scansion

[billy]

[abu nuwas]

For what it is worth, I think there are some different issues being confused here. Accent and pronunciation, which vary from country to country,and within in countries, are separate from stress and scansion, although in many cases differing speech will also entail differing stress, and thus put a spanner in the scanning works. Thus, dropping your 'h's, would not, of itself, affect the way you might recite something, in terms of stressed, and non-stressed syllables. On the other hand, the widespread habit in the north of England, of almost extinguishing 'the' before a noun does affect things --eg 'Where is the pub?' may become something like 'Where's t'pub?'

I suspect that a computer program could be devised to do whatever humans do. Yet there is a difference again, between a program which scans anything by anyone in the world, and one which scans your own speech. You would, however, need to have an idea of what you yourself regarded as 'correct' scansion --- and that might be a little stumbling-block.

As an aside, it frequently is the case that foreigners, who otherwise speak excellent English, find it hard to pick up this stress business at all, as in other languages it does not play the part it does in English. Alternatively, their native language is heavily accented, and this carries over to the pronunciation of English, and naturally causes them to be as mystified as English people are when they use stress in languages where there is none, or, more accurately, it happens in a much different fashion -- French!

[Leanne]

Basically, there are a lot of very nerdy folk closeted in their mothers' basements dreaming of where to put their ictus -- but no matter what they try to tell you, scansion is NOT an exact science. There are about twelve main systems, all different, and myriad others that are occasionally accepted, occasionally discredited, essentially nitpickery. That's why I try not to get into scansion when teaching meter and make it as basic as possible, using the tried and true method of "da-DUM for iamb, DUM-da for trochee"

Over the years, I've learned to "blank" my accent as much as possible while writing to make sure that my pronunciation is going to match up with pretty much anyone's (well, anyone who speaks proper like). If I'm eliding (squishing together) two syllables, I'll make it clear in the way it's written, otherwise everything is pronounced fully.

For the time being, count feet. Don't worry about syllables. You count feet by the number of strong stresses, or the number of times you'll tap on the desk when you're reading aloud, or metronome ticks, or whatever works for you.

[billy]

i understand all that. but its the feet i'm struggling with. i can't tell that in yellow yel is the unstressed foot or vice versa.
thanks for the replies though, i'll stick with it and see where i get to.

[Todd]

One trick I'm trying is I've been told to rest your thumb on your neck right below your chin as you speak the stressed syllable your neck will press against your thumb. We'll let Leanne tell us if it works--gotta start somewhere.

[billy]

yeah i read that one too, it didn't work for me, all feet sound and feel the same, i have a suspicion that some of us have something similar to tone deafness except instead we're foot deaf and blind :hysterical (i'm being serious btw )
like music, some have it and some don't, i'm a don't i think.

[Leanne]

One trick I'm trying is I've been told to rest your thumb on your neck right below your chin as you speak the stressed syllable your neck will press against your thumb. We'll let Leanne tell us if it works--gotta start somewhere.

I hadn't heard that before... I just tried it and it kind of works, but I don't know that I'd recommend it as a technique, it makes you look a bit of a knob

Speech has a rhythm, it rises and falls. The rises are what we refer to as stressed syllables, and we tend to draw them out a tiny bit longer than the unstressed falls. There are schools of scansion that insist you can break every sentence into units of meter and I guess technically they're right, but it seems a waste of time to me and those guys really need to get a life. A word can have different metric patterns depending on the words around it, and a line can have different meter depending on the lines preceding and following, because we read poetry in a different rhythm to our normal speech. If you were to just "speak" a sonnet, it would sound ridiculous.

It IS a practise thing. You WILL get it. Just as there's no actual illness called tone deafness, I assure you that your feet will one day be less stinky.

[billy]

tone deafness isn't an illness, more an affliction
i just did a post over at Todds practice piece, and asked a question.
the question being,

if "i could could i" were two feet of of a length of poetry, are they iambic?

[Leanne]

Yes and no.

The stress on the word "could" would shift with emphasis, but if that's a question (or a challenge) then I would probably say it "i COULD, COULD i?"
(as in, "Oh, I could, could I? Well thanks very much, wanker.") That emphasis would make it an iamb + trochee combination. If you said "i COULD, could I" then you'd have two iambs.

[billy]

okay, i think i'm getting the hang of it (i never typed my WTF at the beginning of the sentence )
thanks leane, it really is getting a little clearer.

[abu nuwas]

Perhaps were you to try forcing words into unnatural straight-jackets, it would help? For example, :
the MUCKy PIG is de DA de DA (iambic) See how silly it is as as troche, DA de DA de : THE m'ckEE pig. I shall leave it to Leanne to make an even more ludicrous anapaest or such from this little mine.

[billy]

i probably was. i think what's happening is; i think a syl is the stressed syl and consciously or subconsciously force it to be so.

it's really easy to see it work in 'the mucky pig' but not so easy in some lines of a sonnet etc.

thanks for the help, i'll have a try at a couple of forms in the next couple of days.

[Leanne]

One of the best ways to get a handle on meter without bothering too much about syllables is writing limericks.

In a limerick, it's all about the feet. Lovely gallopy triple feet, anapaests or dactyls, doesn't matter which as long as there are 3 feet in the first and second lines, 2 in the third and fourth and back to 3 again on the fifth. Being completely silly and not worrying about perfection often leads to perfection anyway, or as close as little poems about rude bits will ever get.

[billy]

as i kid i could knock out a limerick in a minute, now it takes me twenty or thirty.
it was weird.

[Leanne]

as i kid i could knock out a limerick in a minute, now it takes me twenty or thirty.

I have just had to bite my tongue, remembering we're not in the sewer

[billy]

as long as it's on topic it's okay