Bonus 114: How poetry reveals the structure of languages

lingthusiasm:Bonus 114: How poetry reveals the structure of languages | LingthusiasmRoses are redViolets are blueEnglish poems are stress-basedThis is not a haikuIn this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about how the structure of a language influences what forms of poetry are possible in the language. We talk about why so much English poetry depends on not putting the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle, how languages that don’t have word-level stress like French write poetry based on syllable counts instead, how English speakers write haiku in a way that’s actually subtly shifted for the constraints of the language (because Japanese doesn’t have syllables, they have morae), and how signed languages like ASL use handshape repetition for poetry. (Check out the links to some ASL and BSL poem performances below, they’re well worth watching!) We also talk about how the form of poetry has evolved several times as it moves back and forth between spoken and written formats,…