RHYME in English poetry and speech

Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today's lesson is on the subject of rhyme. Okay? So, you

may have seen some of my videos on poetry. Have a look out for my poetry playlist on

the channel. So, this is part of that. This is all about rhymes, which often do appear

in poetry. Okay. So, what does it take to create a rhyme? How do two words rhyme? So,

it may seem obvious. You may, you know, have a good instinct for what is a rhyme, but just

to say that it has to be two things. The vowel sound has to be the same, and a consonant

sound also has to be the same. So, for example, this is a very old-fashioned... This is a

kind of thing children learn at school when they first go to school. "The cat sat on the

mat." So, we've got "a", this is the phonetic symbol for the "a" sound in these three words,

the letter "a", "a". So, "cat", "sat", "mat", you can tell that... You can hear that those

rhyme. But also the "t" at the end has to be there as well. "Cat", "sat", "mat". So,

two things, vowel and consonant. Okay? So, if you're ever looking for a rhyme, of course

you can Google it. There are websites that help you to find rhymes, but you can think

of it for yourself. If you go through the alphabet, that's the way I do it. If you've

got "at" as your basic word or component, "cat", "sat", "mat", you can go through the

alphabet. You can go "at", "b", "bat", "c", "cat", "f" works with it, "fat", "h", "hat",

"mat", "p", "pat", "r", "rat", "sat", "v", "vat". So, you just go through the letters of the

alphabet and see if that's a real word or not. It has... Well, usually it would have

to be a real word, not one that you're just making up. Okay? So, that's one way of doing

it.

And so, in poetry, the rhyming often comes at the end of a line, and it rhymes with another

line, not necessarily the line next to it, but there could be some alternating rhymes.

But it's called an "end rhyme" if it comes at the end of the line. You can also have

internal rhyme. If you see a word maybe in the middle of the line, it might rhyme with

the word of the end of the same line, or there may be a word in the middle of one line which

rhymes with another word in the middle of another line. So, don't just look at the ends

of the lines for rhymes. You might find rhyming internally as well within the line. Okay?

You can also have in poetry, if you're analysing it, you can have what's called a "half rhyme".

That's if you're not using both, it's a half rhyme. So, if you have the cat sat on the

man, you've still got the same vowel, "ah", "ah", "ah", but you've got "tuh", "tuh", "mm".

You've got an "n" here instead of a "t", so it's still got the vowel sound, but it hasn't

got the consonant sound with it, so that's called a "half rhyme" because it doesn't have

both. Okay?

And then you can also have a visual rhyme when you're seeing it in print. If you look

at these two words, they've got "r", "o", "u", "g", "h", both of them, but when you

say them, you find that they have different vowel sounds. This is "through", when you

go through somewhere, through a tunnel, the train went through the tunnel. But this word,

do you know how to pronounce this one? This word is pronounced "rough", so this is "through",

and that's "rough" with an "f" sound at the end. So, they look so similar, but they sound

completely different, so that's a visual rhyme, but it's not a sound rhyme. And the same with

this one. We've got "one", "one", but this one's pronounced "alone", and this one is

"gone", "o", "o", so the vowel sound is different again. "Alone", "gone". Okay.

And this one, well, "wind", there is a word "wind" when you wind some cotton or some wool,

you wind it into a ball, but there's also the pronunciation "wind" when it's a windy

day in the weather. "Wind". But this is pronounced "find", so if it was "wind" and "find", that

would be okay, but it's not. If this one is to do with the weather, the wind is blowing,

you've got "wind" and "find". So, you could call this a half-rhyme, possibly, because

you've got "nd" at the end, but the vowel sound is different, so it's visual and a half-rhyme

in this case.

And then finally, just to say, if you're interested in poetry and you may be writing poetry, possibly,

but rhyming isn't enough to make something poetry, because poetry also has to have some

content. It has to be saying something, hopefully something quite deep, deep thinking, something

perhaps philosophical or something that's quite emotional. And rhyming on its own, it's

just a technical thing. Rhyming on its own doesn't create a poem. There's a lot more

involved in choosing the right words, having the thoughts behind the words as well, so

that's just something to bear in mind. Rhyming isn't enough. There are some poems that don't

have any rhyme in them or very, very few rhymes, and they're really good poems. So, you know,

if you read a few and with that in mind, you'll see what I mean.

Okay, so that's the lesson for today. You might like to try it out yourself with different...

If you think of any word and then go through the alphabet and try to think of rhymes to

go with it, that's a good exercise to do. It also helps you to check your vocabulary.

Okay. And do have a look at any of my other videos that include poetry. Look for the poetry

playlist on the channel and have a look at those. And if you'd like to do a quiz to test

your understanding of rhyming, just go to the website, www.engvid.com, and give it a

try. So, thank you for watching, and I hope to see you again soon. Okay. Bye for now.