On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, Steve Rapaport wrote: > Pronouncing "Dzur" > > The Cycle <http://dragaera.wikicities.com/wiki/Cycle> poem is in trochaic > tetrameter <http://tinablue.homestead.com/Prosody2meter.html> (* > http://tinablue.homestead.com/Prosody2meter.html*), > > But: this line is an exception: > *Dzur stalks and blends with night.* > > The only way the poem scans (that I can see) is if Dzur is pronounced with > TWO syllables, with the first one strongest, as in: > > "DEE-zur" STALKS and BLENDS with NIGHT ____ Some comments on poetry: Formal poetry is seldom translated without structural or literal compromise. Poetry in meter is seldom written without metrical variation. It is rare to meet an perfectly regular iambic pentameter line, for example, and there are variations so standard that they aren't considered variant any more. Variation is used to avoid monotony and expressivly to indicate important words or evoke whatever the poem is describing at the time. We use an accentual-syllabic system today for the most part, but there are other ways of expressing a poem's meter. Classical meters for example used long and short syllables. Dzur is a very long syllable and might be thought to take up the same time interval as a standard foot. This might be an indication that Dragaeran prosody uses such a system.