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It's easier to rhyme in Mandarin than in English (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Just personal observation, maybe it feels different for a professional English song lyric composer.

I don't have a spreadsheet, but so many characters have the same ending sounds in Mandarin that I could easily find a rhyming word when writing song lyrics.

English is a struggle to find a rhyming word that fits into the context of the contents, and it feels kinda like a forced rhyme.

I haven't really spoken Mandarin for over 15 years, somehow it's still easier to do rhyming.

P.S. Cantonese has more variety of sounds and less characters have the same ending sounds, so its harder to rhyme in Cantonese.

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[–] 1 point 10 months ago (4 children)

How about Japanese? I like the hip hop duo Creepy Nuts, and their songs Yofukashino Uta (Call of the Night) and To Us Former Prodigies are so fun to listen to. I don’t know Japanese. Well, a few dozen words, but not enough to understand a song. Both videos on YouTube have subtitles in English though.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Japanese, not restricted in the same way as Chinese tonally, and having a long tradition of both song and poetic lyrics, lends itself extremely well to hip hop/rap. This is not to say it's better than Chinese for this - only different. There are so many excellent Japanese hip hop artists.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 10 months ago* (1 child)

    Idk, I put the Kanjis in my name cuz it looks cool (I mean Kanji is just Chinese really), I don't speak Japanese, sadly :(

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    It's not "just Chinese really." It derived from Chinese and there are many overlaps, but in modern Japanese, Kanji very often represent different words than their Chinese counterparts. Your take is... uninformed.

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