD or ABBA ABBA CDCD EE).
The metre of Mickiewicz's sonnet is the Polish alexandrine (tridecasyllable, in Polish "trzynastozgłoskowiec"): 13(7+6) and its rhymes are feminine: [anu] and [odzi].
Arabic
Rhymes were widely spread in the Arabian peninsula around the 6th century, in letters, poems and songs, as well as long, rhyming qasidas. In addition, the Quran uses a form of rhymed prose named saj'.
Sanskrit
Patterns of rich rhyme (prāsa) play a role in modern Sanskrit poetry, but only to a minor extent in historical Sanskrit texts. They are classified according to their position within the pada (metrical foot): ādiprāsa (first syllable), dvitīyākṣara prāsa (second syllable), antyaprāsa (final syllable) etc.
Tamil
There are some unique rhyming schemes in Dravidian languages like Tamil. Specifically, the rhyme called etukai (anaphora) occurs on the second consonant of each line.
The other rhyme and related patterns are called mōnai (alliteration), toṭai (epiphora) and iraṭṭai kiḷavi (parallelism).
Some classical Tamil poetry forms, such as veṇpā, have rigid grammars for rhyme to the point that they could be expressed as a context-free grammar.
Vietnamese
Rhymes are used in Vietnamese to produce similes. The following is an example of a Rhyming Simile:
Nghèo như con mèo
/ŋɛu ɲɯ kɔn mɛu/
"Poor as a cat"
Compare the above Vietnamese example, which is a rhyming simile, to the English phrase "(as) poor as a church mouse", which is only a semantic simile.
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