06-26-2011, 10:27 AM
Billy, it's actually fairly common for people to think that different accents change the basis of meter -- the "blank" accent of the BBC newsreader type is considered the "proper" one for reciting sonnets and so forth in certain circles. For most English speakers, however, the cadence of speech is much the same regardless of accent. Your sentences are formed in the same way as mine, whether you're from Liverpool or Los Angeles (it's best to leave the Irish out of this though, that Cork accent buggers everything up!) Meter is about patterns and emphasis, or stresses, to give the poetic line its pace and measure, so pronunciation does on rare occasions make finding the meter slightly difficult (the word "Renaissance" is a good example, since some put stress on the first syllable, and some on the second) -- but if you allow that the writer may pronounce the word slightly differently to yourself, it's actually not that big a trick. What I've mentioned before, about getting the meter fixed in your head before you read a poem aloud, will help with these variances.
Non-native English speakers often have greater trouble with our meter though, or more specifically working out syllables. Words in languages like Italian are much simpler to break up, since every time there's a vowel there's a new syllable, but we English speakers use doubles and diphthongs to confuse the issue
Most dictionaries break words into syllables, though they're not always a great guide to pronunciation in another accent.
Rhyme is a little bit trickier though. The best rule to follow is to write it as you'd say it, and let the reader work it out -- on the assumption that if you've used perfect rhymes in every other line and there's a chance that the two words in question could rhyme in some accent, then in the writer's accent they most likely do.
Non-native English speakers often have greater trouble with our meter though, or more specifically working out syllables. Words in languages like Italian are much simpler to break up, since every time there's a vowel there's a new syllable, but we English speakers use doubles and diphthongs to confuse the issue
Most dictionaries break words into syllables, though they're not always a great guide to pronunciation in another accent. Rhyme is a little bit trickier though. The best rule to follow is to write it as you'd say it, and let the reader work it out -- on the assumption that if you've used perfect rhymes in every other line and there's a chance that the two words in question could rhyme in some accent, then in the writer's accent they most likely do.
It could be worse