@@eccentricOrange that's,,completely unrelated? The joke was taking "stress" and "writing" and twisting it to "stressed writers"? Sure, it must be hard being academic, but it's also hard being a creative who everyone belittles because art is seen as less than STEM.
Now there was a young Scot called McNameter With a tool of prodigious diameter 'Twas not merely the size Which occasioned surprise, But the rhythm: iambic pentameter
@@freakoftheweek5470 Said a poet from Uzbekistan: Oh, my limericks never will scan! They are fine in their way But they all go astray When I try to put as many words into the last line as I possibly can.
I'm fluent in English and French and you've blown my mind. I'm well aware of lexical stress in English but it never crossed my mind about how it doesn't exist in French
@@hansvandermeulen5515 show me proof of each ruler through the generations ruling the entirety of great britian without losing it during those unnamed centuries you are talking about
@@m_uz1244 It's an extremely common mistake by non-native speakers of English. In most languages, you can say "a French." English is weird in that you can do that with some demonyms but not others. You can say, "an American," "a Mexican," "an Italian." You can't say "a British," "a Japanese," "a Swedish," or, in this case, "a French." I'm not 100% sure what the rule is, but it seems to be at its very basic that you can only do it with ones that end with "an." "A German" does sound kind of weird, though, so I guess there are exceptions. What you can always do, in English, however, is say, "a French person" or "a Japanese person." You could even say, "an American person," but that does sound a bit weird. Less weird, though, than "a French."
@@m_uz1244 Wouldn't be the internet without somebody complaining about a non native English speaker not getting the nuances of their second language quite perfect.
@UC0Kw1wDuYR3mIJARn1HCUPw ok but this doesn't the fact that no one asked, you are just annoying people, if you think you're changing people's minds then you are just wrong and that's just facts. People like you give atheists a bad name, buddy.
@@codekillerz5392 What do you think it is? I’m trying to understand the joke but iambic pentameter doesn’t seem to fit and my recall when it comes to less famous rhythm is... dodgy, as Mr. Scott might say.
As a German, it never occurred to me that there are languages without lexical stress, despite me knowing French and Spanish. You really learn something new every day! Thank you!
I guess that's the difference between knowing a language and being native in it. Apart from accents, they could probably tell that you're not a native French or Spanish
@@gabrielesalera7088 I believe it does, it definitely has those words that change meaning when you change the stressed syllable. Same with Portuguese as well.
There once was a Scott named McAmeter With a tool of prodigious diameter 'Twas not his size That caused such suprise 'Twas his rhythm - iambic pentameter
I had a slightly different impression. This rhythm was strangely familiar to me as if I heard it somewhere before as a kid watching various english movies and it took me a while to realize that Edgar A. Poe's or Yeats poetry sound exactly the same as it's also written in iambic pentameter.
Never liked Shakespeare and never read him in english, but had to read some in highschool and i can say that russian translations sound very similar to the original. At least in terms of rhythm. Or maybe i just remember it too bad. I said i don't like his poetry
@@stttrm Reading it is bland, and often difficult to parse. But watch it played out by very skilled actors, and suddenly there's a lot of life and drama and/or humor there.
It took me years to realize how fundamentally different a perception of sound English speakers have, compared to us native French speaker. I had the impression that I was perfectly pronouncing English words (I wasn't, but honestly it wasn't that bad), and to my English-speaking colleagues I might as well have been speaking Mandarin. Meanwhile, they would mumble something and because they just pronounced right the stressed syllable, a Welshman, an American, an Australian and a Scotswoman would have no trouble whatsoever understanding each other. The other eye opener was when I realized that beyond the obvious complexity of prononciation as taught to us at school was another layer and that there were much more subtle nuances of sounds - which natives were very much aware of.
Be that as it may, as an English speaking Canadian I am enormously impressed by fluently bilingual francophones. I do not have the gift of learning languages.
@@kerriwilson7732 I would say it's less that you dont have a gift and more that you dont have the proper springboards. The reason why there are so many bilingual Europeans is not because they are so much better at learning languages or because English is so easy to learn, but because most non-English speakers will have to learn out of necessity. In the days when French was the global language, all educated English speakers would have spoken French.
French native here, been practicing English every day for a very long time. I know a ton of vocabulary, grammar, rules etc... But the one thing that I can't seem to get a grip on is THAT. The lexical stress. The different ways you pronounced "Washington" made absolutely no difference for me. I'd love to master that aspect of the English language one day. Great video btw, as always, thank you Tom :)
@@vindolanda6974yeah I don't think he really changed the stressed syllable properly - too used to the usual pronunciation that his brain told him to keep it more or less the same.
I did notice the difference (I'm a native Spanish speaker) but it was so small he either did it incorrectly or lexical stress is not something to be wary of at all.
Can I just say, massive appreciation for not only the fact that you're so adamant about having accurate and high quality captions, but also for how much you acknowledge the importance of captions encompassing more than the literal words spoken in a video. This video wouldn't work with the lazy way a majority of creators, and even proper television programs, caption their content, and many videos don't. Never disappointed by these. This channel is really a little spot of content where I never feel out of place or like I'm just an uncomfortable visitor in a hearing world.
As a French person, I must say understanding and using lexical stress had to be one of the most difficult things to learn. Even now I will still forget to stress the words correctly if I don't pay attention.
difficult to learn and to unlearn, the pain goes both ways. hard to keep up with spoken French when I'm subconsciously expecting the stress and pauses that aren't present
Absolutely! I've always had problems and couldn't figure out why, this video completely enlightened me to why I have trouble parsing naturally spoken French compared with individual words, or written French. Like, I wish a French teacher years ago had been able to articulate this to me!
It goes the other way too. The number of English-speakers I've heard who can't say French words and names because they put the stress in the wrong place is frustrating to me - and I'm not even French!
What if Shakespeare responded to scam e-mails? Imagine the typical scam where the story is that a rich guy died in a plane crash with no next of kin listed and the scammer gets the response "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
As a native Russian speaker I find it funny that our poetry is also syllabo-tonic, just like English or German so it's easier to translate those languages properly but our authors mostly translated French poems, because it was much more culturally significant back in XVIII-XIX centuries
I have trouble following along with standard French speech for the same reason! the lack of pauses and regular stress makes speaking come across as too fast. it's a bit easier actually to understand Southern and Swiss dialects because they don't use quite the same stress patterns
@@haeilsey I'm attempting to learn French (just on an app, picking it up again after having several years in junior high and high school mostly forgotten from 20 years ago). The synthetic voice has exactly this problem for me - it's really damn fast and hard to pick words apart until you know exactly which ones are which!
Your script is just sooo amazingly well-written. "The lexical stress has to land on the beat" is a nice little Limerick, and "So why does Shakespeare sound like Shakespeare" is iambic in itself, right before you introduce the word "iambic". This is just too good. Great work!
"Two words that make a fancy way to say" "Stress every other syllable, in pairs" "With five such pairs in every line you write" all in iambic pentameter.
Also the alexandrine explanation was in alexandrine: "Twelve syllables per line, broken into two parts; and it should also rhyme, stress the end of each half."
Normally, stress is something you have to *not* consider while writing because oh god is it 4:10 already I need to turn in my paper at 5 and I don't have a conclusion or half my pages and it's terrible doesn't make a good essay.
As a french, it made me understand stuff about my own language. Very interesting. I think also this lack of lexical stress made our poets more creative in the content and less in musicality. I don't know how i ended up watching this though.
French poetry is still very musical; it just depends less on inherent rhythm. Meter is still present, though. One of the most challenging poetic forms, the villanelle, comes from France, and it's very musical and highly structured despite the absence of lexical stress.
3:55 "but in geneRAL, French stress SITS, at the end of the utteRANCE." as a native french speaker it's funny how you suddenly sounded like French poetry
1:17 As a learner of English as second language. I am amazed by my trained ears that they sound to me so different. I didn't expect my ears to be that trained.
Hi, as a French person I want to thank you for this. I've studied Shakespeare in English class and in French class, and to be honest, no one was as good as you to explain this concept. So thank you ! Also, you trying to sound French and then speaking as an English person made me realize the difference
@@lawrencesmeaton6930 I'm french (Breton actually) and recently watched the 3 Stargate shows. In SG Atlantis, there is Dr. Carson Beckett, a Scottish. I loved his strong accent but oh boy I had difficulties to understand sometime. I'll pay you Scotts a visit please save me some haggis and don't take offense if I ask you to repeat ;).
@@targard.quantumfrack6854 whooop Bretagne ! I watched all 5 seasons of Outlander and their Scottish accent was music to my ears. I absolutely love it. 🥰🙌🏽
I'd say its mostly the prosodic differences between the languages. Je dirais que c'est largement a cause des differences prosodiques entre les langues.
As someone who is a middle-school ESL-teacher who also teaches a French student English on the side, this was incredibly helpful. A lot of her pronunciations makes so much more sense to me now. Thank you, Tom.
Well said and extremely well laid out. I never thought of studying poetry rythm. As a native french speaker I have been conscious of my lack of sensitivity for stressing for a long time. Yet that is something even tens of thousands of hours of viewing and listening to english material couldn't teach me, however badly I wished it. The only way to learn is to mingle among natural english speakers, and slowly adjust your skills according to their reactions (or lack thereof). Or have a close relationship with one natural english speaker, and ask them to correct you when they feel you could do better. Since I can do neither right now, I shall listen to Shakespeare poetry and at last discover its wonders.
Replace "two degrees above freezing" with "two degrees below 0 f°" and "aggressive swans" with "agressive geese" and you have just described my entire life in one sentence.
Osez l'alexandrin: douze pieds, rime riche, pause au mitan du vers, césure à l'hémistiche (De cape et de Crocs, Acte VIII) "Dare the alexandrin, twelve feet, rich rhymes, Stop in the middle, cut in the half" Definition of alexandrin in alexandrin said by a fierce fighter in dual with a Spanish wolf in a French comic. Deserves to be read ;) Thanks for the video, I never understood before why English poetry sounds so good without rhymes :)
As a Frenchman, I can confirm that the stress isn't inside the words. It's in the flow of the sentence. Hence the art is to have the musicality ebb and flow in each line. If you try an alexandrin, then you will have two balanced 6 syllable halves, so that you can have a nice symmetry. Which you will break from time to time to create a dramatic effect.
It makes me want to learn languages just to read some more classics in their native tongue.. read some Madame Bovary perhaps.. or better still learn Russian! But alas I'm an incurable monolingual moose.
@@Thomas...191 I feel the same way. I love reading so much and I wish I could learn all the world's languages so as to immerse myself in all the world's literatures (because translated novels unfortunately almost always suck). But I don't even have time to read all the great English novels I want to read.
Lovely explanation! I did an English degree at a French university and this concept was one of the hardest things for French-speaking students to grasp.
Funnily enough, the most celebrated French translator of the most celebrated English poet, Bill Shakespeare, is none other than the son of the most celebrated French poet, François-Victor Hugo.
Okay so as a French person who has studied English since I was 8, lived in the UK for over 20 years I can definitely confirm, stress is, in my case at least, the one Achiles' heel that betrays my accent, no matter how hard I try. There will _Always_ be a word which I will stumble on because somehow I get the stress wrong. In some ways that's why so many folks choose to adopt some form of Americanised accent, the American droll while not doing away with stress, seems easier to manage (also Holywood but I digress) In French it's not so much that the stress comes at the end, it's more that there really isn't any stress at all, or if there is it's either very subtle or used for emotional emphasis, so naturally ... well none of it is natural. As for rhythm, well I think that explains why English works so well in song
As a native English speaker I'd never really considered the idea that languages might _not_ have this kind of stresses. The point about songs is an interesting one... Without stress to play around with the interplay between the vocals, lyrics, and rhythm can presumably never really be quite as complex I assume?
English (like all the germanic-based languages) is 'rhythm-stressed' as opposed to 'syllable-stressed' (like all the romance languages). And I agree, I think it's the hardest part to get right when learning each other's languages. I taught English in Spain and Japan and it was an endless struggle.
”Stress isn't something you are normally concerned to much while writing" Me, being extremely stressed due to the deadline of my exam I am currently writing on...😰
You've never truly experienced Shakespeare, until you've seen it performed in the original Klingon. Thank you for your videos, Tom. I almost always learn something new from them. Keep on rockin' !!
This is really interesting to me as a Latinist. As Latin developed into French, the last syllable was cut off and, generally speaking, the second to last syllable (the penult) was stressed in Latin. Essentially, you are retaining the prosody of Latin while actually only saying the beginning of the word.
This is the trick for me as a french speaker to know which part to stress in Italian. For example, it's N*a*poli, because we say Napl(e)s in French. If the stress was instead Nap*o*li, the french name would have been Napole, or something like that.
I have never EVER been able to understand iambic pentameter. No teacher, no website, no video, no personal research, has ever explained it like this before. And now, I finally, finally, FINALLY get it! THANK YOU
@@RadkeMaiden I'm sorry. I didn't realize everyone and their cat knew what Iambic pentameter was! Who could have thought hearing Iambic pentameter might help someone learn instead of just reading it from a page? It's not like people have different ways of understanding things or learning. But thanks for that comment. I'm happy you felt confidently superior enough to write it so condescendingly instead of letting someone learn something! Enjoy your day. 😊
@@trueriver1950 True. I think a lot of teachers, even if they personally knew what it was, didn't know how to explain it. I think part of it stems from probably being a native English speaker. You don't realize it does these things unless someone tells you!
@@LaEternal For me, the issue is that "stress" is never explained. Like, you can tell me iambic pentameter is a pattern of stress and you can show me the unstressed and stressed syllables, but if you don't explain what stress actually is, I'll have no idea what you're talking about.
@@michaelhenry3234 ah ha! Another good point! If you don't know what stress is the definition means nothing!! I hadn't thought of that but it's a good point! 😊👏🏽
Living in Ontario close to Quebec, I never realized the stress on the last syllable of French words… when I tried it I realized it was no different from how I speak french normally!! even before knowing that though just growing up around Québécois speaking people made me naturally accustomed to that
This! Bit of a rant, but I never understood how exactly stress played into the words themselves. In my english class we were told "10 syllables per line, and stress every other pair no matter what" - now I realize that you have to also adapt the words themselves so you're stressing the right parts, and that's what makes it sound fluid and natural.
That reflects more on yourself more than on your teacher. If you couldn't grasp such a simple concept in 2 years and never bothered to ask for clarification, well, then you either didnt care or you are an idiot. No other option
I’ve searched through valleys, I’ve searched through seas To, perhaps, find the culprit unmasked Yet the gods deny me success despite my pleas In finding who tf asked.
I never understood why people think swans can break your arm, birds famously have bones that are weak to that kind of force, I guess it’s just something people tell kids so they don’t get too close
2:30 Yes there's a pause there if you say it that way with a pause after the second beat, but it's no clunkier than the "Leeds" example used just 30 seconds earlier which has the exact same pause.
As a Brazilian, I always have a huge difficulty understanding the appeal of poetry in english... But I get it now, I just don't know what rhythm to read it in. Which also explains why I do enjoy other people reading it...
Yes, English styles of poetry are all about the metrical feet. It's not all iambic pentameter, of course, as the limerick example demonstrates. If you want to sound like Dr. Seuss you use anapestic tetrameter, which has three-beat feet with the stress on the end: "On the FAR away Island of SALa-ma-SOND / YERtle the TURtle was KING of the POND." (Note we skipped a couple of syllables at the beginning of the second line.) ("Green Eggs and Ham" is an exception: I think that's iambic tetrameter.)
@@andreasandros8580 it’s the meaning that can be appreciated, if one can’t understand the language. I sing opera and prefer singing in the original language the show was composed in.
I disagree, I'd say English can pack just as much in - BUT Japanese prizes economy above all, so the Haiku form itself makes more sense as a poetic challenge in Japanese.
3:19 "stress every other syllable, in pairs with five such pairs in every line you write" the fact that that in itself is iambic pentameter is kinda genius
As an Italian, I understand French people's frustration with this. Our verses too are based more on the number of syllables than on stresses. And this video brought back memories from high school, when we had to read Latin poetry and so many classmates struggled with the stresses even when I wrote them down for them. Thankfully I knew a bit of solfège and had to resort to study the poems as if I was studying a musical piece, but it was awkward reading in class while keeping the beat with my foot.
@@lowceyn2875 I get that you're Veneto, so it's almost second nature, but could you please refrain from blasphemy? Thanks. Anyway, yes, we do have some lexical stress, but in class you're taught to just count the sillables
This was really cool! I had to write limericks and Shakespearean poems in iambic pentameter in high school and it was quite a challenge. I've also had to translate poems for my French classes and they never sound as good!
Funnily enough, as a French speaker who has learnt English and now speaks it fluently, l still sometimes have trouble with lexical stress, and I'll have to utter words I've said right thousands of time to myself until I get the stress in the right spot ! And honestly, the french accent based solely on stress was spot on !
Yes. I don't actually speak French all that well (I was near-fluent 25 years ago) but if I just get that one thing right, they aren't sure where I'm from.
@@AdrianAbdel I think line and rhyme should rhyme. But one of them has an m and the other an n. I don't know if that is still considered a correct rhyme in english.
@@AdrianAbdel He's explaining the poetic technique and his explanation is an example of the technique, if you read the comment (in Tom Scott's accent) notice how he's doing what he's describing
@@reorders9868 I beleive it could be considered a "rime pauvre" (poor rhyme) in french, where only 1 sound rhymes, as the "e" at the end of line and rhyme are pronounced the same
Interesting. The term alexandrine(r) is also used in german, a language that has lexical stress, but funnily enough it refers to a iambic type of poetry where you have six stressed syllables, with every second syllable being stressed.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 I think using numeration, '1/one' instead of an article, 'a' would highlight the brevity a smidgen more. Impressively, it's all done in one take.
Have to say, I actually jumped a little bit when the "lexical stress" card popped up from the bottom of the screen. After warning us about the swans, I was carefully watching two of them swimming up behind him, and disappearing below the frame as they got closer...
I can't get over the fact the Tom managed to explain in about 10 seconds what my English teacher couldn't explain in 2 years (that being the iambic pentameter)
It’s inconceivable that an English teacher can’t explain that iambic pentameter is a 10-syllable meter with stress on every other syllable. I have to assume you just weren’t paying attention during that particular 10 seconds of class
@@PatheticApathetic well, I was 15, never had stress in poetry explained to me, and didn't k ow what meter meant. Tbh, still don't. Don't judge pal, but if an explanation involves three concepts I don't already understand, I ain't gonna get it yknow.
@@NitroNinja324 Yes, they can be quite terrible. It's usually because they don't understand the source material they're trying to teach, which in turn is usually because they don't care.
This is part of why japanese's main poetry styles are haiku and tanka. The language doesn't have any stressed syllables instead using a pitch shifting accent that gives it a sonewhat musical tone, and a very rigid syllable structure where almost every consonant has a paired vowel (except n) that fits into a mostly consistent meter (at least formally casual pronunciation of course plays with this a bit). Because of this rhyming words occur several times a sentence, and emphasizing is less apparent. So japanese poets decided it was more interesting to focus on different ways of playing with the rigid syllable structure. By setting various limits and patterns to how a poem is formed, and then coming up with clever word play to work around those limits.
All more or less true, I would add that there is emphasis of poetic topics, particular poetic words, and lots of puns. Japanese also have a sense that certain sounds have particular character and atmosphere, owing I guess to their rich set of onomatopaeic words. There's a number of different techniques they're able to employ. The anthologies I have include the Japanese when the original was not a Chinese poem, which is nice at least to get a sense of the sound next to the translation, especially if you know a little Japanese. It really can't be understated how much Japanese like puns, which plays into the homophonic nature of many of their words given the limited set of characters they have to express sound (pitch sometimes differentiates them, but I don't think invalidates puns). As you stated, things like rhyme really have no meaning in Japanese, but they have much more than rigid syllable counts to work with.
This is fascinating! Going by all the descriptions I had encountered before, it seemed to me that haiku was trivial, akin to the chanting of slogans in English, but without the need for rhyming. If that were true, then my following attempt would be a top-notch poem, if only the words were Japanese: Bonsai, go away! We don't want to have you here - bonsai, disappear! In fact, compared to the examples given in the Wikipedia article on haiku in English, I should get a Nobel Prize in literature for it! Yet your comment suggests, that there must be more to haiku, much more. Is that bit more impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't understand Japanese?
now i understand haiku better! back in high school we were told to write our own haikus (in English), and the structure and all never made sense to me.
Apologies to French folks; this was tough!
wow
1 WEEK AGO?
is this glitch only happening to me?
ok
@@pigeonb3443 unlisted probably
a week ago?
Swans are never surprisingly aggressive, they are always as aggressive as expected
its tom’s weakness
Ok then i will lower my expectations for their aggression
Swandalf the Gray, is that you?
Then they must be extremely aggressive
@Spatza You must be fun at parties.
Tom: There will be jump cuts.
Also Tom: Single take, no jump cuts.
if there was a jumpcut, I missed it
*"One take!"*
I noticed one, but that's it.
@@xchronox0 Where, I've watched through a couple of times, and can't spot it!
I was watching the swans carefully for jumps... And attacks. Can never be too careful.
This will be full of jump cuts.
Not a single jump cut.
Bravo!
Ok verified person
or should we say, bravo editor?
hi checkmark
Predictable
Hmmm. It would have needed a jump-cut to get rid of the warning about jump-cuts. No way to win.
IMO the most important reason why Shakespeare could never have been French is because he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England
Lmao
As French people say “Bien vu Sherlock”
Bien vu sherlock
“Stress isn’t normally something you have to consider when writing”
A million stressed writers disagree
"but this does put a smile on my face"
What about non-writers? It's a lot of stress for us STEM people!!
Unless you have already spent the advance and still have writer's block
@@eccentricOrange that's,,completely unrelated? The joke was taking "stress" and "writing" and twisting it to "stressed writers"? Sure, it must be hard being academic, but it's also hard being a creative who everyone belittles because art is seen as less than STEM.
@@klausjacklister and that's why STEAM is better than STEM.
“Surprisingly aggressive swans”
Also known as swans
Now there was a young Scot called McNameter
With a tool of prodigious diameter
'Twas not merely the size
Which occasioned surprise,
But the rhythm: iambic pentameter
@@simonmultiverse6349 😳🙈❤️🔥
@@freakoftheweek5470
Said a poet from Uzbekistan:
Oh, my limericks never will scan!
They are fine in their way
But they all go astray
When I try to put as many words into the last line as I possibly can.
@@simonmultiverse6349 COME BACK WE NEED MORE
@@simonmultiverse6349 PLEASE
"Stress isn't normally something you have to consider too much while writing"
You should see me write a paper for uni...
Ahahhahaha that’s too true 😭👏👏
Normally there are exceptions
Comment of the year
Took a gallon of brandy to get me through the last term XD
LMAO
I'm fluent in English and French and you've blown my mind. I'm well aware of lexical stress in English but it never crossed my mind about how it doesn't exist in French
Great Britain was ruled by francophones for several centuries, starting with William the Conqueror.
@@hansvandermeulen5515 show me proof of each ruler through the generations ruling the entirety of great britian without losing it during those unnamed centuries you are talking about
@Viva Espana What?
same, but im not good at french
@@JaKingScomez They literally slapped it as they royal motto.
Me as a French : "I can't stress enough."
-: "You can't stress what ?"
-:" ..... I just can't."
"a French"? tf
a french ...
@@m_uz1244 It's an extremely common mistake by non-native speakers of English. In most languages, you can say "a French." English is weird in that you can do that with some demonyms but not others. You can say, "an American," "a Mexican," "an Italian." You can't say "a British," "a Japanese," "a Swedish," or, in this case, "a French." I'm not 100% sure what the rule is, but it seems to be at its very basic that you can only do it with ones that end with "an." "A German" does sound kind of weird, though, so I guess there are exceptions.
What you can always do, in English, however, is say, "a French person" or "a Japanese person." You could even say, "an American person," but that does sound a bit weird. Less weird, though, than "a French."
This joke works on so many levels
@@m_uz1244 Wouldn't be the internet without somebody complaining about a non native English speaker not getting the nuances of their second language quite perfect.
Can I just say, as someone who requires subtitles: these subtitles are so easy to understand, and whoever made them deserves a raise
@Spatza dude. Chill
@Spatza k
@UC0Kw1wDuYR3mIJARn1HCUPw ok but this doesn't the fact that no one asked, you are just annoying people, if you think you're changing people's minds then you are just wrong and that's just facts. People like you give atheists a bad name, buddy.
@@Spanky2k what
Exactly!
As a French who had to learn English on the fly, I can confirm that the stress is everywhere.
this comment is a MOOD xD
l'anglais est stressant je suis d'accord avec toi ;)
Sounds like it was quite distressing
*badam tsuu*
That happens because our British friends delight in stressing over EVERYTHING.
You made me understand why, as a native french speaker, I find english poetry so eerie yet so pleasant. Thank you !
The water in Majorca don't taste like what it ought to
what’s your favorite English poem?
Funnily enough our lack of lexical stress is too the reason why so many English natives find French so eerie
1:32 "Stress isn't something you have to consider too much while writing,"
Tom Scott forgot all about school, huh.
Solid mechanics homework: "depict a typical stress element"
Me: (draws myself)
In an alternate universe:
*Why Chèquespire Could Never Have Been English*
Chêquespirrghe
莎士比亚
pourquoi chaiquespire n'aurait pas pu être Anglais
@@tom.walder there's no "gh" in French 😉
Pourquoi Chexpire n'aurait jamais pu être anglais
Alternate title: How Shakespeare ensured the French could never fully appreciate his plays
Romeo and Juliet was still funny
Is that what I think it is? I suck at recognizing rhythm.
My hero O7
Truly the patron saint of Brits everywhere.
@@codekillerz5392 What do you think it is? I’m trying to understand the joke but iambic pentameter doesn’t seem to fit and my recall when it comes to less famous rhythm is... dodgy, as Mr. Scott might say.
As a German, it never occurred to me that there are languages without lexical stress, despite me knowing French and Spanish. You really learn something new every day! Thank you!
I guess that's the difference between knowing a language and being native in it. Apart from accents, they could probably tell that you're not a native French or Spanish
to be fair Spanish should have lexical stress. I mean, Italian does have it so I suppose ot should be the same for Spanish
@@gabrielesalera7088 I believe it does, it definitely has those words that change meaning when you change the stressed syllable. Same with Portuguese as well.
spanish does have lexical stress. In fact, it is shown in the words itself (á,é,í,ó,ú)
There once was a Scott named McAmeter
With a tool of prodigious diameter
'Twas not his size
That caused such suprise
'Twas his rhythm - iambic pentameter
for some reason i read this in a french accent
I’m too tired to know what this means, but it sounds cool
Naughty.
Nice
the words of a learned pervert
As a non-native English speaker, I have never heard how Shakespeare sounds in English and my mind is actually blown rn
I had a slightly different impression. This rhythm was strangely familiar to me as if I heard it somewhere before as a kid watching various english movies and it took me a while to realize that Edgar A. Poe's or Yeats poetry sound exactly the same as it's also written in iambic pentameter.
Never liked Shakespeare and never read him in english, but had to read some in highschool and i can say that russian translations sound very similar to the original. At least in terms of rhythm. Or maybe i just remember it too bad. I said i don't like his poetry
@@stttrm Shakespeare is better watched or performed than read.
@@stttrm Reading it is bland, and often difficult to parse. But watch it played out by very skilled actors, and suddenly there's a lot of life and drama and/or humor there.
@@stttrm watch The Hollow Crown
Me, a Frenchman trying to test what's demonstrated here:
Suddenly, brain can no longer think in French.
I learned recently that this is called the "centipede's dilemma," which is cool that it has a name.
@@zombie_pigdragon Oh, I didn't know! I'll look for some popularization video about it. ;)
@@zombie_pigdragon :OMG, this reminds me of my brilliant, but a wee bit touched son! Thanks for the insight!!
@HDStudios Il est Belge.
J'irai par la forêt, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.
am I helping
It took me years to realize how fundamentally different a perception of sound English speakers have, compared to us native French speaker. I had the impression that I was perfectly pronouncing English words (I wasn't, but honestly it wasn't that bad), and to my English-speaking colleagues I might as well have been speaking Mandarin. Meanwhile, they would mumble something and because they just pronounced right the stressed syllable, a Welshman, an American, an Australian and a Scotswoman would have no trouble whatsoever understanding each other. The other eye opener was when I realized that beyond the obvious complexity of prononciation as taught to us at school was another layer and that there were much more subtle nuances of sounds - which natives were very much aware of.
Be that as it may, as an English speaking Canadian I am enormously impressed by fluently bilingual francophones. I do not have the gift of learning languages.
“a Welshman, an American, an Australian, and a Scotswoman would have no trouble whatsoever understanding each other”
Well yes, but actually no.
@@509Gman Scratch "no trouble whatsoever", replace with "much less trouble" ^^
@@kerriwilson7732 I would say it's less that you dont have a gift and more that you dont have the proper springboards. The reason why there are so many bilingual Europeans is not because they are so much better at learning languages or because English is so easy to learn, but because most non-English speakers will have to learn out of necessity. In the days when French was the global language, all educated English speakers would have spoken French.
@@weirdlanguageguy If Zamehof had his way with it, we would all be speaking Esperanto.
Sad there were no shots of aggressive swans chasing Tom. 10/10 would watch again.
I expected to see this kind of outtakes at the end as well. I am disappointed.
😁👍
Just the one swan actually.
Me scrolling through yt at midnight: *sure, let’s find out why Shakespeare isn’t french*
Ahah always like that
let’s?
@@SavageJarJar let us??
@@lilybigwilly no it means "let's've'd" iodot smh
For me 1am
French native here, been practicing English every day for a very long time. I know a ton of vocabulary, grammar, rules etc... But the one thing that I can't seem to get a grip on is THAT. The lexical stress. The different ways you pronounced "Washington" made absolutely no difference for me. I'd love to master that aspect of the English language one day.
Great video btw, as always, thank you Tom :)
The 'Washingtons' were pronounced very similar to each other, as a native English speaker the difference was hard to pick up.
@@vindolanda6974yeah I don't think he really changed the stressed syllable properly - too used to the usual pronunciation that his brain told him to keep it more or less the same.
I did notice the difference (I'm a native Spanish speaker) but it was so small he either did it incorrectly or lexical stress is not something to be wary of at all.
“Some surprisingly aggressive swans” the words of someone who has never interacted with a swan before
Nice limerick ;)
Why would you want to interact with them?
Also the word of swan handlers. One can never be prepared for how aggressive swans are.
@@igualnimp Because they're there?
@@igualnimp aggressive swans will interact with you, whether you want to or not...
“There’re going to be jump cuts”
Me: doesn’t see any jump cuts
Nice flex, Tom
One of the best presenters on TH-cam.
@UC5U_P1nHWh2PSNZQ_TL7pDg
How
: awesome :
It is a TH-cam emoji
Type that without spaces
Can I just say, massive appreciation for not only the fact that you're so adamant about having accurate and high quality captions, but also for how much you acknowledge the importance of captions encompassing more than the literal words spoken in a video. This video wouldn't work with the lazy way a majority of creators, and even proper television programs, caption their content, and many videos don't. Never disappointed by these. This channel is really a little spot of content where I never feel out of place or like I'm just an uncomfortable visitor in a hearing world.
Tom and also Alec from Technology Connections do a fantastic job with captions
...just gonna rewatch the video with captions because I gotta experience this for myself. Tom is great!
@@NightGlyde I just did the same thing.
3kliksphilip does it as well
What's it like to watch a video about phonetics as a deaf person anyway? Do you understand the pronounciation stuff? Just very curious.
I'm French and I had never heard someone sounding so French while speaking normal English
As a French person, I must say understanding and using lexical stress had to be one of the most difficult things to learn. Even now I will still forget to stress the words correctly if I don't pay attention.
difficult to learn and to unlearn, the pain goes both ways. hard to keep up with spoken French when I'm subconsciously expecting the stress and pauses that aren't present
Absolutely! I've always had problems and couldn't figure out why, this video completely enlightened me to why I have trouble parsing naturally spoken French compared with individual words, or written French. Like, I wish a French teacher years ago had been able to articulate this to me!
It goes the other way too. The number of English-speakers I've heard who can't say French words and names because they put the stress in the wrong place is frustrating to me - and I'm not even French!
Welp, I didn't even know this existed.
Or the th sound
You know it's cold when Tom is wearing more than a t-shirt.
More than a red t-shirt
r/technicallythetruth
you know its not cold when tom is wearing a t-shirt
@Spatza pal are you okay?
@Spatza huh a youtube bot go figure
Of course you have not really experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon
Oo ello. You had me wading into a pond to collect water this past quarantine
Make more Fray Bentos please
Qa’pla!
King, Son of Lear. Glory be to his house!
Two Ferengis of Veridian 3.
Martok and Juliet.
And Glory be to your house!
+
What if Shakespeare responded to scam e-mails? Imagine the typical scam where the story is that a rich guy died in a plane crash with no next of kin listed and the scammer gets the response "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
As a native Russian speaker I find it funny that our poetry is also syllabo-tonic, just like English or German so it's easier to translate those languages properly but our authors mostly translated French poems, because it was much more culturally significant back in XVIII-XIX centuries
Why are you using Roman numerals?
@@AlchemistOfNirnrootbecause that's how you count centuries
@@tpuddin most people just say 18th-19th century
@@AlchemistOfNirnrootit just looks cooler
@@AlchemistOfNirnrootroman numerals are the norm for centuries in most european languages bar English
As a Frenchman, my time in the US was very hard because I couldn't put my emphasis in the right places, and people could not understand me.
Pardon?
A la... French fry perhaps?
I have trouble following along with standard French speech for the same reason! the lack of pauses and regular stress makes speaking come across as too fast. it's a bit easier actually to understand Southern and Swiss dialects because they don't use quite the same stress patterns
@@haeilsey Never talk to Northern french people then, or you will enter a world of pain and confusion
@@haeilsey I'm attempting to learn French (just on an app, picking it up again after having several years in junior high and high school mostly forgotten from 20 years ago). The synthetic voice has exactly this problem for me - it's really damn fast and hard to pick words apart until you know exactly which ones are which!
Your script is just sooo amazingly well-written. "The lexical stress has to land on the beat" is a nice little Limerick, and "So why does Shakespeare sound like Shakespeare" is iambic in itself, right before you introduce the word "iambic". This is just too good. Great work!
"Two words that make a fancy way to say"
"Stress every other syllable, in pairs"
"With five such pairs in every line you write"
all in iambic pentameter.
Also the alexandrine explanation was in alexandrine: "Twelve syllables per line, broken into two parts; and it should also rhyme, stress the end of each half."
The best poems are the subtle ones like this.
"Stress isn't normally something you have to consider while writing,"
Students:
I was thinking that too!! haha
I'm not stressed while writing...
Except when I have times essays. Those absolutely suck. Why do they exist?! What's the point?!
Normally, stress is something you have to *not* consider while writing because oh god is it 4:10 already I need to turn in my paper at 5 and I don't have a conclusion or half my pages and it's terrible doesn't make a good essay.
As a french, it made me understand stuff about my own language. Very interesting. I think also this lack of lexical stress made our poets more creative in the content and less in musicality.
I don't know how i ended up watching this though.
French poetry is still very musical; it just depends less on inherent rhythm. Meter is still present, though. One of the most challenging poetic forms, the villanelle, comes from France, and it's very musical and highly structured despite the absence of lexical stress.
J'apprends français et il y a plusieurs de Français qui me disent ça. Cependant j'ai appris très peu de anglais, ma langue natale.
This is also explains why French witches and wizards couldn't cast decent levitation spells if their lives depended on it
"Wingardium LeviosAAAAAA".
Stop it, Ron.
The folk at Beauxbatons could not compare.
Makes me wonder how they translated that scene into French
The fact that, thanks to French bureaucracy, each spell must be accompanied by a form 3045-B duly signed really doesn't help...
Very interesting, and also your explanation of iambic pentameter was clear and concise.
explained Iambic Pentameter better in 2 Minutes than my GCSE English Teacher did in 2 Years
@@Jaeden_Phoenix seriously, i couldn't have told you what it means before this, bit its so simple
Five years of High School where it was mentioned every year and I never got it. Now I do!
sounds like a Grammarly ad 🤭
I can finally write in iambic pentameter now
3:55 "but in geneRAL, French stress SITS, at the end of the utteRANCE." as a native french speaker it's funny how you suddenly sounded like French poetry
Now that I imagine French accents in my head this makes complete sense.
@@AntonLFG It really does tbh
Me, a native french speaker : Oh so that's why it's hard to speak English without sounding french !
@@meilline3616 It's really obvious now that it's been pointed out! As a native English speaker, I think prefer it. Sounds nicer imho
3:50
1:17 As a learner of English as second language. I am amazed by my trained ears that they sound to me so different. I didn't expect my ears to be that trained.
filipino moment
Hi, as a French person I want to thank you for this. I've studied Shakespeare in English class and in French class, and to be honest, no one was as good as you to explain this concept. So thank you !
Also, you trying to sound French and then speaking as an English person made me realize the difference
Cheers, Charlie
As always, Tom can outcompete the pros.
How's the baguette?
"Surprisingly aggressive swans."
Only surprising if you don't know swans.
Maybe they were passively aggressive, which would be quite surprising.
Swans: Geese, but after the level up.
A N G E R Y
As TierZoo would put it, Swans have as good an intimate skill as geese, but actually have the stats to back it up and MESS YOU UP.
And particularly if you don't know the Stratford swans
As a french person, I can confirm that every exemple of limerick that Tom gave that was supposed to "not sound right" sounded perfectly right to me...
Same !
They sound extremely jarring and 'wrong' to my scottish ears. What a funny world.
@@lawrencesmeaton6930 I'm french (Breton actually) and recently watched the 3 Stargate shows. In SG Atlantis, there is Dr. Carson Beckett, a Scottish. I loved his strong accent but oh boy I had difficulties to understand sometime. I'll pay you Scotts a visit please save me some haggis and don't take offense if I ask you to repeat ;).
I even had to search what exactly is a limerick...
@@targard.quantumfrack6854 whooop Bretagne ! I watched all 5 seasons of Outlander and their Scottish accent was music to my ears. I absolutely love it. 🥰🙌🏽
J'adore entendre un Anglais parler de la langue française, ça me fait remarquer toutes nos bizarreries linguistiques .
I'd say its mostly the prosodic differences between the languages.
Je dirais que c'est largement a cause des differences prosodiques entre les langues.
Jsp pk dans ma tête je l'ai lu avec un accent anglais
"The feeling and sound of a limerick, relies on the lexical stress"
Very correct, my utmost respect
But I wish you were wearing a dress
Limerick doesn't rhyme with stress nor dress
@@witherblaze they gave it a good shot though, I say well done
@@witherblaze it's a limemorty
@@witherblaze limerick rhymes with lexical because of the Ls, relies and stress rhyme because of the Ss
Femboy Tom Scott
As someone who is a middle-school ESL-teacher who also teaches a French student English on the side, this was incredibly helpful. A lot of her pronunciations makes so much more sense to me now. Thank you, Tom.
You better Google: stress timed and syllable timed languages.
Tom: "This is not going to be 1 take"
The video: *is one take*
Illuminati confirmed… 😶
*sad jump cut noises*
Or was it??? *x files theme song plays*
Well said and extremely well laid out. I never thought of studying poetry rythm.
As a native french speaker I have been conscious of my lack of sensitivity for stressing for a long time.
Yet that is something even tens of thousands of hours of viewing and listening to english material couldn't teach me, however badly I wished it.
The only way to learn is to mingle among natural english speakers, and slowly adjust your skills according to their reactions (or lack thereof).
Or have a close relationship with one natural english speaker, and ask them to correct you when they feel you could do better.
Since I can do neither right now, I shall listen to Shakespeare poetry and at last discover its wonders.
"It's two degrees above freezing and I'm being being pestered ocationally by surprisingly aggressive swans."
Welcome to the great British outdoors.
They are protected by The Queen, and they know it.
Until they get pissed on at 2 am by a drunk 18 y/o ;)
Such savage wilderness.
Replace "two degrees above freezing" with "two degrees below 0 f°" and "aggressive swans" with "agressive geese" and you have just described my entire life in one sentence.
Being being
"... some surprisingly aggressive swans."
There's nothing surprising about aggressive swans. They're foul-tempered killers.
*fowl-tempered
Maybe these swans were more aggressive than regular swans (whose standard level of aggression is 'attack')?
Who do they kill? Apart from fish, that is.
@@Tigerdragon2 you mean their level of agression was 'nuke that pesky human!'?
@@ThreadBomb People. A guy in a city near me was attacked and drowned in a pond by a pair of swans.
“Surprisingly aggressive swans”
So... regular swans?
Osez l'alexandrin: douze pieds, rime riche,
pause au mitan du vers, césure à l'hémistiche
(De cape et de Crocs, Acte VIII)
"Dare the alexandrin, twelve feet, rich rhymes,
Stop in the middle, cut in the half"
Definition of alexandrin in alexandrin said by a fierce fighter in dual with a Spanish wolf in a French comic. Deserves to be read ;)
Thanks for the video, I never understood before why English poetry sounds so good without rhymes :)
"surprisingly aggressive swans"
Either you've never come into contact with a swan before, or they're literally trying to kill you.
"either you've never come in contact with swans before, or they're behaving normaly" ftfy
My was nearly killed by one
As a Frenchman, I can confirm that the stress isn't inside the words. It's in the flow of the sentence. Hence the art is to have the musicality ebb and flow in each line. If you try an alexandrin, then you will have two balanced 6 syllable halves, so that you can have a nice symmetry. Which you will break from time to time to create a dramatic effect.
@@andreasandros8580 yes it is! most french poetry/plays of 19th century and before are.
Very well stated. Thank you.
Avec l’accent du sud y’a ce « stress » dans les mots non ? Ou c’est juste chantant ?
yes, I agree!
@@oscarmajdi3700 oui chantant, ça ne change pas la nature des mots.
As a french person, this makes sense. The same way, you couldn't translate Baudelaire into english! Culture always has limits set by language
It makes me want to learn languages just to read some more classics in their native tongue.. read some Madame Bovary perhaps.. or better still learn Russian! But alas I'm an incurable monolingual moose.
What is the closest thing to Baudelaire in English
@@hoseasylvester2596 Baudelaire was Edgar Allan Poe's translator in French, so I guess Poe?
@@Thomas...191 I feel the same way. I love reading so much and I wish I could learn all the world's languages so as to immerse myself in all the world's literatures (because translated novels unfortunately almost always suck). But I don't even have time to read all the great English novels I want to read.
@@hoseasylvester2596 I'd love to answer but I don't actually know sadly!
Lovely explanation! I did an English degree at a French university and this concept was one of the hardest things for French-speaking students to grasp.
Me as a simple Frenchman : English are too stressed, they have to learn to relax.
english are too STRESSED, they 'ave to learn to reLAX
@@graemetang4173 engLISH (h')ar tout STRESSED, zey 'AV to LEARN 'ow to be reLAXED.
Hey at least it isn't Russian
my boss is french and shes the least relaxed person i know, so...
“Some surprisingly aggressive swans” is so aggressively British
Surprisingly so, or?
Just the one swan actually
Well, they are all owned by the Queen
In Stratford they aren't even that aggressive tbh
Funnily enough, the most celebrated French translator of the most celebrated English poet, Bill Shakespeare, is none other than the son of the most celebrated French poet, François-Victor Hugo.
Billy?
@@talhaj9891 Timmy? Is that you?
@@lethe56 Yes! Can't believe it's actually you!
@@talhaj9891 Wait till I tell mother! I found my long lost brother!
@@lethe56 I can't control my tears right now.
I love how Tom can take something i have zero interest in and make it interesting to the point im completely engrossed in the video
Okay so as a French person who has studied English since I was 8, lived in the UK for over 20 years I can definitely confirm, stress is, in my case at least, the one Achiles' heel that betrays my accent, no matter how hard I try. There will _Always_ be a word which I will stumble on because somehow I get the stress wrong. In some ways that's why so many folks choose to adopt some form of Americanised accent, the American droll while not doing away with stress, seems easier to manage (also Holywood but I digress)
In French it's not so much that the stress comes at the end, it's more that there really isn't any stress at all, or if there is it's either very subtle or used for emotional emphasis, so naturally ... well none of it is natural.
As for rhythm, well I think that explains why English works so well in song
As a native English speaker I'd never really considered the idea that languages might _not_ have this kind of stresses. The point about songs is an interesting one... Without stress to play around with the interplay between the vocals, lyrics, and rhythm can presumably never really be quite as complex I assume?
@@GameFreak7744 french poetry and songs put a much greater emphasis on rhymes because of that
@@themaskedpotatosteevecat8593 Indeed, it's so pervasive it always feels weird to me to read poetry without any rhyme at all.
English (like all the germanic-based languages) is 'rhythm-stressed' as opposed to 'syllable-stressed' (like all the romance languages). And I agree, I think it's the hardest part to get right when learning each other's languages. I taught English in Spain and Japan and it was an endless struggle.
@@ragnkja Like tongue twisters?
”Stress isn't something you are normally concerned to much while writing"
Me, being extremely stressed due to the deadline of my exam I am currently writing on...😰
Really? Only for this one and not the next and the next and the next
Just kidding
@Ho Lam YIU it's probably an online exam
"Twelve syllables per line
Broken into two parts"
I see what you did there.
That was really well played.
I don’t
@@batata2531 it’s a twelve syllable line divided into 2 lines of six syllables
@@batata2531 c'est un alexandrin
Ah nice
"And it should also rhyme,
stress the end of each half."
You've never truly experienced Shakespeare, until you've seen it performed in the original Klingon.
Thank you for your videos, Tom. I almost always learn something new from them. Keep on rockin' !!
Tom: "In French, by default, stress lands on the last syllable of an utterance."
Me: "Est-ce que c’est vrai…? Oh my god."
"French can't do that" - Cela ne fait du sens partout, tu sais?
This is really interesting to me as a Latinist. As Latin developed into French, the last syllable was cut off and, generally speaking, the second to last syllable (the penult) was stressed in Latin. Essentially, you are retaining the prosody of Latin while actually only saying the beginning of the word.
This is the trick for me as a french speaker to know which part to stress in Italian. For example, it's N*a*poli, because we say Napl(e)s in French. If the stress was instead Nap*o*li, the french name would have been Napole, or something like that.
@@bob53135 that's very interesting (i am not sarcastic)
@@comichb Pardon, I'm out of practice.
Throughout the entire video I kept waiting for him to be attacked by swans.
@Rita - F**UĆК МЕ ! you misspelled xp
And more importantly I told you not to call me here
Or to have a jump cut. Neither of which happened.
Same
I have never EVER been able to understand iambic pentameter. No teacher, no website, no video, no personal research, has ever explained it like this before. And now, I finally, finally, FINALLY get it! THANK YOU
@@RadkeMaiden I'm sorry. I didn't realize everyone and their cat knew what Iambic pentameter was! Who could have thought hearing Iambic pentameter might help someone learn instead of just reading it from a page? It's not like people have different ways of understanding things or learning. But thanks for that comment. I'm happy you felt confidently superior enough to write it so condescendingly instead of letting someone learn something! Enjoy your day. 😊
What sucks is the low quality of the teachers you had when you did poetry at school.
You and many others
@@trueriver1950 True. I think a lot of teachers, even if they personally knew what it was, didn't know how to explain it. I think part of it stems from probably being a native English speaker. You don't realize it does these things unless someone tells you!
@@LaEternal For me, the issue is that "stress" is never explained. Like, you can tell me iambic pentameter is a pattern of stress and you can show me the unstressed and stressed syllables, but if you don't explain what stress actually is, I'll have no idea what you're talking about.
@@michaelhenry3234 ah ha! Another good point! If you don't know what stress is the definition means nothing!! I hadn't thought of that but it's a good point! 😊👏🏽
Living in Ontario close to Quebec, I never realized the stress on the last syllable of French words… when I tried it I realized it was no different from how I speak french normally!! even before knowing that though just growing up around Québécois speaking people made me naturally accustomed to that
You explained iambic pentameter in five seconds better than two years of English literature GCSE
This! Bit of a rant, but I never understood how exactly stress played into the words themselves. In my english class we were told "10 syllables per line, and stress every other pair no matter what" - now I realize that you have to also adapt the words themselves so you're stressing the right parts, and that's what makes it sound fluid and natural.
The more that you are taught, the less you learn.
That reflects more on yourself more than on your teacher. If you couldn't grasp such a simple concept in 2 years and never bothered to ask for clarification, well, then you either didnt care or you are an idiot. No other option
I’ve searched through valleys, I’ve searched through seas
To, perhaps, find the culprit unmasked
Yet the gods deny me success despite my pleas
In finding who tf asked.
@@Shadowtail This is amazing.
'I'm being pestered occasionally by some surprisingly aggressive swans.'
Oh you sweet summer child.
@Spatza what do you expect to gain from that comment?
@Spatza um ok
@@GameMaster-pz9pw perhaps a spam report. And that I can provide
coming soon: Untitled Swan Game
Ignore spatza the spaz
"Surprisingly aggressive swans"? In the words of David Mitchell, "That's what they DO! They break your arm, and then the queen eats them."
I never understood this... I don't think I've ever heard of the Queen eating peoples arms...
@@illiath4438 You're right, it just sounds plain silly
@@illiath4438 the queen owns all of the swans in the UK so it's insinuating that they're her little army doing her bidding
I never understood why people think swans can break your arm, birds famously have bones that are weak to that kind of force, I guess it’s just something people tell kids so they don’t get too close
@@AndrewNajash Once again true, this comedian guy really has no clue what he's talking about smh
2:30 Yes there's a pause there if you say it that way with a pause after the second beat, but it's no clunkier than the "Leeds" example used just 30 seconds earlier which has the exact same pause.
This video made me realize how much I would like to hear Tom Scott reading poetry
I second this wholeheartedly
TomScottASMR
with an unlisted video of CRT monitors
His voice is perfect for the fancy texts.
As a Brazilian, I always have a huge difficulty understanding the appeal of poetry in english... But I get it now, I just don't know what rhythm to read it in. Which also explains why I do enjoy other people reading it...
As an Englishman, I learned in this video that I don't know the right way to read them either haha
Yes, English styles of poetry are all about the metrical feet. It's not all iambic pentameter, of course, as the limerick example demonstrates.
If you want to sound like Dr. Seuss you use anapestic tetrameter, which has three-beat feet with the stress on the end: "On the FAR away Island of SALa-ma-SOND / YERtle the TURtle was KING of the POND." (Note we skipped a couple of syllables at the beginning of the second line.)
("Green Eggs and Ham" is an exception: I think that's iambic tetrameter.)
@@andreasandros8580 it’s the meaning that can be appreciated, if one can’t understand the language. I sing opera and prefer singing in the original language the show was composed in.
As an English speaker, this video made me realize that Haiku can pack infinitely more meaning in Japanese than English ever can.
English Haiku kind of sucks in my opinion, and that's probably why
@@ALittleMessi a lot of it sucks because people keep thinking that you only need the 5-7-5 syllable structure to count as a haiku.
I disagree, I'd say English can pack just as much in - BUT Japanese prizes economy above all, so the Haiku form itself makes more sense as a poetic challenge in Japanese.
Weeb
Would you care to explain why you think so?
3:19 "stress every other syllable, in pairs
with five such pairs in every line you write"
the fact that that in itself is iambic pentameter is kinda genius
also "and that was shakespeare's style, well usually
he didn't stick to that for every line"
"im being pestered by some surprisingly aggressive swans"
*swans approaching menacingly in the background*
@Morshu Morichika ゴゴゴゴゴゴゴ ＳＷＡＮ ゴゴゴゴゴゴゴ
@Morshu Morichika
As an Italian, I understand French people's frustration with this. Our verses too are based more on the number of syllables than on stresses. And this video brought back memories from high school, when we had to read Latin poetry and so many classmates struggled with the stresses even when I wrote them down for them. Thankfully I knew a bit of solfège and had to resort to study the poems as if I was studying a musical piece, but it was awkward reading in class while keeping the beat with my foot.
Treating stressed timed poetry like a musical rhythm is really the way to go.
As italian too, thankfully we got less troubles with stressing syllables till we got a lot of stress words too. (northern italy veneto apart porcodio)
@@lowceyn2875 I get that you're Veneto, so it's almost second nature, but could you please refrain from blasphemy? Thanks.
Anyway, yes, we do have some lexical stress, but in class you're taught to just count the sillables
isn't latin poetry based on syllable weight (long or closed vs. short-and-open syllables)?
Well, hey, what works for you is good enough.
As a french liking poesy
I could not grasp the stress quite right
Here's an attempt, so you can see
What would a french poem sound like
Very Interesting. merci beaucoup! ^^
Ooh, clever!
Tu déchires !
In classic Norwegian poetry
You don't have to word every line.
Some lines just has to be themselves
letting the final line shine.
😂😂 took a while to realize what was going on here
Tom would make an amazing teacher, in virtually any subject. I'd be captivated, as I am with all his videos.
This is like some detective series where the detective uses his linguist class lessons to conclude the suspect couldn't had been French.
Brilliant.
That sounds interesting, can you remember what the book/series was called?
@@dan.1433 nah I just made this up, haha
Ur a genius
An international incident where this is the key clue, from a single short recording...Epic twist there
"this is not gonna be a continuous take. There's gonna be jump cuts."
Jump cuts, where art thou!
I admire your profile picture
*are ye
“Thou” is singular. “Cuts” is plural.
@@Correctrix didn't correct "gonna". 🙄
@@screamtoasigh9984 one is accepted colloquial language, the other is an actual violation of english grammar.
@@screamtoasigh9984 they're quoting from the video??
"Now this is a story all about how
my life got turned flipped upside down"
--Will
Triambic tetrameter?
you've got the wrong Will.
iambic tetrameter?
@@nathanadams2336 Triambic.
The Bard of Avon, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
This was really cool! I had to write limericks and Shakespearean poems in iambic pentameter in high school and it was quite a challenge. I've also had to translate poems for my French classes and they never sound as good!
The teacher that made you translate them is stupid.
What I, a French person, have learned today about my language: French does not work in iambic pentameter.
Same
Funnily enough, as a French speaker who has learnt English and now speaks it fluently, l still sometimes have trouble with lexical stress, and I'll have to utter words I've said right thousands of time to myself until I get the stress in the right spot !
And honestly, the french accent based solely on stress was spot on !
Stress and 'h' are the two things that I can never seem to get right.
Yes. I don't actually speak French all that well (I was near-fluent 25 years ago) but if I just get that one thing right, they aren't sure where I'm from.
"Twelve syllables per line, broken into two parts
And it should also rhyme, stress the end of each half"
Fire
These would not be considered as rhyming in french, but I guess it does in english?
@@AdrianAbdel I think line and rhyme should rhyme. But one of them has an m and the other an n. I don't know if that is still considered a correct rhyme in english.
@@AdrianAbdel He's explaining the poetic technique and his explanation is an example of the technique, if you read the comment (in Tom Scott's accent) notice how he's doing what he's describing
@@RainerLP i dont think it does. kinda like trying to rhyme "lime" with "line", doesnt sound that good to me.
@@reorders9868 I beleive it could be considered a "rime pauvre" (poor rhyme) in french, where only 1 sound rhymes, as the "e" at the end of line and rhyme are pronounced the same
I like how the parts explaining different poetry forms are (mostly) written in those forms.
Swans are like:
“Holy heck, is that Tom Scott?”
“Let’s go and ask for his autograph!”
Tom:
“I’m being pestered by some annoying Swans.”
Swans: :c
Swooning swans? Swans swoon? Swan swoons? That last one sounds better, but there are multiple swans... Hmm...
(ಥ_ಥ)
They might even be real people but Tom didn't want to upset us
Swans is two letters away from fans
0:30 Tom:"And uh... i'm being pestered occasionally by some surprisingly aggressive swans"
Swans: "Peace was never an option"
_So you've chosen death_
I thought that was a reference to 3 men in a boat
@UC0Kw1wDuYR3mIJARn1HCUPw 😂
Oh no the swans have joined the geese!
Hy
Because “what, you egg?” would sound even weirder in French.
*stabs him*
Quoi, vous oeuf?
Tu es un garçon grivois
@@cofenfiver3090 /sortie, poursuivi par un ours/
you could go with "Silence, poussin!"
Interesting. The term alexandrine(r) is also used in german, a language that has lexical stress, but funnily enough it refers to a iambic type of poetry where you have six stressed syllables, with every second syllable being stressed.
Jesus christ, this guy's brain runs at a different pace. Honestly, mesmerising the way you articulate yourself.
Impressively, it's all done in a take.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 I think using numeration, '1/one' instead of an article, 'a' would highlight the brevity a smidgen more.
Impressively, it's all done in one take.
@@nin2494 idk what that means but I agree.
It is right to give the Lord Jesus Christ all the credit for that amazing gift Tom has, well done!
@@BrotherTris Amen, brother.
"Today the arrow spins and lands on... FRAAAANCE!"
When doesn't it?
it's just a single cardboard with the text "France" on it
Again, I've told you before! It's just a piece of cardboard with the word "France" written on it!
Except for one that says 'Germany'.
@@sgnosymfoemos We'll get to you!
"The lexical stress has to land on the beat"
Is on beat
Nice
There's also "with five such pairs in every line you write", in iambic pentameter.
@@benpaxton3623 Whole chunks of it are written in that style.
As was the line above - and this one too!
It's very easy once you've got the knack.
@@FightingTorque411 And harder yet to stop, once you begin
To base your writing style upon The Bard's .....
Nice.
You have done what no English teacher could - you have said the words iambic pentameter without me wanting to blow my brains out, amazing!
Have to say, I actually jumped a little bit when the "lexical stress" card popped up from the bottom of the screen. After warning us about the swans, I was carefully watching two of them swimming up behind him, and disappearing below the frame as they got closer...
I can't get over the fact the Tom managed to explain in about 10 seconds what my English teacher couldn't explain in 2 years (that being the iambic pentameter)
It’s inconceivable that an English teacher can’t explain that iambic pentameter is a 10-syllable meter with stress on every other syllable. I have to assume you just weren’t paying attention during that particular 10 seconds of class
@@PatheticApathetic well, I was 15, never had stress in poetry explained to me, and didn't k ow what meter meant. Tbh, still don't. Don't judge pal, but if an explanation involves three concepts I don't already understand, I ain't gonna get it yknow.
@@PatheticApathetic You underestimate how woefully incapable teachers are of perforing their titular duty of teaching.
@@NitroNinja324 Yes, they can be quite terrible. It's usually because they don't understand the source material they're trying to teach, which in turn is usually because they don't care.
Perhaps we weren’t that interested then, but now we want to know
This is part of why japanese's main poetry styles are haiku and tanka. The language doesn't have any stressed syllables instead using a pitch shifting accent that gives it a sonewhat musical tone, and a very rigid syllable structure where almost every consonant has a paired vowel (except n) that fits into a mostly consistent meter (at least formally casual pronunciation of course plays with this a bit). Because of this rhyming words occur several times a sentence, and emphasizing is less apparent. So japanese poets decided it was more interesting to focus on different ways of playing with the rigid syllable structure. By setting various limits and patterns to how a poem is formed, and then coming up with clever word play to work around those limits.
All more or less true, I would add that there is emphasis of poetic topics, particular poetic words, and lots of puns. Japanese also have a sense that certain sounds have particular character and atmosphere, owing I guess to their rich set of onomatopaeic words. There's a number of different techniques they're able to employ. The anthologies I have include the Japanese when the original was not a Chinese poem, which is nice at least to get a sense of the sound next to the translation, especially if you know a little Japanese.
It really can't be understated how much Japanese like puns, which plays into the homophonic nature of many of their words given the limited set of characters they have to express sound (pitch sometimes differentiates them, but I don't think invalidates puns).
As you stated, things like rhyme really have no meaning in Japanese, but they have much more than rigid syllable counts to work with.
Ahh, that's why I never liked haiku and tanka written in English.
This is fascinating!
Going by all the descriptions I had encountered before, it seemed to me that haiku was trivial, akin to the chanting of slogans in English, but without the need for rhyming.
If that were true, then my following attempt would be a top-notch poem, if only the words were Japanese:
Bonsai, go away!
We don't want to have you here -
bonsai, disappear!
In fact, compared to the examples given in the Wikipedia article on haiku in English, I should get a Nobel Prize in literature for it! Yet your comment suggests, that there must be more to haiku, much more.
Is that bit more impossible to explain to somebody who doesn't understand Japanese?
now i understand haiku better!
back in high school we were told to write our own haikus (in English), and the structure and all never made sense to me.
I will probably never use this knowledge again, but that was one of the the most interesting things I've heard in a while.