Re: Did these words used to rhyme?

phoglund@xxxxxx wrote:

Singburi Sam kirjoitti:

There's a question that's always puzzled me.
I don't know whether to ask here or in a poetry
group.

Consider:
If this be error and upon me proved
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

"Proved" and "loved" don't rhyme. (I realize
near-rhymes may be good enough for
poetry but still: this is the climax of one
of the greatest poems of a great poet.)

My question is: did these words rhyme
400 years ago?

Probably. I am no expert on the phonological history of English,
though.

How do linguists
reconstruct old pronunciations, anyway?

You have just stumbled upon one of the usual ways to do it.

Poetry and rhyme tables are important in the phonological reconstruction of Middle Chinese.

In the case of Chinese, other sources of information include:

1. variations in the modern languages that descend from the target language (Mandarin, Wu, Yue, Hakka, etc.)

2. the modern and historical pronunciations of words borrowed into other languages (Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese)

3. the use of characters to transcribe words from other languages (Buddhist scriptures written in Sanskrit and Pali)

4 transcriptions of Chinese terms in other writing systems (Tibetan, Mongolian)

5. comparisons of the modern pronunciations of characters that share phonetic elements (a kind of rhyming approach)

The raw historical facts of pronunciations and rhymes are combined with general phonological theory to produce language-specific theories.

I have no idea how it's done for languages like English.

--
Mike Wright
http://www.raccoonbend.com
.

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