Rhymes talk:English

Rhymes?
Where are the rhymes? This list is no list!!!!

miscelanea
This index is incomplete. Please add more links.

Note that we need to agree on a phonetic order. For example, would short 'a' (/æ/) come before or after long 'a' (/eI/)? -- Paul G 09:24, 6 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I think they should be sorted in their Unicode collation order (there's a standard, may as well use it).


 * Thus, for the IPA characters used in English, the sort order would be:


 * a
 * æ
 * ɑ
 * ɒ
 * b
 * d
 * ð
 * e
 * ə
 * ɛ
 * ɚ
 * ɜ
 * ɝ
 * f
 * ɡ (I notice we havnt been picky and are using 'g' for this?)
 * h
 * i
 * ɪ
 * j
 * k
 * l
 * m
 * n
 * ŋ
 * o
 * ɔ
 * p
 * r
 * s
 * ʃ
 * t
 * θ (not official: unicode hasnt a latin char for it)
 * u
 * ʊ
 * v
 * ʌ
 * w
 * z
 * ʒ


 * ...which basically groups characters by visual similarity, derived characters after underived characters, which is probably easier than trying to figure out why "eɪ" is listed before "æ" when looking things up in the list. —Muke Tever 17:04, 23 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for this, Muke. The principle I have been working on for ordering is long vowel, short vowel, others spelled using the vowel.  Hence /eI/, /æ/, then /ɑː/ and any others.  For consonants, I have broadly attempted to follow the commonest spelling in English; hence ð, frequently spelled "the", as in "breathe", comes after θ, frequently spelled "th".  I'm not sure I like the Unicode ordering.  It might be a standard ordering for Unicode, but it makes little sense phonetically.  For example, ʌ follows v, presumably only because it a similar shape, whereas phonetically it belongs with u and ʊ.


 * In any case, I intend to reformat this page at some point in the form of a table linking to a page for each vowel, in order to cut down on the number of links on this page and to make it easier to understand. The format I am planning to use is based on the commonest spelling of the vowels, and will look something like this:


 * a /eɪ/ (long a, as in "mate") | /æ/ (short a, as in "mat") | [etc]
 * e [etc]
 * i
 * o
 * u


 * I hadn't noticed the /ɡ/ for g but come to think of it, I think this is the symbol to use. I'll make appropriate changes there.


 * I've changed g to /ɡ/ and updated the few "what links here" pages. &mdash; Paul G 16:43, 24 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your observations. &mdash; Paul G 09:29, 24 May 2004 (UTC)


 * Note that the sort order isn't something particularly idiosyncratic to Unicode (which is only trying to generate a generalized sort order for Latin characters)... IPA-inspired orthographies also sort characters along similar principles, e.g. Practical Orthography of African Languages which states:


 * The following is recommended as the alphabetical order of the principal letters:
 * a b ɓ c d ɖ e ɛ ə f ƒ g ɣ h x i j k l m n ŋ o ɔ p r s ʃ t u v ʋ w y z ʒ ʼ
 * Nasal vowels should follow ordinary vowels, and central vowels should follow nasal vowels, thus: o õ ö. Other new letters should follow those from which they are derived: thus ɖ should follow d, and ʂ should follow s. If special letters are introduced to represent clicks, it is suggested that they be placed at the end of the alphabet.


 * (The anomaly in that case is "x" after "h", presumably based on its function as [x] or [χ].)  I do think that ʌ isn't entirely confusing to place after v for several reasons: sort based on letter shape is mnemonic ("it looks like a v, maybe it's under v"); the X-SAMPA for the character is /V/ anyway; and since this is a rhyme index, -ʌ (initial in the rhyme, its only possible placement in English, unless you believe in WEAE) doesn't have a -v to contrast with, so it won't "look" sorted after v anyway.


 * The table, however, seems like a good idea also. —Muke Tever 16:29, 24 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I've added the table and it makes things much neater. It also largely avoids the problem of ordering of vowel sounds, although the order under "Other" is fairly arbitrary.  The ordering of consonants in each link is more or less as given by Muke above, but closer to the most common spellings used in English - hence ð follows θ rather than coming after d. &mdash; Paul G 14:57, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

I added a link to (in this case) Rhymes:English:-eɪ from an entry I just made. I'm not about to add my new word to that page, though, since that's what bots are for. I'm assuming that some process will find "What links here" to this page. But, it may need a little help to count the number of sylables. If we could standardize on subheads, to say, for example Rhymes:English:-eɪ to indicate the two-sylable sublist. &mdash;Długosz

You can link to Rhymes:English:-eɪ (etc) as this is the standard that is being used. &mdash; Paul G 16:43, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

For some time now I've been using the special symbol /i/ for the final sound typically spelled "-y". In most English dialects this is a special case because it's intermediate between /I/ and /i:/. Some dialects may go to one extreme or the other but for me /I/ is totally impossible at the end of a word and /i:/ sounds right for "bee" but wrong for "flabby". The problem is that some dictionaries actually use /I/ and some use /i:/. Now some sources I've read (I think the Macquarie Dictionary was one) suggest using /i/ for this case and I highly recommend it. &mdash; Hippietrail 02:56, 14 May 2004 (UTC)


 * To my ear too, /i:/ is too long and /I/ is too RP. I agree that /i/ sounds about right and have made this change. &mdash; Paul G 16:43, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

What's the rhyme for Hypoallergenic ? I don't follow the "stressed" instructions. That would be /-ɛn-/, but I don't understand how to organize it when the stressed vowel isn't the last sylable.


 * Rhymes:English:-ɛnɪk would list hypoallergenic: everything after the stressed vowel goes in the rhyme. (For indexing it'd presumably be indexed somewhere under Rhymes:English:Stressed on /ɛ/.) —Muke Tever 21:51, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

Note to self: the rhymes indices could do with being tabulated, with an example for every entry rather than just the ones with non-alphabetical IPA symbols. &mdash; Paul G 14:57, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * This is under way. &mdash; Paul G 15:57, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The table for non-British English rhymes is a good idea, but I have deliberatedly separated rhotic and non-rhotic words already. The comment about words containing "r" therefore does not apply. I will remove it. &mdash; Paul G 09:19, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * What I meant was that, for example, in Rhymes:English:Stressed_on_/ɔː/ are words with (in American) two different vowels: the /o/ before /r/ and /(r)/, and the /ɑ/ elsewhere—it doesn't look like they belong on the same index page.  I see I worded it poorly: I didn't mean the individual rhymes pages like Rhymes:English:-ɛəri, just the indexes.   (That was what prompted me to create the American index in the first place, seeing "paw" and "pore" labeling the same index.)
 * The intent of the first note was... imagining a hypothetical American reader looking up a word stressed on the same vowel as "pore" (phonemic /o/, phonetic [ɔ])— and being sent to Rhymes:English:Stressed_on_/ɔː/ whose first page of example words begin with the same vowel as "law" (/ɑ/ [ɑ])—know that they really are on the right page. I don't know if there's a better concise way of putting that.  (As a last resort there's always making e.g. Rhymes:American:Stressed on /ɑ/ and linking to that instead...)  —Muke Tever 00:54, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Use categories for rhymes?
I was thinking it might make things easier to edit if we used a template for rhymes, which would automatically put the relevant words in a category, instead of having to modify both the word's page and the rhymes page. So, for rate, you could write something like. The actual template could be put in the same place as the existing links, and would include an ordinary wikilink (say Categories:Rhymes -eɪt to the category as well as putting the article in there. The only problem I can think of is that separating links by number of syllables would be trickier, but we could probably work around that with sub-cats. Any thoughts? J.K. 23:41, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Using categories seems like the obvious approach. I'm surprised the project was started without any categories at all! I do think there's a minor advantage to having an actual page dedicated to each category... but that content could easily be moved to the category page itself, and updated every so often by a human editor to make sure the text on the category page matches the category entries. Most importantly, using the existing category/subcategory infrastructure would make it a lot easier to find the appropriate categorization. Category:Rhymes:English would contain subcats Rhymes:English:-ændi, Rhymes:English:-undi, and so on. (By the way, the recent switch to lower case changed all these page titles. Should they be changed back? I think so.) --Quuxplusone 21:53, 10 July 2005 (UTC)


 * For future readers, see also:
 * Grease_pit/2013/October
 * Beer_parlour/2013/December
 * Beer_parlour/2021/August
 * - excarnateSojourner (talk|contrib) 23:13, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

this is [(AmE:) pretty] [(BrE:) all quite] fascinating
I did not know that wikt was in the regional accent documentation business. so, it seems like there are more british "wiktionarians" than american ones? is that correct? cuz then I would be very accepting of RP documentation being the standard pronunciation-representation system at least. but if there is a substantive contingent of americans in the community, I think our pronunciations and our wisdom regarding our own speech patterns ought to be a part of the process. whew! I'll be back around in the next little while to see how it all goes. thanks, Ling  Lang  Lung  19:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

horse and hoarse
Shouldn't we keep and  distinct? The distinction may be dead in RP, but internationally it's far from dead. And some of the words aren't so obvious: afford, apportion, borne, deport, divorce, force, ford, forge, fort, forth, horde, porcelain, porch, pork, port, report, sport, sword, sworn, torn, worn. From these examples, it may seem that many of these start with labial letters /b f p v w/, or are /orn/ conjugations of irregular verbs, or are words ending with /e/, and largely this is the case. But actually is in abort, born, cyborg, for, fork, form, porn, spork. Notice especially that born and borne don't rhyme, and neither do fork and pork. - Gilgamesh 22:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Rhymes for suffixes?
See also this discussion on whether suffixes should have rhymes. - excarnateSojourner (talk|contrib) 03:07, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Standardizing the use of ties over affricates
In Wiktionary the j sound in just is transcribed IPA as either (jingle, budge, nudge) or  (just, judge, jug), seemingly at random. Similarly (chuck) and  (church) are both used. In the case of rhymes in particular it is important that we standardize on the inclusion or omission of ties to avoid splitting groups of rhymes across multiple rhyme categories and pages.

I downloaded a database dump current as of 2021-12-20 and using Python I think I have managed to accurately count the number of rhyme category names containing at least one instance of each form. It seems that the pseuodostandard has been to omit the tie, as I counted 1,671 categories using, and only 28 using. Similarly I counted 1,128 instances of and 7 of. I take this as sufficient to justify removing ties from existing rhymes.

- excarnateSojourner (talk|contrib) 02:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Final, unstressed Beer Parlour discussion
Until now #Guide to adding new rhymes has mentioned a Beer Parlour discussion on whether to use, , or when a word ends with an unstressed ee sound, as in happy. I have searched for this as thoroughly as I know how (in the BP archives) and have not found any real discussion on the matter. It may refer to: Neither of these gives much rationale for any particular position, so I'm going to remove the mention of the discussion. - excarnateSojourner (talk | contrib) 01:03, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Beer_parlour/2005/April-June, where a user alludes to a previous BP discussion on the issue.
 * Beer_parlour/2004/October-December, where a user recommends the use of.

'Rhymes organised by non-rhotic British English pronunciation'
'The rhymes are therefore organised by standard UK pronunciation alone (based on Received Pronunciation: see the table below). Non-rhotic British English has been chosen because it has fewer phonological mergers than some other varieties of English, such as American English, making it more likely that the rhymes on any given page are rhymes for most English speakers.'

First, I don't see how this is true, given that you have rhyme pages such as https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Rhymes:English/ɑː(ɹ)m. This is not a 'British non-rhotic pronunciation', it's a compromise transcription between non-rhotic and rhotic pronunciation. For speakers of non-rhotic British English, smarm rhymes with palm, but the rhymes of these two words have separate entries here. Thus, the organisation actually reflects a distinction found only in rhotic accents - in other words, it's organised by a rhotic accent, not by a 'British non-rhotic pronunciation'. If you are going to be using an interdialectal compromise transcription, which is what /ɑː(ɹ)m/ de facto is, you might as well use EnPR (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_pronunciation). (Or, worse, Wikipedia's diaphonemic IPA, which looks as if it describes the pronunciation of an actually existing dialect when it really doesn't.)

Second, I think that almost by definition a non-rhotic English dialect is bound to have more phonological mergers than most rhotic dialects do - simply due to, well, the 'merger' between presence and absence of the rhotic, as we also see in the case smarm - palm. This is especially true when we take into account intrusive R, which is basically standard in RP nowadays (thus saw = sore). Sure, GA and other dialects have many mergers of their own, which makes most or all of them unsuitable, too, so arguably an organisation based on an interdialectal transcription would be more appropriate than one based on any single dialect. 87.126.21.225 16:00, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Any lower limit (other than 2) for number of rhymes

 * Hi all, forgive this question if it is already answered elsewhere; I did not find the answer while searching for it today.
 * Is there any lower limit (obviously N must equal at least 2) for number of rhymes on one of these Rhymes pages?
 * My recommendation is that 2 ought to be the lower limit, not any higher value. Rationale: Users can indeed get some value out of pages that only have 2 items.
 * — Quercus solaris (talk) 15:38, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

American rhymes table
In the table it says "pep /ɛ/ from /ɛ/" I think this should be changed to "pep /ɛ/" since the additional "from /ɛ/" is unnecessary. 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:DC64:DEE4:B90D:2BC5 18:05, 11 February 2024 (UTC)


 * @Surjection Sorry for any inconvenience but it doesn’t seem like any of the previous comments were ever acknowledged and you were the one who protected this page. Would you mind carrying out the edit mentioned above, if you do agree that it should be changed? 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:6CD9:69F6:F9CA:3E5D 19:04, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Usually the best way to propose changes like this is in a centralized forum; I'd try WT:TEA or WT:INFO. I do not know enough about English phonology to feel confident in making any change myself. &mdash; S URJECTION / T / C / L / 19:08, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Will do. Thank you for replying. 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:6CD9:69F6:F9CA:3E5D 19:12, 12 February 2024 (UTC)