Rhymes in English

Discussion in 'Questions about English' started by Alexx, Apr 16, 2009.

  1. Alexx

    Alexx Well-Known Member

    Hello, I just found in the internet this sentence:

    "No word rhymes with orange, purple, or silver."

    Could you try to find some rhymes and verify this?
     
  2. fabik317

    fabik317 Well-Known Member

    Define "to rhyme". While I'd consider for ex. "orange - storage" a perfectly valid rhyme, somebody else might say they're not close enough.
     
  3. McCracken

    McCracken Well-Known Member

    To me, a word that "rhymes" with another is one that sounds the same but is different e.g. pound/sound; crowd/allowed/aloud/cloud etc). The same, or similar spelling, does not necessarily make a rhyme in English (e.g. "cough/bough/through/though" are all pronounced differently - isn't English great :lol: ?)

    As for the examples given by Alexx:

    I have come across the word "chilver" (rhymes with silver) before now, which is a female lamb.

    I have heard people use a Scottish word "hirple" (rhymes with purple) and that means "to limp".

    I have never heard anyone use a real word that rhymes with orange. That is not to say that one does not exist :wink:
     
  4. scrimshaw

    scrimshaw Well-Known Member

    I think I would have to agree
    orange, purple, and silver seem to have no words that rhyme....certainly none that come to my mind.

    Something like these might be the closest you could get

    on the table, an orange,
    so alone, so forlorn

    I took from my quiver,
    an arrow, it was silver
     
  5. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    scavenge, hinge, singe

    How do you pronounce “challenge”? As /ˈtʃælɪndʒ/ or as /ˈtʃæləndʒ/?

    carpal, Miss Marple

    But I would be satisfied even with:

    apple, sample, example, maple


    revolver? culver?
     
  6. jrjaks

    jrjaks Member

    Roger Miller tried in his song "Dang Me":

    Roses are red and violets are purple
    Sugar is sweet and so is maple syruple
    I was the seventh out of seven sons
    My pappy was a pistol
    I'm a son of a gun.

    But I don't think that qualifies either :D
     
  7. jen

    jen Well-Known Member

  8. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    they did this on QI (tv show)..

    Curple rhymes with purple.. It's a part of the equipment you need for horse riding... but the others I can't confirm or deny by myself!

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/richard_winskill/213065994


    And to simply cheat and check wikipedia:


    silver /ˈ-ɪlvɚ/, rhymes with chilver, a female lamb, and the given name Wilver.

    orange /ˈ-ɒrɨndʒ/, rhymes with Blorenge, a hill in Wales, and Gorringe, a family name, and for some people sporange

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_En ... out_rhymes


    Hee hee, you must have some seriously interesting pronunciation of those words.
     
  9. scrimshaw

    scrimshaw Well-Known Member

    Now I did mention there that those were the best I could think of, :D , since there are really very few alternatives.

    The orange...forlorn....was to try to capture the similar 'orn' sounds in the words.

    quiver...silver...yea,,very questionable


    and for purple, people have to distort words, or try to create a new word.

    I guess those are three words the poets try to avoid.
     
  10. GlennInFlorida

    GlennInFlorida Well-Known Member

    part of the problem with rhymes is accents..

    a lot of people around here pronounce orange sort of like arnč, others pronounce it like arenč or orenč (sort of Czech spelling but the č is not quite right - has more of an English j or jah sound) so finding a rhyme depends on how you say the word in the first place :?
     
  11. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    Yes but usually if you pronounce one dipthong or vowel sound in a certain way this is pretty constant, so the words that rhyme are the same, so for example cow and brow rhyme for me just as much as they do for someone with an english accent, but my cat and his mat don't rhyme.

    There are a few exceptions, for example if your accent includes a syllabic or rolled R it will sound very different to the english awwww sound they make..
     
  12. bibax

    bibax Well-Known Member

    Deleted.
     
  13. bibax

    bibax Well-Known Member

    For my Czech ears orange rhymes with finch.

    On a tree there is a hungry yellow finch
    all he needs is a wild sweet orange.
    :?

    The orange finch sounds like orinč finč.

    I am not able to distinguish the final voiced j (dž) from its voiceless counterpart ch (č), not to say to pronounce it correctly. When I am trying to pronounce e.g. hedge correctly, the result is always hedger (a schwa at the end).
     
  14. scrimshaw

    scrimshaw Well-Known Member

    Čtyři Koruny....cat and mat rhyme perfectly :D So maybe what Glenn said makes sense. It's according to how we pronounce things

    Sorry Bibax......orange and finch do not rhyme

    To me...when I say and here the word orange, the orn sound is emphasized and the dž sound at the end just trails off, heard but not emphasized.
    So the dž sound is not what makes the rhyme.
    I think in czech phonetics it would be pronounced ORNdž.
     
  15. bibax

    bibax Well-Known Member

    4 Kč has meant that (American) cat and (British) mat don't rhyme. This means that (American) cat and (British) cat don't rhyme as well. Consequence: an American singer and a British singer cannot sing a duet. :shock:

    We learned the British (or BBC) variant of the English pronunciation.

    Without ANY wovel between R and N the orange would be pronounced o:ndž in the British pronunciation, like ornament is pronounced o:n@m@nt (without any R !!).

    But there IS a wovel between R and N.

    Our Czech dictionaries say:

    orange orindž (ends in -indž)
    finch finč (ends in -inč)

    The only difference is the voiceness (dž vs. č). But in the expression orange finch I am not able to distinguish dž from č.

    Now I have tried slovnik.seznam.cz :

    orange is pronouced or@ndž, but oranges is (are) pronounced orindžiz.

    Can you confirm this?

    N.B.
    o: = long o (like in wall); @ = schwa/mixed vowel; = j (like in job); č = ch (like in chip); the stress is always on the first syllable;
     
  16. scrimshaw

    scrimshaw Well-Known Member

    Maybe this will help....even though it looks like it could be broken into syllables...it is not
    some might say or-inge
    but it mostly pronounced altogether with no stops or pauses
    Remember this....the A is silent...not pronounced.

    ORNdž...the dž sound is exactly the same as first (or last ge) in the name
    George

    That brings to mind this
    try saying 'Blow the horn George'

    and then eliminate the stop between orn and G

    american cat and english cat don't rhyme
    There is a saying, the only thing that separates us (Great Britain and the U.S.) is our common language.

    In america we use a short 'a' in cat

    Are you familiar with this? In our english
    Each vowel has two distinct sounds....a long....and a short
    fat, cat, slap, mat, rat.....short
    as opposed to
    fate, gate, mate, late....long
     
  17. McCracken

    McCracken Well-Known Member

    You quite rightly explained that GB and the US are separated by a common language and your point here proves it too :) .

    In England the A is not silent at all, albeit not pronounced as A. Your "oringe" above would sound close to an English person, as would "orenge", both with 2 clear syllables. "Ornge" would definitely be southern USA to most ears on this side of the pond :wink: .
     
  18. bibax

    bibax Well-Known Member

    You have a different terminology.

    More precisely:

    rod, dot, cock....short (single wovel)
    small, wall, call...long (single wovel)
    rode, dote, coke...considered long, but in fact it is a DIPHTHONG !

    Well, let us forget the terminology.

    Thus Mr. McCracken resolved the problem:
    orange pronounced oringe or orenge in Brittania.

    We learned to pronounce oringe in Czechoslovakia. It is most common here.
     
  19. scrimshaw

    scrimshaw Well-Known Member

    Well, I am a southerner :D
    There are regional variations.
    I say y'all, too. 8)
     
  20. McCracken

    McCracken Well-Known Member

    :lol: :lol:

    Every couple of years or so I meet up with friends from Georgia and Florida and afterwards it takes me about a week to stop sayin "y'all" :wink:
     

Share This Page