[Jerome Betts]

Susan, rhymes with mile, guile, while and so on. COD gives the one-syllable pronunciation. However, I must say, muttering it over to myself, I think a more relaxed or informal pronunciaton in BE could well be ' i-ull'.

[Roger Slater]

It's like aren't, hour, fire, etc., in that it's "properly" a single syllable but many of us say it as two. The reverse of "poem," which is properly two syllables but many of us say as one.

[Jayne Osborn]

There's an old joke about what brides allegedly say:
"Aisle altar hymn!"

'Aisle' is normally kind of elided into one syllable, Susan, and so is 'child'. There was a debate on another thread about 'child'; some of us think it's exaggerating the word to pronounce it chi-uld. I believe you say 'toward' as one syllable, whereas it's definitely two to us!

[Terese Coe]

Originally Posted by Ann Drysdale

And I believe that Hecht also required as many foreign languages as possible to appear in the piece, thereby paying due reverence to the supremacy of macaronic verse. He played a blinder - and By Goliard, he won! Double Dactyl indeed!


Jiggery Pokery!
Hechtus Antonius
Made a ridiculous
Fistful of rules

Raising two fingers to
Metrical specialists -
Ultraconventional
Farcical fools!

And Hey! That's us, folks! The words Petard and Hoist come to mind...

That's a beauty, Ann!

[Terese Coe]

Originally Posted by Susan d.S.

Here is one from the master, Hecht:

Higgeldy-piggeldy
Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe
Softly complained to the
Heavenly host,

"Buckminster Fuller says
Dodecahedronals
Carry stress better than
Lintel and post"

And from Hollander:

Higgeldy-piggeldy
Tristram of Lyonesse
Gave up the ghost to la
Chanson des Anges,

Cheating, at once, of his
Corporeality
Ysolt Mains-blanches; also
Ysolt, Blancmange*

i.e. the other Ysolt

Hmm. Isn't "Chanson" an iamb in French? Great S2 from Hollander though!

Thanks for these, Susan.

And come to think of it, "Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe" has an accent on "Mies," which apparently was also his original surname. Mies should have a stronger stress than Van. How comforting that the original DD'ers were not above tweaking the pronunciation of "DD" names to suit L2.

Since both Hecht and Hollander were/are Americans, I can't blame it on Brit pronunciation this time around.

But there's always a next time, eh, John, Jayne, Ann, and the rest? LOL. At least it gives us Yanks an out when we lose a Brit comp...

[Susan d.S.]

Terese, the more I look at published examples, the more tweaking I see...

Jerome, Jayne, thanks. The differences in spoken inflection are vast, aren't they? And the elisions. Ask any American about their first attempt to pronounce "Worcestershire Sauce."

[Jayne Osborn]

Nimberly-skimberly
Christopher Carroll' O
puts pen to paper and
wins oftentimes.

No matter whether it's
oldiespecstaggery
- no matter what mag he
writes splendid rhymes.

[Jayne Osborn]

Ask any American about their first attempt to pronounce "Worcestershire Sauce."

It's come up before, Susan, but I delight in re-telling it: the American who asked someone the way to 'Looga-Burooga' (Loughborough), which is pronounced Luff-Burra

[Susan d.S.]

Haha! Jayne, that's wonderful. A bit of Africa!

Here is my sop to Hecht's penchant for putting in foreign phrases:

Slevenly-sleevily
Bernard-Henri Levy
Dons blazers, blue jeans and
Spells out elan.

Sartorial, ever
Uncategorical,
Pour lui et pour nous, and*
Clothes make the man.

(alternative L5-7: "Imperative, never/Uncategorical/Kant cannot cut it, so", referring to Levy being taken in by a fraudulent book on Kant last year.)

[Chris O'Carroll]

Jayne, you're too kind. I'm blushing. I have occasionally pointed to my name as an example of one (like "George H.W. Bush") that has six syllables but not two dactyls. You seem to have solved that problem.

I predict an overflowing inbox at the New Statesman for this comp. Naturally, I hope that one or more of my entries will hit the target, but I'm seeing some formidable contenders here.