Act alters the arc... is that alliteration or are vowels excluded from what we call alliteration? I do understand what assonance is, when you have a repeated vowel sound in the middle of words. But what about a string of the same vowel at the beginning of words? Is that alliteration?
I want the answer to be no, because it doesn't have the same feeling you get from, say, "From forth the fatal loins of these two foes." Just to use the delightful consonant "f," we can see that the weak "act alters the arc" would sound much more exciting if it were — excuse the obscure meaning — "fact falters the farc."
Anyway, don't get me started on the "arc of history." Yesterday was my day to go off on the overuse of "history": "I have an aversion to the 'making history' argument." And here's how I feel about that:
@seanghedi can we pls go one day without something unprecedented happening😔 #USelection #unitedstates #joebiden #trump #kamalaharris #uspolitics #fyp ♬ original sound - GHEDl
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Whether or not it technically counts as alliteration, I'd argue that it's neither apt, nor artful, nor even an aid to the headline, since it makes it harder to read out loud.
Arc of history always registers as "Orc of History" in my mind. Why not just use "history"?
Anyway, with Biden the Arc of History is now the Arc of Defeat and not the Arc of Triumph.
Don't be burdened by what has been.
Merriam Webster says "usually consonant," which means it doesn't have to be, but I agree with you that it does have to be. Vowel sounds are too soft; so soft that they weren't even recognized as being letters until centuries after consonant-only alphabets were created. They're bridge sounds, fillers.
Vowels don't count. Also map together n-d-t-th m-b-p-v-f s-z-ch g-j-k-ch
We are in the stupidest timeline
Selfless act?
He was pushed and blackmailed out (25th Amendment) and bribed!
Don't give this guy any credit.
His incompetence has cost at least one million lives around the globe.
Fuck Joe Biden.
I love alliteration and never miss an opportunity to use it.
Never realized that there was a question about whether vowels we alliteration. Less common, sure. Perhaps not as euphonic, OK.
Still alliteration, though. At least as far as I can tell, never having thought real deeply on it.
John Henry
Not alliteration. But it would have been if we were corrected to, "Jon Biden's factless fable faltered like a futile fart at history."
Alliterations Are Always Awesome!
Don’t make an assonance of yourself.
Xhe xells xeashells xy xe xeashore is an apt and allusive allegorical alliteration.
I was taught that if the word starts with a vowel or at least a vowel sound, then it does not count as alliteration. Whether that matters or not is semantics. The point of alliteration is it is pleasing, and a series of words with vowel sounds that is pleasing is better than a series of words with consonant sounds that are not pleasing.
The tricky thing with vowels is they do not have consistent pronunciation, so just because a series of words starts with the same vowel does not mean they sound at all similar. I do wonder if that is why vowels were excluded from the alliteration definition.
We are in the stupidest timeline
May you remain viable through dumb and dumber is an empathetic plea to a progressive process.
Beowulf, one of the first instances of alliterative poetry in written history, uses consonants. The better translations from Old English work to keep that. I say, go with tradition.
Back in the mid-1960s, my paternal grandfather (1885-1977) gave me cogently sage advice about overuse of "historic", especially by politicians -- What makes history rarely makes the news. -- and cited the Kennedy assassination as a rare exception.
As a Colonel in military intel, the WWI vet whose Reserve service and superb physical conditioning allowed him to be the oldest non-General on active duty in WWII, and then our CIA Station Chief for southern South America ... he knew what he was talking about. Fluent in eight languages (including Spanish and Portuguese), he observed, quietly, "What we did [under his command] in keeping Argentina, Brazil. and Chile from going over to the Axis profoundly changed the dynamics of the naval wars in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Nobody knows about that, and that's just fine. That's the norm, and we only read about it in passing, once the history is finally written."
"I do wonder if that is why vowels were excluded from the alliteration definition."
It doesn't really matter what is encompassed by the term. What matters is whether something interesting and exciting is happening in the words, something about the sound. Even if there were an official definition of alliteration that covered words beginning with the same letter -- or syllables beginning with the same sound — there would be the alliteration that worked well and the alliteration that didn't work.
In this case, "Act alters the arc" doesn't work. It has negative value... whether it's bad alliteration or not alliteration at all.
"I was taught that if the word starts with a vowel or at least a vowel sound, then it does not count as alliteration. Whether that matters or not is semantics. The point of alliteration is it is pleasing, and a series of words with vowel sounds that is pleasing is better than a series of words with consonant sounds that are not pleasing."
I agree.
I agree with Static Ping here. I was taught that alliteration depends not so much upon the actual letter being used, but the sound of that letter. Vowel variation is too significant to really count as alliteration. Simple repeating of the lead letter is not alliteration: "Circus clown children" doesn't work, with the soft-c, hard-c, diphthong-c sounds, but that "card-counting cattle killers" would be considered alliterative. Whether that would be a 2-level, 3-level, or 4-level alliteration is then up for discussion.
Best headline I ever wrote in a previous career:
Pricy Potbelly Pygmy Pigs Prove Problematic Pets
I mean, I can't remember what I was taught, but I agree with the rest.
I had a working understanding of the meaning of the word, but I didn't remember an exception for vowels. Encountering the stupid repetition of "a" words, I wondered if the definition excluded crap like that. But the important point is to have some taste and judgment. Almost all alliteration isn't awesome.
Almost all alliteration ain't awesome.
The best description I saw of last night's address by Biden was this- "Biden Delivers own Eulogy".
I'm with Static Ping on this.
"The tricky thing with vowels is they do not have consistent pronunciation, so just because a series of words starts with the same vowel does not mean they sound at all similar."
The a's that start the words in the example have very different sounds. The essence of alliteration is that the words start with the same *sound*, not the same letter, so this example completely fails the poetic function of alliteration.
Are "phone" and "pony" alliterative because they both start with the letter "p"? Of course not. They don't sound anything alike.
This is an anthill I am willing to die on.
"alter(ing) the arc of history" presupposes that you know what the arc of history would have been. Silly. But if the arc has been altered, could someone please tell us where the arc is pointing now?
Whoever is feeding the scripts probably has in mind Obama, arc of history, justice.
Helplessly hoping
Her harlequin hovers nearby
Awaiting a word
Gasping at glimpses
Of gentle true spirit
He runs, wishing he could fly
Only to trip at the sound of good-bye
Wordlessly watching
He waits by the window
And wonders
At the empty place inside
Heartlessly helping himself to her bad dreams
He worries
Did he hear a good-bye? Or even hello?
They are one person
They are two alone
They are three together
They are for each other
Stand by the stairway
You'll see something
Certain to tell you confusion has its cost
Love isn't lying
It's loose in a lady who lingers
Saying she is lost
And choking on hello
Now there's some alliteration right there!
An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction’s devastating doom.
Every endeavour engineers essay,
For fame, for fortune fighting – furious fray!
Generals ‘gainst generals grapple – gracious God!
How honours Heaven heroic hardihood!
Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill,
Just Jesus, instant innocence instill!
Kindred kill kinsmen, kinsmen kindred kill.
Labour low levels longest, loftiest lines;
Men march ‘mid mounds, ‘mid moles, ‘mid murderous mines;
Now noxious, noisy numbers nothing, naught
Of outward obstacles, opposing ought;
Poor patriots, partly purchased, partly pressed,
Quite quaking, quickly “Quarter! Quarter!” quest.
Reason returns, religious right redounds,
Suwarrow stops such sanguinary sounds.
Truce to thee, Turkey! Triumph to thy train,
Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine!
Vanish vain victory! vanish, victory vain!
Why wish we warfare? Wherefore welcome were
Xerxes, Ximenes, Xanthus, Xavier?
Yield, yield, ye youths! ye yeomen, yield your yell!
Zeus’, Zarpater’s, Zoroaster’s zeal,
Attracting all, arms against acts appeal!
alliteration (n.)
1650s, "repetition of the same sound or letter at the beginning of words in close succession," from Modern Latin alliterationem (nominative alliteratio), noun of action from past-participle stem of alliterare "to begin with the same letter," from Latin ad "to" (see ad-) + littera (also litera) "letter, script"
- etymonline.com
Alliteration is either a matter of personal perception, preference, or defined in deference to stare decisis.
alter the arc of history / change the curve of history
stupid rule / stupid standard
there is at least one point in the multiverse where sanity still endures,
What is the name for using "border tsar" instead of "border czar" to reflect Kamala's media status as a star?
If history follows an arc, are we following an upward slope on the y axis, or downward? Above or below the (0,0) point on the graph? Is there even a z-axis? An arc parabolic with the open side up, or down? The whole frigging metaphor is fraught with failings. Now there's some alliteration, with an f, for ya!
An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade.
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
...
An alliteratary masterpiece.
In English poetry you usually have a strong syllable followed by a weak syllable because that's the English speech pattern. And the alliteration went on one of the strong syllables.
This is a translation of Beowulf that keeps that characteristic.
Lo! the Spear-Danes’ glory through splendid achievements
The folk-kings’ former fame we have heard of,
How princes displayed then their prowess-in-battle.
At a point in the long history of English poetry it was decided there were rules and it was decided that you if you started out using a the pattern of a strong syllable followed by a weak syllable you had to always do it the same way throughout the poem UNLESS having a strong syllable followed by two weal syllables gave a poetic effect. Tennyson, for instance, Speaking of Milton is considered to have got the sound of war followed by the sound of a brook into poetry by alternating his use of syllables:
Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel,
Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries,
Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset —
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
The clipped effect of "Rings to the roar of an angel onset" contrasts with the wnadering dreaminess of "bowery loneliness/ The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring" because of the number of strong and weak syllables.
And in the case we are discussing, the point is that "act alters the arc" has two strong syllables followed by two weak syllables which is not a speech pattern that sounds "right" to an Englsih speaker. Your ear hears "act alters the arc" as "wrong," even if you have never heard of "prosody" or "iambics." It's one of the ways I can tell if something is AI generated because ChatGPT and the others don't know how English is supposed to sound. They only know the rules and they sound like a foreigner who's learned his English from a phrase book. Moreover, American English has a somewhat different sound so that "act alters the arc" sounds pretentious to Americans as well as "wrong." Note how hostile everyone is - that's the "wrongness" and pretentiousness registering. There are things up with which we will not put.
From aging asshole to airhead alters the arc of history?
Anglo-Saxon alliteration is NOT limited to consonants. The technical definition of alliteration for Old English* (in which Beowulf is written) is the repetition of STRESSED sounds. All stressed vowels alliterate with all other stressed vowels (we call this, unsurprisingly, vocalic alliteration).
Examples:
line 6: EGsode Eorle syððan Ærest wearð (E, E, and Æ)
line 9: oð þæt him Ægwhylc Ymbsittendra (Æ and Y)
line 12: ðæm Eafera wæs Æfter cenned (E and Æ)
Æ, called "ash" is pronounced like the /a/ in "bat" or "cat"
ð, called "eth" is pronounced like Modern English th (both voiced and unvoiced)
þ, called "thorn" is also pronounced like Modern English th voiced and unvoiced.
Consonance is the repetition of the same consonant sound in a clause, line or sentence. Assonance is repetition of the same vowel sound.
Alliteration is consonance at the beginning sounds or assonance at the beginning sounds.
So “full fathom five thy father lies” contains alliterative consonance and non-alliterative assonance (long i in “five, thy, lies”
Alliteration can be consonance or assonance.
Consonance or assonance can be alliterative or non-alliterative or a combo.
The “th” sound in fathom and father is non-alliterative but is balanced by the “th” sound of thy.
It’s a great combo.
For vowels it’s called “assonance”.
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