Various randomosity

[icepixie]

Heh. I'm looking up the Child ballads in order to write this week's fiction assignment, which is to take some kind of legend/myth/etc. and put it in a different context or otherwise change it. I think I'm gonna do "The Three Ravens." Anyway, I should've realized this as an avid fan of Pamela Dean's Tam Lin (which is fabulous, and everyone should read it), but I just now noticed that the ballad of the same name involves a maid named Janet going to Carterhaugh. I'm sorry, this amuses me, especially since she gets pregnant by a guy there who's about to be sent to hell as a tithe from the fairy queen, whom Janet must save by grabbing him off a horse, holding on to him as he turns into various nasty beasties, and finally dunking him in a well when he turns to fire.

I'm a fan and an English major. Bad combination.

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Was attempting to scan our English translation of Goethe's Faust the other day, and was doing all right, until I ran into the word "fire." How many syllables does that have? 'Cause when I say it, it has two distinct syllables, making it sound like "fie-yer"--which of course didn't work for the meter. And this is why scansion is evil, 'cause I pronounce things differently, dangit. (Which doesn't really explain why I was doing this voluntarily, I know...)

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Oh, and the Bujold icon is back, 'cause I missed it.

Comments

[icepixie]

See, there are a lot of words that are technically one syllable, but which I pronounce with this pitch change in the middle of the vowel that makes it not two syllables, but not one, either. Like "life" or "hill" are actually "lie-uh-f" or "hi-uh-ll," except that the schwa is very much not accented, so you can barely hear it. (I need to record myself talking one of these days...) But "fire" is definitely two syllables, as are words like "wire," "mire," etc. I don't think I could actually pronounce those words with one syllable and no pitch change sort of thing.