American Rhyme

[Frank Daniel]

Here is another example from Will Ogilvie's poem 'How the Firequeen Crossed the Swamp'

" With jingling harness and droning wheels and bare hoofs' rhythmic tramp,
With creaking timbers and lurching load the Fire Queen faced the swamp! "

Could 'Tramp' be pronounced 'Tromp' - is that Sco 'ish or no?
or could 'Swamp' be pronounced 'Swam - p' Nuh! I give up!

Joe

[william williams]

Interesting Question Frank as it is written we all say is correct as it is phonetic spelling
But just because you have a Scotch accent the way you pronounce the word verbally would not be wrong.

Dam it mate you know what I mean

Bill

[Neville Briggs]

I'm not an authority on Scottish brogue, Frank. I suspect that if Ogilvie meant those two words to be a rhyming sound..possibly something close to " trarmp: and "swarmp'
like Scortlarnd the Brairve. Glenny will know..hoot mon.

[warooa]

A Scottish way of saying tramp would be akin to saying (quite rapidly) "to dump" which mimics the harsh rolling r.

But it's still drawing a long bow, me thinks, trying to rhyme it with swamp.

Cheers, Marty

ps och nee the woo

[Neville Briggs]

Plenty of poets used " sight rhymes ' knowing full well that the sound didn't quite match.
I can be done, they won't put you up against the wall and shoot you if you use sight rhymes . ..will they ??

[Heather]

Now that's an interesting question Neville. Can you call something a "rhyme" if it looks alike? I thought rhyme was to do with how it sounded. My dictionary says a rhyme is "identity of sound between words or their endings, esp., in verse".

Heather

[Neville Briggs]

Peely will tell you Heather.

[Heather]

Manfred, we need a "chicken" symbol!

Heather

[Bob Pacey]

Pretty simple for me either it rhymes or it does not. It would be like saying I can not be bothered to put the effort in.

Bit like footy really nearly a goal is just a behind or should we call it a slight goal.

I'm with you Heather.


Bob

[Peely]

G'day Heather

Sight rhymes or by their other name, spelling rhymes technically, are not true rhymes since the word ends do not have the same sound. At one stage in the past, some of these word ends were pronounced the same way and were true rhymes then. An example quoted in 'The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary' by Frances Stillman comes from a poem by Chaucer (14th Century poet). He rhymed 'houres' with 'youres'. At that time the pronunciation of the 'ou' in that version of 'hours' was the same as it is in the present version of the word 'yours'. Spellings for words like these were often standardised before the change in pronunciation occurred. Sight rhymes are almost uniquely found in English literature because the methods of spelling words in the English language are often so irrational in their nature.

Regards


John Peel