Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 July 20

= July 20 =

The Tyger

 * ''Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
 * ''In the forests of the night;
 * ''What immortal hand or eye,
 * Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

How was Blake intending "eye" and "symmetry" to rhyme? Would he have been pronouncing "eye" as "ee" (as in the Scots word for eye), or is "symmetry" supposed to be pronounced "symmetr-eye"? Or were they always just assumed to be "close enough" without actually rhyming? Iapetus (talk) 09:11, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * This blog post by David Crystal gives some answers. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:08, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Interesting info. And this reminds me of Gilbert and Sullivan rhyming "alive" with "Conservative". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:53, 20 July 2020 (UTC)


 * See also: Eye rhyme —107.15.157.44 (talk) 15:42, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes (and the link is helpful), but according to Crystal that "is the lazy solution". ---Sluzzelin talk  22:47, 20 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps Blake was thinking of "eye" as "ey-ee". That would give the last two lines 8 syllables each, while the first two have 7 each. (That is symmetry in itself.) Jmar67 (talk) 03:45, 21 July 2020 (UTC)


 * There's no way to know for sure what Blake was thinking, but one theory is that "eye" vs "[symmet]tree" is an intentional slant rhyme that creates a tension resolved in the last words of the poem, "lamb make thee". You might like this article by Haj Ross about the sounds in the poem.  He at one point was writing a whole book about it but I don't know if anything came of that. 2601:648:8202:96B0:0:0:0:5B74 (talk) 04:58, 21 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Perhaps he just didn't care. In The Ecchoing Green he tries to rhyme "thrush" with "bush" and "weary" with "merry". See also this query from last year on rubbish rhymes. Alansplodge (talk) 15:02, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Perhaps they did rhyme in his native dialect. Not everyone speaks English, especially English vowels, the same way.  -- Jayron 32 15:19, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * He was a Londoner. Weary and merry is a bit of a stretch in any English dialect. Alansplodge (talk) 15:22, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Firstly, "Londoner" is a bit vague, and there are many dialects in London itself which vary widely, not just based on geography, but also based on socioeconomic status and other factors. Secondly, and perhaps more relevant, "was" is an important term here.  Dialects are not fixed in stone for time immemorial, the dialect spoken in London, by Blake, 250 years ago is not necessarily identical to 21st century BBC Standard English.  The expectation that because two words with similar, but not identical, vowel sounds in some modern Standard English, have never rhymed at any point in history for any English speaker ever is a bit of a stretch, especially when we have evidence that someone considered them a natural rhyme in the past.  And that evidence is Blake's poem itself.  -- Jayron 32 15:32, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Blakes poem must have rhymed correctly because Blake put it in a poem? Alansplodge (talk) 15:55, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * No, Blake chose words that to him rhymed. No one has presented evidence that they haven't, and instead have only used the non-sequitur that Blakes words to not rhyme to the person themselves without regard for whether or not they may have rhymed to Blake.  In fact, most modern linguists reconstruct the sound of pre-modern dialects using written evidence like poetry to deduce that; using clues from written language can give insight into the intended pronunciation.  Do we know for sure?  I don't know you exist, for sure.  But insofar as we have to draw deductions from scant evidence, starting from the presumption that "my way to speak English is the only way anyone ever has, is, and will ever speak English" is a faulty premise to begin with.  If we start, instead, with the presumption that language changes over time and place, and is context dependent, then that leads us to different conclusions regarding how Blake may have reached decisions regarding his poetry.  The possibility that they actually did rhyme is at least as likely, and in my mind far more likely, than "Blake spoke English exactly like I did, and thus chose a few random words that didn't rhyme because reasons".  -- Jayron 32 16:42, 21 July 2020 (UTC)
 * More on this: Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 June 24. 77.101.226.208 (talk) 14:31, 24 July 2020 (UTC)