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by igravious 1189 days ago
> The author doesn't seem to understand rhyming too well (cactus practice is a weak rhyme at best)

cactus / practice ?

they rhyme to my mind

skeleton / gelatin ?

also rhyme to my ears

protein / poutine

also rhyme enough to be considered to rhyme

You appear to be operating under the impression that the every syllable of a rhyming couplet has to rhyme exactly for it to be considered a rhyme. This is an incorrect assumption. In fact, the above rhymes are arguably more pleasing because they are inexact rhymes rather than being exact forced rhymes.

In your world the only actual rhymes would be

bold / cold / gold

and

double / trouble / bubble

types of rhymes but the world considers the following to be perfectly acceptable

sent to meet her / centimetre

and so on

2 comments

What most people consider a rhyme is that the vowel and coda of the last syllable match (of course we don't mostly reach for the technical definition).

I guess the examples there might be accent dependent. Protein/poutine is the only one of those first examples that really rhymes to me; skeleton/gelatin and cactus/practice both have different vowels. Maybe different for you though.

> What most people consider a rhyme is that the vowel and coda of the last syllable match

??? Oh yeah, says who?

protein / poutine

p[]oh teen / poo teen => both start with a p, then there's an oh or oo (which are similar) and both end the same way – disyllabic rhyme

cactus / practice ?

[]ah ck təss / []ah ck tiss => ignoring the first consonant (cluster) which anchors the rhyme and pronouncing the u as a schwa (which it is), the ck's are the same and təss and tiss are totes similar – disyllabic rhyme

skeleton / gelatin ?

trisyllabic goodness – again, the way we pronounce the on in first word is not like the on in frond but like the ən in motion (UHn) and the way we pronounce the at in the second word is not like the at in bat or cat but like the ət in … hmm, none spring to mind but it's an UHt sound here if you listen to it – sgɛ́lɪtən or ˈskelɪtən – ˈʤelətɪn – so you've k vying with g (both hard), e with e, l with l, ɪ with ə (close sounding!), t with t, ə with ɪ (close sounding!), n with n

===

listen with your ears, not with your eyes

Protein and poutine do not rhyme if you pronounce poutine the proper way in Canadian French.

And you are right of course that gelatin and practice have the short "ee" sound at the end whereas skeleton and and cactus have the "uh" sound.

> Protein and poutine do not rhyme if you pronounce poutine the proper way in Canadian French.

I looked it up, and sure, it sounds about the same in Canadian French as someone saying Vladimir Putin[1]. But I've never heard anyone say it that way myself, and in neutral French (according to the linked video, at least), it's pronounced 'pooh-teen', which sounds exactly like protein (I don't know if you pronounce protein different, but for me it's 'pro-teen').

[1]: https://youtu.be/yyis4TgmXYg

There's a funny restaurant called Vladimir Poutine in Montréal lol:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/vb7qwb/inside-vladimir-pouti...

> You appear to be operating under the impression that the every syllable of a rhyming couplet has to rhyme exactly for it to be considered a rhyme

I'm not operating under that impression, but the author is [1].

To me, the final "sounds" should match - not every syllable, an end rhyme according to wiki [0]. Specifically I would consider a rhyme to require matching sounds "at least from last vowel to end", but I don't think of rhymes first from the strict definition. Perhaps it's an accent thing but "-us" in cactus is not the same sound as "-ice" in practice. If a child made a poem with these sounds I would tell them "good job, it's a rhyme", and perhaps for the purpose of a silly word game too. But I would not use it as a passing case for a test of any sort like the author.

What's more pleasing is irrelevant, what is relevant is if its a true rhyme.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/end_rhyme#English

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=35258385&goto=item%3Fi...

> Perhaps it's an accent thing but "-us" in cactus is not the same sound as "-ice" in practice.

Indeed, it's an accent thing. In America at least, pronouncing "cactus" with an "is" or an "us" sound are both valid.

I think that given that the author provided a working definition, and your provided failure example is actually passing that definition (just only for the author's dialect), and given that you are now essentially trying to change the subject to "my definition of rhyme is the correct one"; well, you're just being...pedantic? argumentative? I'm not sure.