I'm not well read, and don't think I'd be able to finish any of the classics. As such I have no clue what "slipping from prose into a soft Iambic pentameter" means. I came here for the robots.

▲ altairprime 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You know how in Disney movies they shift smoothly from talking to singing? It’s just like that, only instead of the bass beat to the character’s song starting to play, her ‘prose’ (think ‘non-poetry words’, aka what most people consider books to be full of) shifts smoothly into Shakespeare-like syllable emphasis patterns. Listen for the percussion notes starting about ten seconds into https://youtu.be/79DijItQXMM and imagine that instead of him bursting into musical song, he burst into chanting a limerick:

There once was a demi-god, Maui / Amazing and awesome: I’m Maui // Who stole you your fire / and made your days lighter // Yes, thank you, you’re welcome! Love: Maui

It’s a bit odd of an analogy, but limericks and “Iambic pentameter” are specific instances of an underlying language architectural thing, so it should be just enough to convey the basics of that “prose to Iambic” sentence. And: if you’ve ever watched “Much Ado About Nothing” from the mid-90s, that’s 100% Iambic.

(If you’re an English major, yes, I know, this is all wrong; it’s just a one-off popsicle-sticks context-unique mindset-conveyance analogy-bridge, not step-by-step directions to lit/ling coordinates in your field.)

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eszed 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

English major here, and your post is great. It's not complete, of course, but you've hit everything a beginner needs to know to get over the first hump of understanding, in a way that "expert" knowledge sometimes gets in the way of communicating. I doubt the reply I was writing in my head would have been better, and probably would have been worse, so thank you for jumping in.

But (because I have to go there - and I promise getting to this paragraph wasn't the point of the compliments above), Much Ado isn't entirely in verse: the clowns - lower class, all of them (Dogberry, et al) - speak in prose. So, the next layer of the onion, for anyone who wants to pick at it, is noticing in what circumstances writers use different registers, and why. Austin does the same thing: Mr Collins speaks in flat, prosy sentences, except (if I recall correctly) when he talks about his patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. I think that has a subconscious effect, even on people who couldn't name an iamb, but once you pick up on it, it's one of those "ooh!" sorts of moments where you get a glimpse behind the authorial curtain.

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altairprime 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Thank you :)

and, yes, what you said! I vaguely recognize that from studying the written form but certainly I didn't remember it here beyond “I bet this needs a conditional or something”.

ps. I am especially proud of the unplanned field pun!

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jpfromlondon 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>prosy

prosaic.

	▲	eszed 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Negative, ghost rider: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/prosy

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gabriel666smith 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is a great example, and not odd as an analogy at all. It surfaces something subtle.

Language architecture is really interesting, I think, for programmers who have bought into the LLM hype in any meaningful way. It's an important field to have a sense of.

Tokenizers, for example, generally have multi-syllabic tokens as their base-level, indivisible unit.

You rarely see this mentioned when LLM capability against non-coding tasks is discussed, despite it being deeply important for prose construction.

Not to mention, putting language models aside, that the vast majority of code is written in language with a logical grammar. The disciplines are highly linked.

	▲	regularfry 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The AI generated front page of HN posted yesterday had some generated comments in at least one of the threads that scanned and rhymed. It's clearly there in whatever model that was, and while it might just have been a confluence of having seen a specific word pair a certain distance apart in the learning data to account for the rhyming, I'm having a hard time explaining away the construction of a coherent meter.
	▲	altairprime 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The Judoon have such a lovely language, though!

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beng-nl 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Your desire to share knowledge and the pleasure of what you’re describing really shows; thank you for using your time so generously.

▲ keymasta 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Two broad categories, verse and prose.

Prose is mostly focused on describing meaning using any words that serve to do so.

Verse is more concerned with structural factors like rhythm, tonality, and structure within syllables, or within types of sound, or parts of speech. Other linguistic devices which look at details beyond the strict meaning of the words, like rhyme or many other factors (you could even use visual spacing for example) can be considered in verse.

Within verse there's the concept of iambs. I think of it as a tuple of two syllables which are said, weak-strong. Pentameter means ten syllables, and iambic means in groups of weak and strong. Most of Shakespeare is written like this. Also English naturally sounds iambic a lot of the time.

Iambic pentameter sounds like this:

  I watched a bird attempt its beak upon
  The end of fake too-moist baguette in vain
  For it was sick of stale McDicks tossed on
  It endlessly maintained its rationed pain

  While others in its bobbing flock for scraps
  Of birds fought for the thrill squawked on and on
  Till cannibals among their kind rejoiced
  To find cousins in mayonnaise so long

Normally you'd also look at rhyme structure if writing a legit Shakespearean sonnet [2] but I fired this one out as in the style of fast food. So this is technically iambic pentameter but not technically a sonnet.

Or like a particular Shakespearean sonnet [0]. Or like any of them, [1]

[0] https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnet.I.html

[1] https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnets.html

[2] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/shakespe...

	▲	SAI_Peregrinus 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Minor nitpick: "pentameter" means 5 parts, and each part is an iamb in iambic pentameter, so it's 5 parts where each part is 2 syllables in a weak-strong pattern. That results in 10 syllables, but "pentameter" doesn't mean 10 syllables alone.

▲ baruz 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not with that attitude you won’t! But dip your toe in, _Pride and prejudice_ is pretty light and breezy while having some depth to it.

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ifh-hn 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know. All I remember from school is absolutely hating being forced to read, and understand/interpret, thing like shakespeare and Jane Austin. But then again I now like a lot of the vegetables I used to hate as a kid...

My daughter loves the classics, me, science fiction and fantasy.

	▲	Tarsul 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Just read Treasure Island. It's a classic but one that is easy to comprehend and also timeless.
	▲	baruz 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		_Pride and prejudice_ hits for me similar notes as those for fantasy and historical fiction, though of course it is commenting on contemporary issues with no magic (except the magic of love), alas. It’s like entering a foreign society where you may have to infer why people are acting the way they do. Now that you’re not in school, no one is forcing you to write essays on what you read, or even to understand or interpret what is going on in the narrative! Cool, huh?

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3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲ justonceokay 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s like incel mentality except applied to literacy