Selena, just to reassure you, most of these are perfectly fine from a grammatical point of view, only a few sound non-native! The ones I would class as non-native grammar are:
* Pragmatic Sanction goes not far
* Let’s see how they further fare! (I actually spent the weekend Anglo-picking the Fredersdorf letter translations for publication, and had to remove a lot of "further"s--we just don't use it in quite so many contexts in English. :) )
* Court flees soon to Magdeburg
* France in debts
The rest are just phonetically complex or metrically misaligned.
I mean, this isn't actually giving me a ton of difficulty
This is the one with an audible waver that I requested be spliced in if you decide not to re-record! But maybe if the song is overall easier *and* you concentrate more (as noted, you concentrated more on mine, based on my feedback on your Selena recording), it'll be fine?
France now has a Regency, Spain’s King is a Frog – lots of consonants I think esp. Spain's King
Is "Spanish king a frog" any easier? A lot of the difficulty you're attributing to "lots of consonants" I suspect is adjacent stressed syllables, or at least exacerbated by it. The diphthong in "Spain" is probably also making it harder: you have to move your tongue into two different positions, one of them pretty far from a neutral position.
ETA: Gah, I just realized on reread that the parallelism makes omitting the verb sound like the Spanish king *has* a frog. We'll have to think about this some more.
Franklin prints, lots of quips – lots of consonants here too
"Franklin prints, full of quips"? Eases up on the consonants a tiny bit and creates some alliteration. "Prints" is still hard, though: I'm contemplating that one. It's historically significant, so I want to keep the meaning if at all possible!
Female Heir in Austria-> Pragmatic Sanction goes not far – lots of words!
Also ungrammatical! Since we've got the Pragmatic Sanction in my lyrics, what about "Female Heir in Austria-> Father's wishes/treaties don't go far"?
"Father's wishes" is easier to sing, but "treaties" more historically meaningful; take your pick. :)
Biche the dog gets kidnapped – lots of consonants here too I think?
"Biche the dog is kidnapped"? I have a feeling a lot of what you're struggling with is final 'ts' and 'tz' clusters.
Epic bust up Fritz/Voltaire - let’s see how they further fare! – this is also a bit tongue-twisty but not sure I want to change it, lol
What about "Epic bust up with Voltaire - Fritz still claiming not to care"? "Fritz still" is probably still a bit tongue-twisty, but I enjoy making fun of Fritz's "Voltaire is the WORST--omg he wrote to me!" :P
Side note, "showdown" is easier for me to sing, but I like "bust up". :)
Court flees soon to Magdeburg, Miracle of Brandenburg – for some reason this gets garbled in my head after "no one has the last laugh." I love the Magdeburg/Brandenburg rhyme though :)
"Flees soon" strikes me as ungrammatical, what about "Court must flee to Magdeburg, Miracle of Brandenburg"?
Selena, tell me if I got too ghost-writery! I was just imagining we'd fix the 3 or so lines that sound non-native, but then Cahn started talking about too many consonants, and my linguist brain switched on, and then my creative brain wanted to get involved. But it's your lyrics!
Yes, I meant to say this last night but forgot -- this should in no way be taken as criticism, I just figured that, as long as I'm going through the lyrics, I might as well flag all of the ones that came across as tongue-twistery to me, even when I actually like them ("Crown Prince Fritz" being an example of one that I like and that I don't think actually should change -- but man it's hard to get my tongue around it!) And salutations for not making me sing "Stanislaus Leszczynski" like SOME people :PPPP
I was thinking that speed matters to the consonant clusters, and realized I let you have "Pragmatic Sanction" by itself, so you could enunciate each syllable, but my worst line is high-speed consonant clusters in unfamiliar proper names all over the place! *veg*
Sorry, had other rl stuff to accomplish first. Now:
Karl of Sweden, Gottfried Leibniz, Augustus the Strong - both in terms of meter and consonants
Hm. Can't see how I could make these losing consonants, as they are names. I mean, you could replace Karl with Charles, if that's easier for you to sing, but that's about it, because "Sweden" or at least "Swedish" needs to be here, to make it clear who we're talking about. Ditto for Augustus the Strong. Leibniz can lose his first name if that's easier for you, but I thought the syllables would be wrong then compared with the original line?
Is "Spanish king a frog" any easier? A lot of the difficulty you're attributing to "lots of consonants" I suspect is adjacent stressed syllables, or at least exacerbated by it. The diphthong in "Spain" is probably also making it harder: you have to move your tongue into two different positions, one of them pretty far from a neutral position.
ETA: Gah, I just realized on reread that the parallelism makes omitting the verb sound like the Spanish king *has* a frog. We'll have to think about this some more.
That. Again, sorry, I can't think of any way of expressing this with less consonants that still has rhythm. I can't.
Ice Palace, Vis Viva, Émilie du Chatelet – I mean, this isn't actually giving me a ton of difficulty but if we're fixing things maybe take another look at this?
Anything I can think of to replace "Ice Palace" with has even MORE consonsants and syllables. Except for "Russian Ice" maybe? But that loses an entire palace carved out of ice, which is what makes it worth mentioning in the first place.
Franklin prints, lots of quips – lots of consonants here too
"Franklin prints, full of quips"? Eases up on the consonants a tiny bit and creates some alliteration. "Prints" is still hard, though: I'm contemplating that one. It's historically significant, so I want to keep the meaning if at all possible!
Can't think of anything else that doesn't lose what makes it worth mentioning. Hm, possibly
"Envoy Franklin, full of quips?"
There goes the printing, but him as envoy was also of high historical importance. Though it destroys the timeline, of course.l I mean, my version as opposed to Mildred's is chronological, and Franklin didn't get to be envoy until much later whereas the printing was earlier in the timeline.
Female Heir in Austria-> Pragmatic Sanction goes not far – lots of words!
Also ungrammatical! Since we've got the Pragmatic Sanction in my lyrics, what about "Female Heir in Austria-> Father's wishes/treaties don't go far"?
"Father's wishes" is easier to sing, but "treaties" more historically meaningful; take your pick. :)
Then "Treaties" is is, because one can wish for the moon, but a signed treaty ought to be worth something.
Biche the dog gets kidnapped – lots of consonants here too I think?
"Biche the dog is kidnapped"? I have a feeling a lot of what you're struggling with is final 'ts' and 'tz' clusters.
Or maybe "Biche is stolen, Fritz upset?" (to rhyme with the earlier Gottsched") - if that's easier to sing, that is)
Epic bust up Fritz/Voltaire - let’s see how they further fare! – this is also a bit tongue-twisty but not sure I want to change it, lol
What about "Epic bust up with Voltaire - Fritz still claiming not to care"? "Fritz still" is probably still a bit tongue-twisty, but I enjoy making fun of Fritz's "Voltaire is the WORST--omg he wrote to me!" :P
In this case I'd replace the "still" with "is", i.e. "Fritz is claiming not to care", because we're not yet in the 7 Years War. "Epic bust up with Voltaire" is genius.
"Flees soon" strikes me as ungrammatical, what about "Court must flee to Magdeburg, Miracle of Brandenburg"?
Excellent, I say. Thank you for all the help, Mildred!
Karl of Sweden, Gottfried Leibniz, Augustus the Strong - both in terms of meter and consonants
Hm. Can't see how I could make these losing consonants, as they are names. I mean, you could replace Karl with Charles, if that's easier for you to sing, but that's about it, because "Sweden" or at least "Swedish" needs to be here, to make it clear who we're talking about. Ditto for Augustus the Strong. Leibniz can lose his first name if that's easier for you, but I thought the syllables would be wrong then compared with the original line?
"Karl of Sweden" is fine for me, "Charles" would actually be harder, but what if we replaced "Gottfried" with "Newton"? Same meter, easier to sing (for an English speaker, at least), gets us an extra historical figure.
I'm still struggling with the meter of "August(us) the Strong", no good ideas yet.
Is "Spanish king a frog" any easier? A lot of the difficulty you're attributing to "lots of consonants" I suspect is adjacent stressed syllables, or at least exacerbated by it. The diphthong in "Spain" is probably also making it harder: you have to move your tongue into two different positions, one of them pretty far from a neutral position.
ETA: Gah, I just realized on reread that the parallelism makes omitting the verb sound like the Spanish king *has* a frog. We'll have to think about this some more.
That. Again, sorry, I can't think of any way of expressing this with less consonants that still has rhythm. I can't.
What about "France now has a Regency, (the) king in Spain's a frog"? Same consonants, but spaced out and stressed differently, and it's easier than "Spain's king" for me, at least. And it keeps the meter.
ETA: Or even "the Spanish king's a frog"?
"Envoy Franklin, full of quips?"
There goes the printing, but him as envoy was also of high historical importance. Though it destroys the timeline, of course.l I mean, my version as opposed to Mildred's is chronological, and Franklin didn't get to be envoy until much later whereas the printing was earlier in the timeline.
Cahn, is "Franklin prints and writes and quips" any easier for you? It is for me, but YMMV.
In this case I'd replace the "still" with "is", i.e. "Fritz is claiming not to care", because we're not yet in the 7 Years War.
Ooh, good point. "Fritz is" is easier to sing and chronologically correct, then! (And I can still make fun of him in my head. :P)
I think I actually prefer "Gottfried Leibniz" to "Newton Leibniz," but it depends a little what's done with Augustus, I think.
"France now has a Regency, the Spanish king's a frog" is easier for me, yeah.
"Franklin prints and writes and quips" is also easier for me, yes!
"Epic bust up with Voltaire - Fritz is claiming not to care" is awesome, and much easier; I think the main difficulty here will now be not tongue twistiness but rather not cracking up when getting to this line :D
Thank you for the feedback! This means I'm on the right track as to what's going on: it's not only consonants, but stress/accent alignment.
Do you have a sense of why "Gottfried" is easier than "Newton" for you? It's definitely not the number of consonants. :P Gottfried has 3 in a row, and I carefully picked "Newton" for you to only have one at a time!
Hmm. I think part of it might be the cognitive load of "Newton Leibnitz" next to each other? But also there's something where "Newton" and "Leibnitz" make me open my mouth in different ways, whereas with "Gottfried Leibnitz" the vowels are certainly not the same, but I open my mouth in approximately the same way (or at least a much more similar way) for both.
Hmm. I think part of it might be the cognitive load of "Newton Leibnitz" next to each other?
I wondered after I posted this if there might be additional cognitive load for you. For me, it's *less* cognitive load, because heck if I know what Leibniz's first name is off the top of my head, but Newton and Leibniz just *go together* in my head, have for twenty years. That's part of why I liked putting them together in the song! Plus I encounter the "Newton-Leibniz" or "Leibniz-Newton" calculus controversy a lot (well, comparatively). It's a set phrase, rolls off my tongue.
Interesting!
But also there's something where "Newton" and "Leibnitz" make me open my mouth in different ways,
Fair! The "Sweden, Newton" was the similarity making it easier for me.
This means I'm on the right track as to what's going on: it's not only consonants, but stress/accent alignment.
To elaborate a little on how I'm making these lines easier for cahn, in case we end up doing a song video again ('cause this was so much fun! although time-consuming enough we should only do it very rarely):
English prefers to alternate stressed-unstressed syllables. This is why so much of our poetry is iambic pentameter (or iambic something). English *really* doesn't like adjacent stressed syllables, there's even a name for the phenomenon in one major linguistic theory I learned.
Within a word, you know how to stress syllables: "Selena" is stressed xXx, "Mildred" Xx, Cahn is X.
But there's also phrase- and sentence-level stress. Very roughtly, nouns will carry the most stress, then adjectives and some adverbs, then verbs, then function words (prepositions, articles, forms of 'to be').
Generally speaking, you want your phrase/sentence-level stress to line up with the metrical beats, so that the most stressed syllables in the sentence are the accented syllables in the meter. Now, if the meter always perfectly alternates stressed and unstressed syllables, and the meter always lines up perfectly with the sentence stress, you can get an artificial, monotonous, over-emphasized effect. So a little variation is good. But that's the basic theme you riff on.
So the reason "the Spanish king's a frog" is easier than "Spain's king is a frog", is that the sentence-level stress of "Spanish king's" goes XxX, whereas "Spain's king is" goes "XXx". So in the second one, the most stressed syllable, i.e., "king", falls in a position where the meter wants an unaccented syllable, and the least stressed syllable, "is", falls in a position where the meter wants an accented syllable. Because the meter wants XxX.
That's also why sticking "the" in helps, because if you assume a basic pattern of expecting alternating stressed and unstressed syllables for the line, you get
France now has a Regency
X x X x X x X
and then the next syllable wants to be unstressed. Hence the "the":
France now has a Regency, the Spanish king's a frog
X x X x X x X x X x X x X
You can now easily see one reason why
Franklin prints, lots of quips
X x X X x X
is harder to sing than
Franklin prints and writes and quips
X x X x X x X
even though "lots" and "writes" are almost identical in terms of consonants!
That's also one reason I find "aging Sun King" (xXxX) easier than "Sun King old" (XXX), though Cahn has yet to weigh in on that one. (The repetition of "ing" also helps.)
You can also see why I said
Triple monarch turnover
X x X x X X x
was slightly easier than
F Wilhelm dead, dead emperor
X X x X X X x X
, but complained about "turnover" not being ideal, and why Cahn's reaction was "I think it's a little better" rather than "Yes! That's much better!" (Of course, "triple monarch turnover" is also not the easiest phrase either phonetically or in terms of cognitive load.)
When I wrote my song lyrics, when I was struggling with a line, I literally wrote out the stress pattern of the corresponding medieval line (which is very earwormy) using X x X x X x symbols, and the stress pattern of my line directly below it, and rewrote and rewrote mine until the Xs were the same.
TLDR: I'm sticking in unstressed syllables as needed to break up adjacent stressed syllables, and lining up nouns with the stresses as much as possible.
Btw, it occurred to me yesterday that in addition to my formal linguistic background coming in handy, a surprising amount of my PhD involved poetics! I can't write poetry to save my life, and I certainly didn't specialize in poetics, but comparative Indo-European poetics came up a lot in class (two of my professors specialized in it, plus my advisor specialized in Old English metrics) and in my reading, and I definitely drew on that when composing my lyrics. (All this is also why my lyrics took like 8 hours and 2 drafts, both the writing out of stress patterns and the "What would an Indo-European bard do here?")
And then I went and decided "Struensee, Stanislaus Leszczynski" was a perfectly cromulent line to force on cahn. :P
F Wilhelm (***) dead, dead Emperor: Fritz invades Silesia – I had to change this anyway so the meter worked
I find the first half of this pretty difficult too. Does "triple monarch turnover" work any better for you? It's not ideal for me (mostly "turnover"), but I find it a bit easier. If so, I can use the images to show which monarchs--and really, Anna's death was instrumental in Fritz's invasion too.
World War Zero, Menorca, Austria versus Prussia
Is "four-front war in Prussia" too much of a tongue-twister? It fits the meter better than "Austria versus Prussia," but I find "four-front war" a little twisty. (Historically, it should be "four-front war *for* Prussia," but that's even worse.)
Crown Prince Fritz, Paris Wits, English Marriage Project – Crown Prince Fritz is a tongue-twister, but I don't know that there's much getting around that!
Teenage Fritz? It's not as historically on point as "Crown Prince", but it covers the period of the English marriage project, and easier to sing.
If not, "young prince Fritz" is just maaaarginally easier for me than "Crown Prince Fritz," because of the lack of diphthong, but "prince Fritz" is the real tongue-twister for me. No good solutions yet; like you said, hard to get around.
Sun King old, War in Spain, Habsburgs out and goodbye – "Habsburgs out" is for some reason really hard to sing for me
Is "Habsburgs lose and goodbye" any easier? Or "Habsburgs gone and goodbye," which is slightly harder but alliterates?
I actually find "aging Sun King" easier than "Sun King old"--how about you?
Huh, I kind of like "Aging Sun King, War in Spain, Habsburgs gone and goodbye." Thoughts?
Or maybe "Biche is stolen, Fritz upset?" (to rhyme with the earlier Gottsched") - if that's easier to sing, that is)
Or "Fritz sees red," to make the rhyme even closer? Though I think "sees red" is slightly harder than "upset." (Although I was wrong about Newton, so we'll give Cahn the choice.)
It's a pity "dognapped" is so hard to say; "Biche is dognapped, Fritz sees red" is fun to listen to--but not so easy to sing! (Even in addition to the fact that I would have a hard time not cracking up.) "Biche is stolen, Fritz upset" is certainly easier.
France in debts, Scottish vets, English colonies dodge tax
It has to be "France in debt," as we discussed; "Scottish vets" is great even now with a slightly imperfect rhyme; "dodging tax" is way easier for me than "dodge tax," but doesn't fit the meter here. "Yankees dodging tax" works in isolation, but then we've lost two syllables we need to make up. "Yankees won't stop dodging tax"?
"France in debt, Scottish vets, Yankees won't stop dodging tax"...I can sing it. Cahn, what do you think? The extra two syllables could maybe be improved (and then they could go either before or after "Yankees").
F Wilhelm (***) dead, dead Emperor: Fritz invades Silesia – I had to change this anyway so the meter worked
I find the first half of this pretty difficult too. Does "triple monarch turnover" work any better for you?
Yeah, I think that's a little better.
World War Zero, Menorca, Austria versus Prussia
Is "four-front war in Prussia" too much of a tongue-twister?
I think that's doable. Four-front war for Prussia is not, though! :)
Crown Prince Fritz, Paris Wits, English Marriage Project – Crown Prince Fritz is a tongue-twister, but I don't know that there's much getting around that!
Teenage Fritz? It's not as historically on point as "Crown Prince", but it covers the period of the English marriage project, and easier to sing.
If not, "young prince Fritz" is just maaaarginally easier for me than "Crown Prince Fritz," because of the lack of diphthong, but "prince Fritz" is the real tongue-twister for me
Teenage Fritz works for singing! But yeah, it's "prince Fritz" that is hard.
Huh, I kind of like "Aging Sun King, War in Spain, Habsburgs gone and goodbye." Thoughts?
I think the word Habsburgs is just hard for me! But I like the alliteration.
Or maybe "Biche is stolen, Fritz upset?" (to rhyme with the earlier Gottsched") - if that's easier to sing, that is)
Or "Fritz sees red," to make the rhyme even closer?
I am voting for "upset" :)
"France in debt, Scottish vets, Yankees won't stop dodging tax"...I can sing it. Cahn, what do you think? The extra two syllables could maybe be improved (and then they could go either before or after "Yankees").
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timeasmymeasure
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-04 10:46 am (UTC)Selena, just to reassure you, most of these are perfectly fine from a grammatical point of view, only a few sound non-native! The ones I would class as non-native grammar are:
* Pragmatic Sanction goes not far
* Let’s see how they further fare! (I actually spent the weekend Anglo-picking the Fredersdorf letter translations for publication, and had to remove a lot of "further"s--we just don't use it in quite so many contexts in English. :) )
* Court flees soon to Magdeburg
* France in debts
The rest are just phonetically complex or metrically misaligned.
I mean, this isn't actually giving me a ton of difficulty
This is the one with an audible waver that I requested be spliced in if you decide not to re-record! But maybe if the song is overall easier *and* you concentrate more (as noted, you concentrated more on mine, based on my feedback on your Selena recording), it'll be fine?
France now has a Regency, Spain’s King is a Frog – lots of consonants I think esp. Spain's King
Is "Spanish king a frog" any easier? A lot of the difficulty you're attributing to "lots of consonants" I suspect is adjacent stressed syllables, or at least exacerbated by it. The diphthong in "Spain" is probably also making it harder: you have to move your tongue into two different positions, one of them pretty far from a neutral position.
ETA: Gah, I just realized on reread that the parallelism makes omitting the verb sound like the Spanish king *has* a frog. We'll have to think about this some more.
Franklin prints, lots of quips – lots of consonants here too
"Franklin prints, full of quips"? Eases up on the consonants a tiny bit and creates some alliteration. "Prints" is still hard, though: I'm contemplating that one. It's historically significant, so I want to keep the meaning if at all possible!
Female Heir in Austria-> Pragmatic Sanction goes not far – lots of words!
Also ungrammatical! Since we've got the Pragmatic Sanction in my lyrics, what about "Female Heir in Austria-> Father's wishes/treaties don't go far"?
"Father's wishes" is easier to sing, but "treaties" more historically meaningful; take your pick. :)
Biche the dog gets kidnapped – lots of consonants here too I think?
"Biche the dog is kidnapped"? I have a feeling a lot of what you're struggling with is final 'ts' and 'tz' clusters.
Epic bust up Fritz/Voltaire - let’s see how they further fare! – this is also a bit tongue-twisty but not sure I want to change it, lol
What about "Epic bust up with Voltaire - Fritz still claiming not to care"? "Fritz still" is probably still a bit tongue-twisty, but I enjoy making fun of Fritz's "Voltaire is the WORST--omg he wrote to me!" :P
Side note, "showdown" is easier for me to sing, but I like "bust up". :)
Court flees soon to Magdeburg, Miracle of Brandenburg – for some reason this gets garbled in my head after "no one has the last laugh." I love the Magdeburg/Brandenburg rhyme though :)
"Flees soon" strikes me as ungrammatical, what about "Court must flee to Magdeburg, Miracle of Brandenburg"?
Selena, tell me if I got too ghost-writery! I was just imagining we'd fix the 3 or so lines that sound non-native, but then Cahn started talking about too many consonants, and my linguist brain switched on, and then my creative brain wanted to get involved. But it's your lyrics!
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-04 04:24 pm (UTC)Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-04 04:28 pm (UTC)I was thinking that speed matters to the consonant clusters, and realized I let you have "Pragmatic Sanction" by itself, so you could enunciate each syllable, but my worst line is high-speed consonant clusters in unfamiliar proper names all over the place! *veg*
Hats off to you for pulling it off!
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-05 09:06 am (UTC)Karl of Sweden, Gottfried Leibniz, Augustus the Strong - both in terms of meter and consonants
Hm. Can't see how I could make these losing consonants, as they are names. I mean, you could replace Karl with Charles, if that's easier for you to sing, but that's about it, because "Sweden" or at least "Swedish" needs to be here, to make it clear who we're talking about. Ditto for Augustus the Strong. Leibniz can lose his first name if that's easier for you, but I thought the syllables would be wrong then compared with the original line?
Is "Spanish king a frog" any easier? A lot of the difficulty you're attributing to "lots of consonants" I suspect is adjacent stressed syllables, or at least exacerbated by it. The diphthong in "Spain" is probably also making it harder: you have to move your tongue into two different positions, one of them pretty far from a neutral position.
ETA: Gah, I just realized on reread that the parallelism makes omitting the verb sound like the Spanish king *has* a frog. We'll have to think about this some more.
That. Again, sorry, I can't think of any way of expressing this with less consonants that still has rhythm. I can't.
Ice Palace, Vis Viva, Émilie du Chatelet – I mean, this isn't actually giving me a ton of difficulty but if we're fixing things maybe take another look at this?
Anything I can think of to replace "Ice Palace" with has even MORE consonsants and syllables. Except for "Russian Ice" maybe? But that loses an entire palace carved out of ice, which is what makes it worth mentioning in the first place.
Franklin prints, lots of quips – lots of consonants here too
"Franklin prints, full of quips"? Eases up on the consonants a tiny bit and creates some alliteration. "Prints" is still hard, though: I'm contemplating that one. It's historically significant, so I want to keep the meaning if at all possible!
Can't think of anything else that doesn't lose what makes it worth mentioning. Hm, possibly
"Envoy Franklin, full of quips?"
There goes the printing, but him as envoy was also of high historical importance. Though it destroys the timeline, of course.l I mean, my version as opposed to Mildred's is chronological, and Franklin didn't get to be envoy until much later whereas the printing was earlier in the timeline.
Female Heir in Austria-> Pragmatic Sanction goes not far – lots of words!
Also ungrammatical! Since we've got the Pragmatic Sanction in my lyrics, what about "Female Heir in Austria-> Father's wishes/treaties don't go far"?
"Father's wishes" is easier to sing, but "treaties" more historically meaningful; take your pick. :)
Then "Treaties" is is, because one can wish for the moon, but a signed treaty ought to be worth something.
Biche the dog gets kidnapped – lots of consonants here too I think?
"Biche the dog is kidnapped"? I have a feeling a lot of what you're struggling with is final 'ts' and 'tz' clusters.
Or maybe "Biche is stolen, Fritz upset?" (to rhyme with the earlier Gottsched") - if that's easier to sing, that is)
Epic bust up Fritz/Voltaire - let’s see how they further fare! – this is also a bit tongue-twisty but not sure I want to change it, lol
What about "Epic bust up with Voltaire - Fritz still claiming not to care"? "Fritz still" is probably still a bit tongue-twisty, but I enjoy making fun of Fritz's "Voltaire is the WORST--omg he wrote to me!" :P
In this case I'd replace the "still" with "is", i.e. "Fritz is claiming not to care", because we're not yet in the 7 Years War. "Epic bust up with Voltaire" is genius.
"Flees soon" strikes me as ungrammatical, what about "Court must flee to Magdeburg, Miracle of Brandenburg"?
Excellent, I say. Thank you for all the help, Mildred!
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-05 10:44 am (UTC)Hm. Can't see how I could make these losing consonants, as they are names. I mean, you could replace Karl with Charles, if that's easier for you to sing, but that's about it, because "Sweden" or at least "Swedish" needs to be here, to make it clear who we're talking about. Ditto for Augustus the Strong. Leibniz can lose his first name if that's easier for you, but I thought the syllables would be wrong then compared with the original line?
"Karl of Sweden" is fine for me, "Charles" would actually be harder, but what if we replaced "Gottfried" with "Newton"? Same meter, easier to sing (for an English speaker, at least), gets us an extra historical figure.
I'm still struggling with the meter of "August(us) the Strong", no good ideas yet.
Is "Spanish king a frog" any easier? A lot of the difficulty you're attributing to "lots of consonants" I suspect is adjacent stressed syllables, or at least exacerbated by it. The diphthong in "Spain" is probably also making it harder: you have to move your tongue into two different positions, one of them pretty far from a neutral position.
ETA: Gah, I just realized on reread that the parallelism makes omitting the verb sound like the Spanish king *has* a frog. We'll have to think about this some more.
That. Again, sorry, I can't think of any way of expressing this with less consonants that still has rhythm. I can't.
What about "France now has a Regency, (the) king in Spain's a frog"? Same consonants, but spaced out and stressed differently, and it's easier than "Spain's king" for me, at least. And it keeps the meter.
ETA: Or even "the Spanish king's a frog"?
"Envoy Franklin, full of quips?"
There goes the printing, but him as envoy was also of high historical importance. Though it destroys the timeline, of course.l I mean, my version as opposed to Mildred's is chronological, and Franklin didn't get to be envoy until much later whereas the printing was earlier in the timeline.
Cahn, is "Franklin prints and writes and quips" any easier for you? It is for me, but YMMV.
In this case I'd replace the "still" with "is", i.e. "Fritz is claiming not to care", because we're not yet in the 7 Years War.
Ooh, good point. "Fritz is" is easier to sing and chronologically correct, then! (And I can still make fun of him in my head. :P)
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-05 10:54 pm (UTC)"France now has a Regency, the Spanish king's a frog" is easier for me, yeah.
"Franklin prints and writes and quips" is also easier for me, yes!
"Epic bust up with Voltaire - Fritz is claiming not to care" is awesome, and much easier; I think the main difficulty here will now be not tongue twistiness but rather not cracking up when getting to this line :D
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-05 11:01 pm (UTC)Do you have a sense of why "Gottfried" is easier than "Newton" for you? It's definitely not the number of consonants. :P Gottfried has 3 in a row, and I carefully picked "Newton" for you to only have one at a time!
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-06 04:11 am (UTC)Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-06 08:06 am (UTC)I wondered after I posted this if there might be additional cognitive load for you. For me, it's *less* cognitive load, because heck if I know what Leibniz's first name is off the top of my head, but Newton and Leibniz just *go together* in my head, have for twenty years. That's part of why I liked putting them together in the song! Plus I encounter the "Newton-Leibniz" or "Leibniz-Newton" calculus controversy a lot (well, comparatively). It's a set phrase, rolls off my tongue.
Interesting!
But also there's something where "Newton" and "Leibnitz" make me open my mouth in different ways,
Fair! The "Sweden, Newton" was the similarity making it easier for me.
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-06 08:49 am (UTC)To elaborate a little on how I'm making these lines easier for
English prefers to alternate stressed-unstressed syllables. This is why so much of our poetry is iambic pentameter (or iambic something). English *really* doesn't like adjacent stressed syllables, there's even a name for the phenomenon in one major linguistic theory I learned.
Within a word, you know how to stress syllables: "Selena" is stressed xXx, "Mildred" Xx, Cahn is X.
But there's also phrase- and sentence-level stress. Very roughtly, nouns will carry the most stress, then adjectives and some adverbs, then verbs, then function words (prepositions, articles, forms of 'to be').
Generally speaking, you want your phrase/sentence-level stress to line up with the metrical beats, so that the most stressed syllables in the sentence are the accented syllables in the meter. Now, if the meter always perfectly alternates stressed and unstressed syllables, and the meter always lines up perfectly with the sentence stress, you can get an artificial, monotonous, over-emphasized effect. So a little variation is good. But that's the basic theme you riff on.
So the reason "the Spanish king's a frog" is easier than "Spain's king is a frog", is that the sentence-level stress of "Spanish king's" goes XxX, whereas "Spain's king is" goes "XXx". So in the second one, the most stressed syllable, i.e., "king", falls in a position where the meter wants an unaccented syllable, and the least stressed syllable, "is", falls in a position where the meter wants an accented syllable. Because the meter wants XxX.
That's also why sticking "the" in helps, because if you assume a basic pattern of expecting alternating stressed and unstressed syllables for the line, you get
and then the next syllable wants to be unstressed. Hence the "the":
You can now easily see one reason why
is harder to sing than
even though "lots" and "writes" are almost identical in terms of consonants!
That's also one reason I find "aging Sun King" (xXxX) easier than "Sun King old" (XXX), though Cahn has yet to weigh in on that one. (The repetition of "ing" also helps.)
You can also see why I said
was slightly easier than
, but complained about "turnover" not being ideal, and why Cahn's reaction was "I think it's a little better" rather than "Yes! That's much better!" (Of course, "triple monarch turnover" is also not the easiest phrase either phonetically or in terms of cognitive load.)
When I wrote my song lyrics, when I was struggling with a line, I literally wrote out the stress pattern of the corresponding medieval line (which is very earwormy) using X x X x X x symbols, and the stress pattern of my line directly below it, and rewrote and rewrote mine until the Xs were the same.
TLDR: I'm sticking in unstressed syllables as needed to break up adjacent stressed syllables, and lining up nouns with the stresses as much as possible.
Btw, it occurred to me yesterday that in addition to my formal linguistic background coming in handy, a surprising amount of my PhD involved poetics! I can't write poetry to save my life, and I certainly didn't specialize in poetics, but comparative Indo-European poetics came up a lot in class (two of my professors specialized in it, plus my advisor specialized in Old English metrics) and in my reading, and I definitely drew on that when composing my lyrics. (All this is also why my lyrics took like 8 hours and 2 drafts, both the writing out of stress patterns and the "What would an Indo-European bard do here?")
And then I went and decided "Struensee, Stanislaus Leszczynski" was a perfectly cromulent line to force on
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-06 02:42 am (UTC)F Wilhelm (***) dead, dead Emperor: Fritz invades Silesia – I had to change this anyway so the meter worked
I find the first half of this pretty difficult too. Does "triple monarch turnover" work any better for you? It's not ideal for me (mostly "turnover"), but I find it a bit easier. If so, I can use the images to show which monarchs--and really, Anna's death was instrumental in Fritz's invasion too.
World War Zero, Menorca, Austria versus Prussia
Is "four-front war in Prussia" too much of a tongue-twister? It fits the meter better than "Austria versus Prussia," but I find "four-front war" a little twisty. (Historically, it should be "four-front war *for* Prussia," but that's even worse.)
Crown Prince Fritz, Paris Wits, English Marriage Project – Crown Prince Fritz is a tongue-twister, but I don't know that there's much getting around that!
Teenage Fritz? It's not as historically on point as "Crown Prince", but it covers the period of the English marriage project, and easier to sing.
If not, "young prince Fritz" is just maaaarginally easier for me than "Crown Prince Fritz," because of the lack of diphthong, but "prince Fritz" is the real tongue-twister for me. No good solutions yet; like you said, hard to get around.
Sun King old, War in Spain, Habsburgs out and goodbye – "Habsburgs out" is for some reason really hard to sing for me
Is "Habsburgs lose and goodbye" any easier? Or "Habsburgs gone and goodbye," which is slightly harder but alliterates?
I actually find "aging Sun King" easier than "Sun King old"--how about you?
Huh, I kind of like "Aging Sun King, War in Spain, Habsburgs gone and goodbye." Thoughts?
Or maybe "Biche is stolen, Fritz upset?" (to rhyme with the earlier Gottsched") - if that's easier to sing, that is)
Or "Fritz sees red," to make the rhyme even closer? Though I think "sees red" is slightly harder than "upset." (Although I was wrong about Newton, so we'll give Cahn the choice.)
It's a pity "dognapped" is so hard to say; "Biche is dognapped, Fritz sees red" is fun to listen to--but not so easy to sing! (Even in addition to the fact that I would have a hard time not cracking up.) "Biche is stolen, Fritz upset" is certainly easier.
France in debts, Scottish vets, English colonies dodge tax
It has to be "France in debt," as we discussed; "Scottish vets" is great even now with a slightly imperfect rhyme; "dodging tax" is way easier for me than "dodge tax," but doesn't fit the meter here. "Yankees dodging tax" works in isolation, but then we've lost two syllables we need to make up. "Yankees won't stop dodging tax"?
"France in debt, Scottish vets, Yankees won't stop dodging tax"...I can sing it. Cahn, what do you think? The extra two syllables could maybe be improved (and then they could go either before or after "Yankees").
More when time!
Re: We didn't start the fire: Anglo-picking
Date: 2025-03-06 04:18 am (UTC)I find the first half of this pretty difficult too. Does "triple monarch turnover" work any better for you?
Yeah, I think that's a little better.
World War Zero, Menorca, Austria versus Prussia
Is "four-front war in Prussia" too much of a tongue-twister?
I think that's doable. Four-front war for Prussia is not, though! :)
Crown Prince Fritz, Paris Wits, English Marriage Project – Crown Prince Fritz is a tongue-twister, but I don't know that there's much getting around that!
Teenage Fritz? It's not as historically on point as "Crown Prince", but it covers the period of the English marriage project, and easier to sing.
If not, "young prince Fritz" is just maaaarginally easier for me than "Crown Prince Fritz," because of the lack of diphthong, but "prince Fritz" is the real tongue-twister for me
Teenage Fritz works for singing! But yeah, it's "prince Fritz" that is hard.
Huh, I kind of like "Aging Sun King, War in Spain, Habsburgs gone and goodbye." Thoughts?
I think the word Habsburgs is just hard for me! But I like the alliteration.
Or maybe "Biche is stolen, Fritz upset?" (to rhyme with the earlier Gottsched") - if that's easier to sing, that is)
Or "Fritz sees red," to make the rhyme even closer?
I am voting for "upset" :)
"France in debt, Scottish vets, Yankees won't stop dodging tax"...I can sing it. Cahn, what do you think? The extra two syllables could maybe be improved (and then they could go either before or after "Yankees").
Yeah, this is better.