01-25-2015, 10:33 PM
Cambridge and Oxford are going like this:
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dicti...glish/fuss fʌs
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dicti...ish/abacus ˈæb·ə·kəs
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.co...ish/fuss_2 fʌs
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.co...ish/abacus ˈæbəkəs
Fuss has a, er, higher sounding uh than abacus right there (not a linguist, so I can't really say what the term is for that. But it's still easy to learn). They're not that different, but they're still different. Note that the distinction, at least according to Oxford, still persists in American English. And, well, no, I'm not British, nor have I even actually met anyone from the Commonwealth, but I'm not American either.
Anyway, this, I concede, is a pretty pedantic point, but it really is irksome to have just that little fault with the rhyme, if, at least, a perfect rhyme is what this is going for. I really do suggest changing that if you wanna go all the way, since, whether the distinction truly exists or not, a lot of people are inevitably going to be bothered by this.
And a bit of a tangent: Shakespeare's also pretty bothersome whenever he's going for rhymes, but that's because his mode of pronunciation back then was very different from how he pronounces words now. Found out about how they roughly pronounced stuff through this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dicti...glish/fuss fʌs
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dicti...ish/abacus ˈæb·ə·kəs
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.co...ish/fuss_2 fʌs
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.co...ish/abacus ˈæbəkəs
Fuss has a, er, higher sounding uh than abacus right there (not a linguist, so I can't really say what the term is for that. But it's still easy to learn). They're not that different, but they're still different. Note that the distinction, at least according to Oxford, still persists in American English. And, well, no, I'm not British, nor have I even actually met anyone from the Commonwealth, but I'm not American either.
Anyway, this, I concede, is a pretty pedantic point, but it really is irksome to have just that little fault with the rhyme, if, at least, a perfect rhyme is what this is going for. I really do suggest changing that if you wanna go all the way, since, whether the distinction truly exists or not, a lot of people are inevitably going to be bothered by this.
And a bit of a tangent: Shakespeare's also pretty bothersome whenever he's going for rhymes, but that's because his mode of pronunciation back then was very different from how he pronounces words now. Found out about how they roughly pronounced stuff through this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s