O Pinions!

Chaos versus control

12 oktober 2020. I posted in WDC newsfeed:

Oh... fighting... with online grammar know-it-alls.

How many syllables are there in a string of four letter words... hmm.

Okay. As a poet, I hear what I read (a gift or curse...mostly a gift). But "grammar" is based on standard written language that would be used in an essay... not the way I speak or anyone speaks really. Not always useful for poetry! Which I will defend as an oral-aural art form. (I pronounce those two words the same.)

Case in point:

#1. Higher has 2 syllables. "I'm going to go higher." (7 syll.)
#2. Hire has one. "I'm going to go hire her. (7 syll.?)

In my speech (dialect) both have two. I pronounce the words exactly the same. And #2 therefore has one more syllable. That would be 7/8 in slow speech and 5/6 in rapid speech. Am I confusing 'beat' or 'length' with 'syllable'?

However, for me orange is 1 syllable not 2 and chocolate 2 not 3 unless I'm speaking slowly or in French (chocolate is 4 in Spanish). Although French intonation is over a phrase not a word.

Yet for me poem is 2 syllables not 1 like in some dialects.

It shouldn't matter, but there are syllable based poetry contests here and I'm tired (2 syllables) of explaining.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Interesting responses including the expected grammarian response of 'this is where to go'. Which is what I was ranting against. So I wrote:

Thanx everyone... my problem was some of the online places you-all mentioned. They are the 'gatekeepers' of standardized English and an anathema for those of us who do not believe that poetic language need be standardized, or at least not as rigid as taught in grade school. As I've pointed out to English literature majors... "You study language. I make it!" I obviously trash Holy Ground when I say this.

Disclaimer: my major was Biology and I've taken graduate level course in Linguistics. The 'fight' between Linguistics and "English" is similar to "the ranchers and the farmers can be friends" argument in "Oklahoma". Chaos versus rules. Anthropology versus Mathmatics. Chefs versus cook-bookers. Pantsers versus outliners? The rule governed should work as copy-writers, proofreaders, legal and medical secretaries, work where being precise is needed and of great value. Poets may have goals other than being precise. (Even within forms.)

Let me put it another way. When I say painter do you think of the person who just finished painting your kitchen walls... or Vincent van Gogh? They are both painters and both valuable in their own way.

This is very academic (abstract and opaque to most) but may help me understand a southern English dialect as opposed to Glasgow.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095447018300226