What do you think?

[sister_luck]

I'm in a bit of a conflict regarding authentic English and using Denglish terms that are clearly translated from the German and turn up in all sorts of material for German students and teachers.

Here's the problem:

I've got to prepare my advanced students for their final exams in 2009. Discussing and analysing poetry is part of that. For some reason, there is quite a difference in the terms used in German and in English to do so. In German, the speaker of the poem is the lyrisches Ich. Rhymes can be Kreuzreime, umarmende Reime and Paarreime.

So, these terms get translated into English. I've got various books at home aimed at German students to help them prepare for their final exams that contain the phrase lyrical I - sometimes with a hyphen as lyrical-I. *shudders*

Here is a list describing rhyme scheme taken from one of those books:

rhyme pairs (aa); cross rhyme (abab); embracing rhyme (abba); tail rhyme (aabccb)

I've found both crossed rhyme and tail rhyme elsewhere, but with very different definitions.

I'm pretty sure that the above terms wouldn't be taught this way in a real English language school setting, either in the States, the UK, the Antipodes or elsewhere. On the one hand, I do want to use authentic English, on the other hand it looks like some of these words are very prevalent in German English teacher jargon and will thus be expected of the students. Also, I don't want to punish them for mistakes that others have made - so I'm currently offering alternatives to the words they use, but don't count them as a mistake.

Does that make sense? Am I right that these terms are bogus?

edited because awarding penalties doesn't mean what I wanted it to say

Comments

[gillo]

I've never heard of

lyrical I

, with or without a hyphen. We normally simple refer to "the speaker" or "the protagonist".

Similarly I've never used or come across any of those terms. A pair is always a "rhyming couplet", except in Augustan verse when it tends to be a "heroic couplet". I might talk about quatrains with alternating rhymes, or "ballad form" if the line length was appropriate. Mostly with more complex patterns I would talk about, for instance, "an

abba

rhyme scheme".

I'd be inclined to teach the terms as something they might come across in German texts, but explain that native speakers would be unlikely to use the terms. You can make them feel a little superior, while alerting them to the possibility that they might encounter it. (I do this sometimes when teaching apostrophes - I get them to look out for inappropriate use, what we sometimes call "greengrocers' apostrophes"!)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you. *breath of relief*

It feels good to be right about something! So, alternating rhyme is a good alternative for the yucky cross rhyme? I was starting to feel unsure about that one as well. I've also come across enclosed rhyme for an "abba rhyme scheme". Don't like that much either.

I've banned lyrical I outright, because it is so horrible - the others I will tolerate in my students' writing and offer an alternative. I certainly won't teach any of them.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

I never had rhyme schemes in English, but I did in Dutch (of course), and the funny thing is that most of the terminology we used, was the same as you use in German. I believe we even have a common way to describe the speaker, but I don't think it was literally lyrisches ich. Maybe our phrase will come to me later.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I wonder whether that's because of some links early on when philology was started?

I don't mind lyrisches Ich in German so much, even though it is kind of pretentious. It just doesn't work as a phrase in English. I'd be interested to know the Dutch term.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

This all sounds very familiar; I'm sure you've asked the same question before? Maybe about a year ago?

I had a look in my literary encyclopedia and it didn't give names to the different rhyme schemes at all - it just called them "an ABAB rhyme", "an ABCB rhyme scheme" or "three quatrains with the rhymes ABAB/CDCD/EFEF then a couplet rhyming GG".

At most, an unusual rhyme scheme might be named after the poem or poet who made it famous - ABBA might be called "the In Memoriam stanza" because Tennyson used it in a poem of that name, but normally such names refer to the metre as well as the rhyme.

It's also worth saying that all this is definitely specialist jargon even in English, and the average person in the street would look at you blankly if you started talking about rhyme schemes...

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Yes, I did ask questions about this some time ago - I must come across as very stupid!

It's just that I've got all this German teaching material for English and it's full of terms that I find highly dubious. Sometimes I get a bit confused and insecure about it and stop trusting my knowledge and my books.

Also, this was more about how to deal with the problem of my students encountering said terms in material they might use to prepare for exams.

Thanks for looking up stuff!

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Not at all; it's just that I was reaching over to the encyclopaedia (bookcase next to the computer desk, very civilised) and suddenly thought "Haven't I looked this up for someone once before? Hang on... wasn't it for the same person?" :-)

I mean, clearly I'd forgotten my answer too, or I wouldn't have had to look it up...

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Hmm, maybe you meant to look it up for me and then didn't? Because you didn't comment on my old post (http://sister-luck.livejournal.com/77395.html) - someone else got in before you did and answered all my questions.

[lijability.livejournal.com]

Lyrical-I might also be called a lyricist in English.

Then there is feminine rhyme, single rhyme, double rhyme, end rhyme, tail rhyme, eye rhyme, ... modem poet, modernist, beat poet, librettist, lyricist, vers-librist....

End or tail rhymes are any that rhymed at the end of the lines for instance Burns' most famous poems were written using a six line, tail-rhyme stanza with an a-a-a-b-a-b scheme, but you could easily have any other scheme including different numbers of lines.

We're Americans,
We're flexible,
We're Americans,
We're sensible,

Or something like that... ;~)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Well, lyrisches Ich is not the lyricist per se, but rather the persona the writer adopts. For example, I might write a poem from the point of view of a teenage boy - then I'd describe the lyrisches Ich as a teenage boy, but the lyricist would still be a 34-year-old woman from Germany!

And even though it might not be obvious from my questions, I actually do know those terms - it's just the Denglish ones that confuse me.