Hello All, A work colleague and I were having a discussion about the new x-men film and I said I was going to enjoy a calypso whilst watching Apocalypse. An Apocalyptic Calypso. He said good use of alliteration. I said that's not alliteration since then we have been arguing about it. Until he finally dropped the "I have a degree in English" and now that is his default response. So any of you clever folks out there care to settle this for me
They don't begin with the same sound. No. It's some form of rhyme, but I'm not an expert on all the terms. Internal rhyme, maybe?
I said this, it wasn't the beginning sound he then went onto say there are 3 types of alliteration, which he tried explaining which didn't make sense. Everything I have read about alliteration since this mini battle of wills commenced leads me to believe I am correct. but I haven't studied English at degree level, so I could be wrong.
It's not alliteration. That's words that start the same. Here's one of my faves from Nabokov - Vague Velvety Vileness. Could be assonance? - that's repetition of vowel sounds, I think. but internal rhyme sounds about right.
It is alliteration (sorry). Alliteration can also be found in the stressed syllables of two words. It doesn't have to be in the sound the words start with (although it usually is). Apocalyptic Calypso
You beauty. Thanks for this I am going to direct him here Can you delete your response so I can win my argument
According to the OED, alliteration is: the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. 'Apocalyptic calypso' is actually an example of assonance: the resemblance of sound between syllables in nearby words arising from the rhyming of stressed vowels
This gets close to a perfect palindrome actually... I think it is more about how it sounds out loud. In "Apocalyptic Calypso", the Apo- will get almost unheard. So you'd basically hear the "caliptic calypso" more than anything else, which is maybe why your friend insisted on alliteration more than on assonance. But, yeah, it is assonance or internal rhyming more than alliteration.
Yes, agreed. But I suggest you check out some more technical literary definitions. You'll find that the OED's basic entry is incomplete - as is often the case with reserved language. If we start disecting it, I'm sure we can come up with lots of valid things that it is - an example of assonance, etc. But it's definitely an example of alliteration as well.
Apocalyptic Calypso is an example of consonance, not alliteration. That's where you pick up stressed consonants (no matter where they appear in the word) to form the repeated sound. To be an example of consonance alliteration (a specialized type of alliteration) both sounds would have to be at the beginnings of the words and, obviously, they aren't.
His retort to me saying it was assonance " At GCSE you are taught the standard Alliteration in its basic form of the repeated sound of the first consonant as stated. However when you then move to Lexical Semantics at Degree Level you have to grasp and Dissertate on all the special forms of Alliteration. Your example “Apocalypto Calypso” therefore can actually be referenced in 2 forms of specialised Alliteration named below. I would recommend following an in depth analysis from a physical encyclopedia but the Wikipedia citations below will suffice just as well in a pinch. Consonance (ex: As the wind will bend) is another 'phonetic agreement' akin to alliteration. It refers to the repetition of consonant sounds. Alliteration is a special case of consonance where the repeated consonant sound is at the stressed syllable.[7] Alliteration may also include the use of different consonants with similar properties[8] such as alliterating z with s, as does the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or as Anglo-Saxon (Old English) poets would alliterate hard/fricative g with soft g (the latter exemplified in some courses as the letter yogh – ȝ – pronounced like the y in yarrow or the j in Jotunheim); this is known as license.[citation needed] There is one specialised form of alliteration called Symmetrical Alliteration. That is, alliteration containing parallelism.[9] In this case, the phrase must have a pair of outside end words both starting with the same sound, and pairs of outside words also starting with matching sounds as one moves progressively closer to the centre. For example, "rust brown blazers rule", "purely and fundamentally for analytical purposes" or "fluoro colour co-ordination forever". Symmetrical alliteration is similar to palindromes in its use of symmetry. " we have decided to call this a draw
It's definitely alliteration. *fingers in ears* la la la la la la la la la la *sticks out tongue, eyes wide* Pistols at dawn! Or your weapons of choice! I'll take you one at a time or all together, motherfuckers, aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh! Grammarians rule. Peace. (it's whatever you want it to be, really, we're all right, or none of us are, or some of us are...)
Haha well upon reading the definition of assonance we have agreed that is a strange situation where it meets the criteria of both hence us both being correct.
Now that I think about it, there is no repeated stress for a single sound in there. Apocalypto Calypso a-POC-alyptic cal-YP-so No repeated stress, so therefore no consonance, no alliteration and definitely no smegging assonance. It's just fun to say. What's the literary term for that?
