A near rhyme is refers to words paired in songs or verse which sound similar, but not quite enough to be called a “perfect rhyme”…at least not in Standard English. They can be interesting for revealing insights into spoken phonology, in this case the phonology of country songs.

Here are some interesting cases I found on a recent mix CD playing in my car.

Hell On Heels (Say What You Will)

In Hell On Heels (by the Pistol Annies featuring Miranda Lambert), there are lots near rhymes. Just for context, the song chronicles the past exploits of a classic “gold digger.”

Most near rhymes have the same vowel, but end with slightly different consonant, although usually with some phonological smilarities. For example

(1) This diamond ring on my hand
Is the only good thing that came from that man

(2) Poor ol’ Billy, bless his heart
I’m still using his credit card

Note: both /d/ and /t/ are coronal stops.

And even one actual rhyme that features two words with different spellings

(3) Then there’s Jim, I almost forgot
I ran him off, but I took the yacht

Both end with [at] in this dialect.

For me though the most interesting near rhyme is one which pairs deal /dil/ and heels /hilz/ with will /wɪl/. It would be interesting to see how the spectrograms compare here.

(4) I’m hell on heels
Say what you will
I’ve done made the devil a deal

In this case, the vowels are different even though the final consonant is the same. However, in terms of the English vowel space, they are very close – that is both /i/ and /ɪ/ are phonemically high front unrounded vowels. Interestingly, it seems like first hell on heels is pronounced closer to [ɪ] to emphasize the rhyme, but closer to [i] or even [iə] thereafter.

Note: Another interesting case of /i/ in a near rhyme is from the Addams Family theme song which pairs scream and see’um.

Psycho Girlfriend

Another song with an interesting set of rhymes is Psycho Girlfriend by Jessie James (Decker) about a woman who has “issues” talking to her boyfriend who can’t seem to quit her.

Again, we have a great near rhyme where the vowel is the same, but the final consonant is different.

(1) Did I forget to mention
I need all your attention
Or else I’ll throw a tantrum [for it?]

This pairs both /ʌn/ in -tion and /ʌm/ in -um.. Even better, all the words actually end with [ntʌN] where N stands for nasal stop (/m/ or /n/).

And here’s another with different underlying pronunciations, but actually more closely rhyming in the colloquial pronunciation

(2) I’ll call you when you’re workin’ /i.e. working/
Over n over again

Underlylingly, the first line ends with working /wərkɪŋ/ and the second with again /əgɛn/. But phonetically, both end with [ɨn] in the actual lyrics. The vowel change is part of a larger pattern where many unstressed vowels reduce to [ɨ] in American English, causing spelling nightmares for American school children everywhere.

The last case is interesting to me because I think it’s meant to be a rhyme, but doesn’t work for me in my idiolect.

(3) Insecure, in denial
Immature, like a child

The way Jessie James sings it, but both denial and child have two syllables [aj.ɨl] or [aj.l̩] (with vocalic /l/). In my grammar though, I feel like child has only one syllable, so the rhyme doesn’t quite work for me. Checking the Oxford English Dictionary pronunciations, they too transcribe child with one syllable and denial with two.

So this appears to be a dialectal difference interfering with the rhyme. On the other hand, I suspect that if I took a spectrogram of my own speech, I might find that child and denial were actually more similar than I think. The status of /ajl/ and /ajr/ syllables is interesting in general.

With the Wonder Woman movie about to come out, it’s important to review this timely pronunciation article from Vox and Slate.com about how to pronounce the name of star Gal Gadot ( גל גדות‎‎). As they point out, Gadot is NOT the same as the French family name of the play Waiting for Gadot but rather an Israeli name.

So bring out that final /t/ and say something like “Gal Ga-duht” /gæl gadɔt/ (stress on the final syllable). The first of Gal is fairly close to English Short A, but the is between English “uh” and “oh”.

Fresh off the BBC – an interesting article on how the pronunciation of the Queen (Elizabeth II) and RP Standard British English has shifted over time.

You can definitely hear a difference in the Queen’s Christmas speeches over the decades. In the 1957 Christmas speech video, the accent sounds a little archaic, but by 2015 the Queen has the same charming accent as Helen Mirren. It’s still RP, but a more modern form of it.

I should add that the context of the Christmas speeches has changed. The 1957 speech is set up very formally with the Queen in full formal regalia. By 1968, she was dressed in a day dress and by 1986, she was broadcasting from the stables and her accent has shifted as well.

The article also points out that the Windsor social circles have become less isolated than in decades past. Thanks to the late Princess of Wales, her children and grandchildren have much more contact outside royal residences than previous royal generations did.

Even so, it is difficult for the public to truly ascertain how the Queen speaks “colloquially”. By design, she has created a very formal persona and does not normally allow the public to see her speak except in formal speeches. Even when she is interviewed, her speech remains very formal, although this 2013 clip does show her relaxing just a bit. However, she still uses the impersonal one very frequently to describe her own daily duties.

Speeches Over the Decades

• 1947 21st Birthday Speech
• 1957
• 1986
• 1986
• 2011 – Speech for Queen Mother’s Death
• 2015
• 2013 Documentary

I’ve been watching the PBS series Latino Americans and of course paid close attention to the Spanish language. So my main observations were:

Code Switched Pronunciation

The narrator generally spoke Standard U.S. English, but most Spanish words were given authentic Spanish pronunciations, much more than I’ve seen in other documentaries on Latin American subjects. I almost felt that the narrator was the Giada de Laurentiis (famous for her authentic Italian pronunciations of all things pasta) of Latin American documentaries. Many bilinguals alternate pronunciations, but this was especially consistent.

And who was this mystery narrator? None other than Benjamin Bratt who was raised by his Peruvian mother Eldy Bratt. He’s a great example of someone who has really mastered the phonology of two languages.

Dropping Final /s/

There was a clip of a traditional Spanish language song from the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, I believe) and by gosh, the singer was often dropping the final /s/ (or changing it to an /h/). Unfortunately, I am not having luck tracking it down now, but it’s rare to hear a dialectal feature captured with such good audio.

P.S. – This was very interesting and enlightening to me both as an Anglo and an East Coast resident. I had some notion of Latin American immigration in terms of the big East Coast cities like New York and Miami, but the history of Hispanics on the West Coast is very long, much longer than most people realize. Many past events are influencing immigration politics of today.

A scene from the recent Tarantino movie Django Unchained has Django spelling his name then commenting “The D is silent”. But is it really? While not as explosive a question as the use of the N-word in the movie, this statement is surprisingly complicated in terms of phonological theory…and therefore worth a blog post.

Etymology and French Spelling

The most famous bearer of the name is Django Reinhardt, a jazz guitarist NOT of African-American or African heritage, but of Franco-Romany (“Gypsy”) heritage. Specifically, he was a Romany living in France (and that will influence how the name is spelled).

According to a New Yorker profile, the name “Django” (apparently meaning “I rise”) was the secret Romany name given to him for use among his tribe. His official name of “Jean Reinhardt” was his official name for the French government. The use of the two names made tracking individual Romany men that much trickier….

Note that the etter combination of “Dj” is the French way of spelling the English “J” sound. If Reinhardt had been from a group of Romany living outside of France, his name may have been spelled as “Jango” (no D). But that doesn’t mean that the “D” is silent.

Modern French happens to be missing both the “J” (/ǰ/ in Americanist transcription) and the “CH” (/č/) sounds. Their “J” is actually “ZH” or (/ž/ or /ʒ/), while “CH” is now “SH” or (/š/ or /ʃ/). When then need to spell the English versions, they add a /d/ to the J or /t/ to the CH. Hence French maps include the country of TCHAD (Chad) and the Indonesian capital of DJAKARTA (Jakarta).

Why? Because English CH,J are actually affricates transcribed as /tʃ, dʒ/ in IPA (or sometimes (/tš, dž/) signifying that they are complex sounds. The English “J” is said to be a /d/, but with a “zh” /ʒ/ release.

Try pronouncing both a “D” /d/ and a “J” /dʒ/ and you will find that your tongue is in the same position for both. Only the release of the tongue tip is different. The same is true for “T” /t/ and “CH” /tʃ/.

So, in conclusion: In French, the D is NOT silent.

Is the D silent in English?

Interestingly, though most English speakers do not realize the similarity of D and J until they learn phonetics. For English speakers the sound D /d/ and J /dʒ/ are distinct sounds. Further, the sound “J” is seen as a single sound (hence the Americanist transcription /ǰ/ as one symbol instead of two.

The same is also true in many languages of India, most of which write “D/J” and “T/CH” as four distinct consonants. For instance, Sanskrit “D” is द (more or less) and “J” is ज (while “T” is त and “CH” is च). There are even aspirated versions for all four sounds. From a phonological point of view, the affricates in Sanskrit act as if they were plain single stops, not complex sounds.

This is an example of an interesting phenomenon in which a phonetic signal can be interpreted in multiple ways depending on the language of the listener. For languages in which “CH,J” are phonemes , I suspect that the intuition is that they are single sounds as in the Americanist /ǰ,č/ and NOT as complex sounds. The stop component is there phonetically for sure, but the mental interpretation is different.

So, in conclusion: In English, the D MAY BE silent.