[New-Poetry] Questions on form

[Bob Grumman]

Jason Quackenbush wrote:
> Chris Lott wrote:
>> On Jan 1, 2008 7:28 PM, Jason Quackenbush <jfq at myuw.net> wrote:
>>  
>>> I count "William," "different" as a three syllable words and 
>>> "beautiful"
>>> and "Everyone" as four syllable words. so there are four lines in this
>>> that have eight syllables. which is what i mean by "shoehorning" which
>>> is what you have to do if you want to say that every line here is in
>>> regular 7 syllable units. and you have to do that if you want to use
>>> traditional bivalent scansion toaccount for what feels like the
>>> regularity in this.
>>>     
>>
>> That's 4 for 4 in syllable counts being different from mine.. William
>> and different are 2 syllable words in my mouth, beautiful and everyone
>> are 3... I'll have to start listening more closely, but I can't think
>> of anyone I know who adds the extra syllable in there when speaking.
>> Or I just don't hear them :)
>>
>> c
>>   
> I'm not surprised there's disagreement. Most people treat dipthongs as 
> single syllables when they're scanning poetry, but most people when 
> speaking give dipthongs more time than a long vowel, so i think it 
> makes sense to count them as two syllables, particularly since there 
> are two sounds there. which is why william is three and beautiful is 
> four. Also, most people miss that there's an unstressed syllable in 
> the middle of "different" because it's extremely unstressed. However, 
> I think there's a noticable difference between the word "different" 
> and "diffrent" where the latter has an "fr" consonant cluster due to 
> the missing unstressed schwa in the middle of "different," and 
> likewise the whole stress pattern of the word shifts a touch. the same 
> thing goes for "Everyone", contrast with "Evryone" and you'll see 
> where the fourth syllable is.
>
> Then again, we may have significantly different dialects which might 
> be the cause of the difference here too. What part of the world did 
> you grow up in? 
Isn't it standard for inconsequential syllables to drop out of words as 
languages evolve?  If so, at some point, a two syllable pronunciation of 
a word like "different"--or "dialect," which I still usually pronounce 
as three syllables but sometimes as just two--will become "correct."

--Bob