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nf7mate
11-Jun-09, 09:53
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 Language, poetry, and music |
nf7mate
11-Jun-09, 10:05
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Opera and the Italian language
The Italian language seems to have been made for opera. It is super rich in powerful vowels. In fact, the consonants seem to just be placeholders to get you to the next vowel. Consider the name of the language as spoken in its native tongue. "eh-tal-ee-ah-no" It begs to be sung. You can stretch out any one of those sylables in song, or pronounce any one sylable mutliple times. Pick a tune, any tune, and see how easy it is to sing the word "Italiano" to that tune.
Compare that with German. Consonants everywhere. This is a language that is not conducive to the opera at all. It seems to be much more difficult to write an opera in German than in Italian. And yet we have Wagner.
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An Englishman, a Frenchman and a German in a garden
The Englishman first observes - "ahh, a Butterfly, and how perfectly the English language describes in one word the delicate fluttering flight of this wonder of nature"
Not to be outdone, the Frenchman replies, "ahh, but how perfectly ze French language conjures ze beauty and poetry of le Papillon. C'est poetique, non?
To which the German answers - "Und vat is wrong viz SCHMETTERLING?
)
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German and Poetry
It seems that the German language is very well suited with poetry.
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English
For poetry- maybe not the musical vowel sounds of the latin languages, but certainly for depth of meaning.
I think the language is more stretchy than many others- more nuances, more ambiguity
I could be wrong, but I'll hazard that there are more ambiguous and interchangeable words than any other language.
In addition to which a whole host of words which look completely different from the way they sound.
This has to lead to plurality of meaning and proliferation of imagery. which I would argue is the core of great poetry.
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nf7mate
03-Jul-09, 12:44
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Ancient Greek sentance structure
Ancient Greek gives writers the ability to manipulate sentances in many ways. Subjects, verbs, objects, and indirect objects don't have any particular order. This can make for an interesting literary device which is lost in translation to most other languages. For example, the author may chose to place a word first or last in a sentance for special emphasis but when translated it must fall in a place in the sentance.
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