Do other languages have "rhyming"?

They most certainly do.

@ZEPHYRA Can I have some examples?

Chanson d’automne: Paul Verlaine

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure,

Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

Example? Sure. Here’s a French rap by Keny Arkana. I can hear the rhyming, and if you read the lyrics you can see the similar syllables.

Ou est Lisette?
Ou est Lisette?

Me voici
Me voici

Comment vas tu, aujourd’hui?
Je vais tres bien, merci.

Allons jouer, allons jouer!

Oublie ça by the French rock band Téléphone immediately came to mind.

“No lejos de mí un solo día”
Pablo Neruda

No estés lejos de mí un solo día, porque cómo,
porque, no sé decirlo, es largo el día,
y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones
cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes.

No te vayas por una hora porque entonces
en esa hora se juntan las gotas del desvelo
y tal vez todo el humo que anda buscando casa
venga a matar aún mi corazón perdido.

Ay que no se quebrante tu silueta en la arena,
ay que no vuelen tus párpados en la ausencia:
no te vayas por un minuto, bienamada,

porque en ese minuto te habrás ido tan lejos
que yo cruzaré toda la tierra preguntando
si volverás o si me dejarás muriendo.

All the romance languages make for easy rhyming because of the uniformity of many of the inflections.

Some of Dante:

.. Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta ...
più caramente; e questo è quello strale che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale o
lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle
lo scendere e ‘l salir per l’altrui scale…

Have you never seen Dora The Explorer?

Weighing in with a beautiful rhyming French poem:

L’éternelle chanson

Lorsque tu seras vieux et que je serai vieille,
Lorsque mes cheveux blonds seront des cheveux blancs,
Au mois de mai, dans le jardin qui s’ensoleille,
Nous irons réchauffer nos vieux membres tremblants.
Comme le renouveau mettra nos coeurs en fête,
Nous nous croirons encore de jeunes amoureux,
Et je te sourirai tout en branlant la tête,
Et nous ferons un couple adorable de vieux.
Nous nous regarderons, assis sous notre treille,
Avec de petits yeux attendris et brillants,
Lorsque tu seras vieux et que je serai vieille,
Lorsque mes cheveux blonds seront des cheveux blancs.

Sur notre banc ami, tout verdâtre de mousse,
Sur le banc d’autrefois nous reviendrons causer,
Nous aurons une joie attendrie et très douce,
La phrase finissant toujours par un baiser.
Combien de fois jadis j’ai pu dire ” Je t’aime ” ?
Alors avec grand soin nous le recompterons.
Nous nous ressouviendrons de mille choses, même
De petits riens exquis dont nous radoterons.
Un rayon descendra, d’une caresse douce,
Parmi nos cheveux blancs, tout rose, se poser,
Quand sur notre vieux banc tout verdâtre de mousse,
Sur le banc d’autrefois nous reviendrons causer.

Et comme chaque jour je t’aime davantage,
Aujourd’hui plus qu’hier et bien moins que demain,
Qu’importeront alors les rides du visage ?
Mon amour se fera plus grave – et serein.
Songe que tous les jours des souvenirs s’entassent,
Mes souvenirs à moi seront aussi les tiens.
Ces communs souvenirs toujours plus nous enlacent
Et sans cesse entre nous tissent d’autres liens.
C’est vrai, nous serons vieux, très vieux, faiblis par l’âge,
Mais plus fort chaque jour je serrerai ta main
Car vois-tu chaque jour je t’aime davantage,
Aujourd’hui plus qu’hier et bien moins que demain.

Et de ce cher amour qui passe comme un rêve,
Je veux tout conserver dans le fond de mon coeur,
Retenir s’il se peut l’impression trop brève
Pour la ressavourer plus tard avec lenteur.
J’enfouis tout ce qui vient de lui comme un avare,
Thésaurisant avec ardeur pour mes vieux jours ;
Je serai riche alors d’une richesse rare
J’aurai gardé tout l’or de mes jeunes amours !
Ainsi de ce passé de bonheur qui s’achève,
Ma mémoire parfois me rendra la douceur ;
Et de ce cher amour qui passe comme un rêve
J’aurai tout conservé dans le fond de mon coeur.

Lorsque tu seras vieux et que je serai vieille,
Lorsque mes cheveux blonds seront des cheveux blancs,
Au mois de mai, dans le jardin qui s’ensoleille,
Nous irons réchauffer nos vieux membres tremblants.
Comme le renouveau mettra nos coeurs en fête,
Nous nous croirons encore aux jours heureux d’antan,
Et je te sourirai tout en branlant la tête
Et tu me parleras d’amour en chevrotant.
Nous nous regarderons, assis sous notre treille,
Avec de petits yeux attendris et brillants,
Lorsque tu seras vieux et que je serai vieille
Lorsque mes cheveux blonds seront des cheveux blancs.

Rosemonde Gerard (1871–1933), Les Pipeaux, 1889

yiddish

Oy OY OY
schicker is a goy

Yes, even Norwegian…..

Yes, and yet none of them have a word which rhymes with orange either.

@anartist: Interesting. Check out Pierre de Ronsard’s version:

Pierre de Ronsard (1524 – !585)

from Sonnets pour Hélène

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
« Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle. »

Lors vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de « Ronsard » ne s’aille réveillant,
Bénissant votre nom, de louange immortelle.

Je serai sous la terre et fantôme sans os ;
Par les ombres Myrteux je prendrai mon repos ;
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,

Regrettant mon amour, et votre fier dédain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain ;
Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.

And here is W B Yeats’ version: (1865 – 1939)

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

It’s interesting, I was looking through the lyrics to many of my Japanese songs and I noticed that they really don’t rhyme much. So while many other languages rhyme (as illustrated above), Japanese doesn’t seem to do it much, at least not in popular music.

I mean, I found instances where two lines rhymed, but there were really no rhyme schemes in any of the songs. Maybe this has to do with the fact that Japanese words can only end in a, e, i, o, u, or n.

I don’t know about Japanese, but French and Spanish rhyme better than English does. Farsi also has a huge tradition of rhyming poetry.

German certainly does; in fact, many of the rhymes are exactly the same as in English; for example, Nacht (“night”) and Macht (“might”).

Here are two famous examples: ‘Der Erlkonig’ and ‘Die Lorelei.’

Las rojas son rosas
Las violetas son azules
En español buenos versos forjas
Aunque digan que no rima los gandules

@gailcalled I composed a piece of music to that once….thank you for the reminder…

i’ve always considered it to be a bit unfair to compare spanish rhyming to english rhyming. every other word in spanish ends in an “a” or “o” so you have a lot of rhyming flexibility!

And Italian, of course. Here, for example, is “Voi che sapete,” from the second act of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro:

Voi che sapete
che cosa è amor,
donne, vedete
s’io l’ho nel cor.
Quello ch’io provo
vi ridirò,
è per me nuovo,
capir nol so.
Sento un affetto
pien di desir,
ch’ora è diletto,
ch’ora è martir.
Gelo e poi sento
l’alma avvampar,
e in un momento
torno a gelar.
Ricerco un bene
fuori di me,
non so chi’l tiene,
non so cos’è.
Sospiro e gemo
senza voler,
palpito e tremo
senza saper.
Non trovo pace
notte né dì,
ma pur mi piace
languir così.
Voi che sapete
che cosa è amor,
donne, vedete
s’io l’ho nel cor.

oh my god…and that was one of the first songs I learnt!! :-)

@Jeruba: Both Der Erlkonig and Voi che sapete force me to the side of the road if I am driving. (Particularly when Fischer-Die_skau sings the former. I am listening to him now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cOXbQSEQ0M

Try this version.

And here’s Cecilia Bartoli singing the Mozart: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJtr0xq1uI0

Um, yeah, I meant “las rosas son rojas” above. Stupid tiny BlackBerry screen.

Joachim Ringelnatz’s “Die Ameisen”:

In Hamburg lebten zwei Ameisen,
die wollten nach Australien reisen.
Bei Altona, auf der Chaussee,
da taten ihnen die Beine weh,
und da verzichteten sie weise
dann auf den letzten Teil der Reise.

I have! My daughters had to memorize a spanish poem for school, called “Sapo Cancionero” and they most certainly had rhyming words!

Sapo de la noche, sapo cancionero,
Que vives soñando junto a tu laguna.
Tenor de los charcos, grotesco trovero,
Estás embrujado de amor por la luna.

Yo sé de tu vida sin gloria ninguna;
Sé de las tragedias de tu alma inquieta.
Y esa tu locura de amor a la luna
Es locura eterna de todo poeta

Sapo cancionero:
Canta tu canción,
Que la vida es triste,
Si no la vivimos con una ilusión.

Tú te sabes feo, feo y contrahecho;
Por eso de día tu fealdad ocultas
Y de noche cantas tu melancolía
Y suena tu canto como letanía.
Repican tus voces en franca porfía;
Tus coplas son vanas como son tan bellas.
¿no sabes, acaso, que la luna es fría,
Porque dió su sangre para las estrellas.

@gailcalled Thank you.

Here’s a song in Spanish I’ve ben singing for years:

Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma
Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crece la palma
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

?Why do all songs in Spanish talk about su alma, mi corazon, su amor, triste, melancolía y sangre?

@gailcalled Not all.

Allá en la fuente
Había un chorrito
Se hacía grandote
Se hacía chiquito
Estaba de mal humor
Pobre chorrito, tenía calor

@bob: Eso es divertido…para las niños?

It took me a while to figure out what el chorrito is.

@gailcalled Sí, para los niños.

More about it.

I tried to be so careful. I know it’s las niñas (and I can make the ~ ñ both ways.) Boo to me.

@gailcalled Hasta al mejor cocinero se le quema la sopa XD

Charitable of you. (Soy el cocinero peor.) I see that el grillito is the same in French; le grillon.

I can’t tell you anything about the words, but the pop songs playing over the loudspeaker at the Vietnamese supermarket in my neighborhood all have end-line rhymes.

@gailcalled Um, it’s “el peor cocinero”. And if we apply the saying to you, you’re “la peor cocinera” XD

@blob_ I thought about both placement and gender. Made my decision on placement by not aping al mejor cocinero while wondering why it wasn’t al cocinero mejor. My little translation app gave only the masculine verb form. I thought about that for a while also while wondering how much more time I could waste in getting it wrong.

Anyway, the two years of college Spanish that I took with Senorita Mulberry (not a native speaker obviously) were not very useful. How is this? Puedo leer pero no puedo ni hablar ni escribir.

Hopeless, I know, but I did enjoy learning about Señor Grillito.

@glailcalled Tequila helps loosen the tongue and sharpen the ear XD

@bob: Should I pour the tequila directly into my ears? Besides, someone on fluther thinks I know some Latin. And I do have a life to begin living, don’t I? Don’t we?

@gailcalled Well, I’ve never tried that, but it could be interesting.

Me gusta tequila, me gusto el vino, me gusta cerveza tambien.
Con mis amigos, in esta cantina, cantamos y estamos bien!
Soy un hombre sincero, yo no tengo dinero,
Pero tengo un cancion in mi corazon, y tengo un grande sombrero!
(En cual poner tu dinero!)

^^ Aha. There’s mi corazon. All is well with the world.

Hebrew rhymes nicely. And even has a rhyme for “orange” which is called a tapuz – in Hebrew. It’s funny; Charuz means rhyme, and rhymes with tapuz.

@Zen_Again: It’s only an end rhyme. You don’t have the phlegmy “ch” in “tapuz.”

An end rhyme is still a rhyme, and shall be til the end of time.

@Zen: Oh, but what about meter? Your sentence does have end rhymes but no meter and thus hurts my ears. Musicians say that about music that is off-key, which my tin ear can’t hear. (I understand. also, that the iamb is supposed to be an intrinsic part of English, built-in as it were.) See HIgh Flier, by John Gillespie Magee, jr. (WWII pilot; killed at 19)

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed _ of wheeled and soared and swung….”

Mary had a little iamb…

Ok. I am not resisting temptation.

Mary is a trochee; had a- is a trochee, _little is either a spondee or a trochee_.However, I am prepared to concede to say that iamb is an iamb.

Here’s the most gruesome example; Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees.” The incessant beat does, I admit, make it easy to memorize. I can still chant the whole thing, learned in 1950.

I think that I should never see
a poem as lovely as a tree.

Even Latin has its rhyming. Here’s an excerpt from Dies Irae:

Dies irae, dies illa,
solvet saeculum in favilla,
teste David cum Sibylla.

Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando iudex est venturus,
cuncta stricte discussurus!

@Yetanotheruser: Due to the inflective quality of both Latin and classical Greek, the words are easy to rhyme.

Spoken Chinese is full of rhymes, more so than English. I speak both languages, and can say Chinese is very rhyming——the language is riddled with homonyms, which make for a lot of rhymes. In addition, almost all words in Chinese are monosyllabic, which make rhyming even more possible.

@gailcalled That is also true of Spanish, and I suspect Italian and Portuguese as well.

@Yetanotheruser: Very true; answer #7 from me (near the top of the thread) quotes Neruda:
_

And answer #8 (also from me)

All the romance languages make for easy rhyming because of the uniformity of many of the inflections.
Some of Dante:

.. Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta ...
più caramente; e questo è quello strale
che l’arco de lo essilio pria saetta….
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale o
lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle
lo scendere e ‘l salir per l’altrui scale…

Are you serious lol, must be something wrong with your ears because spanish is so easy to rhyme since most words end in vowels, basically anything can rhyme in spanish