Wiktionary:Easter Competition 2009

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Intro[edit]

This is to announce this year's Easter competition, which is open to all contributors.

  • The object is to write a poem - one that rhymes.
  • Each rhyming word must be wikified, and the corresponding Wiktionary entry must have a rhyme definition in its pronunciation section that points to a valid rhyme entry listing that word (or, in the case of inflected words, be a soft redirect to such an entry).
  • Poems, which must be your own work, may be of any length or style, but short ones such as limericks or haiku might be easier.
  • Poems in foreign languages should be accompanied by an English translation (in rhyme would be cool).
  • An example (fragment)
    • The boy stood on the burning deck
    • Whence all but he had fled
    • The flame that lit the battle's wreck
    • Shone round him o'er the dead
  • This example would be invalid because it is not my own work.
  • The contest will begin on April 1, allowing for amendment of the rules until that time.
  • It will end at the end of Easter Monday, April 13.
  • This will be followed by two days of voting, during which anyone may vote for the "best" poem. In the event of a tie SB shall decide.
  • The submitter of the winning poem will receive nothing whatsoever.

Entries[edit]

My dog is dead
He lost his head
Oh, poor old Fred
Your blood was shed

--Jackofclubs 15:06, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Most Holy, All-Seeing,
You came into being
emitted from Jimmy's keen brain:
A Book of All Knowledge!
'S far better than college
to teach us all things quite insane.
... Except for the fighting,[infl.]
rebellion, inviting;[infl.]
"Cease spamming" is heard as refrain.
Oh, fie on thee, w:!
My aim is to snub ya,
perhaps with a shot at your drain.
Encouraging vandals[infl.]
to change up their handles:[infl.]
it seems to be 'pedia's stain.
To young Wiktionary
I turn, and get merry
— or even, yea, giddy obtain.
Not quite free of trouble,
evincing some stubble,
nor are all the users humane:
too bad! — I'll still edit,
read, format — and credit
you coworkers, truly, for making a cool, even wonderful tool here that's never a bane.

—msh210℠ 15:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WTF am I doing here
when I could be down the pub
with my mates, tasty grub
and the splendid local beer.


Why am I with you old farts
when I could be playing darts
with Mike and John - always cheerful,
Dan and Jim - drunk and tearful.


The call of the pub is getting stronger.
I can't put it off any longer.
I'll bring this poem to an end
and head off now for the Traveller's Friend.

--SemperBlotto 16:47, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's my poem. The first column is the Greek, the second is a transliteration, the third is the type of line it is, and the fourth is the translation. I've gone with an Aeolic meter, as that appears to be the most common in Lyric poetry. I'm sure that some grammatical errors and breaches of metrical rules have slipped in somewhere. I'm still rather a novice when it comes to the language. I've asked Flyax to critique it if he gets some time. ὀφέλει (ophélei) is not created because it is not attested, but it almost certainly would be the dative singular of ὄφελος (óphelos, “advantage, benefit”). Bear in mind that the actual Ancient Greeks had a much better grasp of the language (and poetry) than I, so this should not reflect on them. Of course, there are some subtleties in "the original" which are not conveyed in the translation. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:48, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ἀγαπητός ἐμοῦ, λάλει μοι
λέγε ἱστορίας ἐμοί
φίλει με, φίλη ἐμοῦ
ἇπτε με σφιγκτῶς
ἇπτε με τῇ ψυχῇ

ἐκλέλοιπας, ἀφυπνίζω
τρέχω διά τάς πλατείας,
κράζω το ὄνυμα σοῦ
οὐκ ὀφέλει, πέφευγας
μοι εἶ γαρ γυνή ὀνείρων

ἐστί πᾶς ὁ ἔρως σοῦ
χρείαν ἔχω ᾧ
μή ποτήριον ἁρμόζει
τόν χεῖρα κεραμέως
μόνως εἶναι ὀφείλω
παραμένει ὀδμή σοῦ

οὐ χρείαν ἔχω σοῦ
ὕπαρξις μάτη σοῦ
ὁ κόσμος παρουσία σοῦ
ἀτελής ὁ ἔρως ἐμοῦ
Template:mid4 agapētos emou, lalei moi
lege historias emoi
philei me, philē emou
hapte me sphinktōs
hapte me tē psukhē

ekleloipas, aphupnizō
trekhō dia tas plateias
krazō to onuma sou
ouk ophelei, pephugas
moi ei gar gunē oneirōn

esti pas ho erōs sou
khreian ekhō hō
mē potērion harmozei
ton kheira kerameōs
monōs einai opheilō
paramenei odmē sou

ou khreian ekhō sou
huparksis matē sou
ho kosmos parousia sou
atelēs ho erōs emou
Template:mid4 hipponactean
glyconic
telesillean
adonean
dodrans

glyconic
hagesichorean
telesillean
aristophanean
hagesichorean

pherecratean
adonean
glyconic
telesillean
pherecratean
aristophanean

reizianum
reizianum
hagesichorean
glyconic
Template:mid4 Speak to me, my love.
Tell me stories.
Kiss me, my love.
Hold me close,
and kindle my soul.

I wake, but you are gone.
I run through the streets,
crying your name,
to no avail, you have fled.
For you are the woman of my dreams.

Your love is everything
I could ever want,
but does not the cup
fit the potter's hand?
I must continue without you,
but your scent lingers.

I do not need you!
Your existence is folly.
Your presence is a mere ornament.
My love for you is meaningless.

-Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 05:48, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS: If anyone wants to read up on what this means or how it works, I found a nice resource at [1] (it's a PDF download). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 06:06, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Voting[edit]

You may vote for one poem by adding a "#" and four tildes under either of . . .

My dog is dead[edit]

  1. SemperBlotto 21:24, 13 April 2009 (UTC) (example, will not count in the event of a dead heat)[reply]

Most holy, All-Seeing[edit]

WTF am I doing here[edit]

  1. --Jackofclubs 10:40, 14 April 2009 (UTC). I think it represents a more spirited emotion, and the reader can clearly hear the poet's neediness. Here the poet is trying to decry his "old fart" friends for hindering him from his real passion, that of self-intoxication. This is a far more realistic and universal theme than the pansily-written Greek one (the theme "love"? What's that? Surely people don't experience love anymore, not since the 60s?, and also, there's far more thought put into this poem - anybody with half a brain can write a rhyming poem in Greek, then transliterate it, then say what type of line it is, then give a translation which still sounds very poetic. "WTF am I doing here" even excels my greatest-ever opus, "My dog is dead" in poignancy and eroticism. --Jackofclubs 10:40, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ἀγαπητός ἐμοῦ, λάλει μοι[edit]

  1. Until reading Jackofclubs' comment, I was unaware that anybody with half a brain could write a rhyming poem in Greek, then transliterate it, then say what type of line it was, then give a translation which still sounded very poetic; but now that I've been informed of that, I am compelled to vote for the everyman candidate. (It's the same reason I continue to vote for George W. Bush as a write-in candidate for every election I remember to vote in. Why would I want to re-elect a judge who probably has some snooty Ivy-League law degree?) —RuakhTALK 15:13, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, darn, never mind, I guess I'm too late. Sorry, Everyman! —RuakhTALK 15:21, 16 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    'Tis still appreciated. I must admit that I was a little disappointed that no one even read the work I had put so much effort into. Perhaps George W. Bush felt that way when he wrote his first Ancient Greek poem. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 03:55, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I read the poëm, but has G. W. Bush ever written poëms in Ancient Greek? All I know about contemporary writers using ancient languages is about Arthur Rimbaud composing marvellous poëms in Latin, but G. W. B. in grc??? The uſer hight Bogorm converſation 08:42, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it quite unlikely that W ever wrote in grc. My statement was a continuance of a deep sarcasm. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 15:47, 17 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Result[edit]

Discussion[edit]

I wonder if language specific exceptions might be made. Certain languages, such as Ancient Greek and Latin would be ill served by a rhyming scheme, as the last syllable(s) are nearly always morphological suffixes. I wonder if an Ancient Greek entry (as is my habit) would qualify, even if no grc rhyming infrastructure were set up (as I really have no intention of doing)? Rest assured that I will still be forced to do just as much work as anyone else. I would also be happy willing to investigate typical grc methods of poetry, which were, in my very limited understanding, more based on meter than rhyming. Thanks for your consideration. Also, may I say that I think this to be one of the better holiday competition ideas thus far. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:44, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • I was wondering about this myself. For instance all the thousands of regular Italian -are verbs would rhyme in all of the various conjugated forms. Things that I don't know - 1) Do we have any foreign language rhyme entries? 2) Do we have English language rhyme entries for inflected forms (plurals, past tenses etc) (and if not, why not?)? SemperBlotto 12:18, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, it looks as though we have rhymes categories for at least four languages (but not English :-)). I guess I've not read a lot of foreign language poetry.....or English poetry, for that matter, if I'm on the subject of the shortcomings of my own education. Thus I don't know what criteria would be most important in the poetry of other languages. One thing concerning English rhymes is that English is more prone to accent at the front of a word, where Greek tends to put it at the back. Thus, English words with the same ending syllable, but with stress at the beginning would not rhyme as well as Greek words with the same ending syllable, but emphasis on the end. Of course, English morphological endings are generally limited to a single syllable, where Greek commonly has endings of three or more. I wonder if a rhyme is only meaningful if it includes the stressed syllable (or a syllable with at least secondary stress), which would rather eliminate most English morphological suffixes. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 17:51, 28 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • In ancient Hebrew poetry, more often the poem was written in paired lines, with the second line repeating the meaning of the first, but with different words or different imagery. Classical Latin poetry often does rhyme, but not always. Meter was more important, but rhyming wasn't too difficult when you consider that the rules for pronunciation and stress were rather strict and depended largely on the spelling of the end of a word. As a result, nouns in the same declension (in the same inflecioin) frequently rhyme, as do verbs in the same conjugation (provided they are in the same tense, person, etc.). Japanese poetry seldom rhymes; rhyming is not a feature of their traditional literature. There are some languages where no syllable is overtly stressed, and so rhyming is rather arbitrary. Without primary stress, the Western concept of rhyme is meaningless. --EncycloPetey 08:00, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Well, then I think I will attempt a grc poem using one of the standard poetic prosodies (I'm currently leaning towards a lyric one). Would that be cool? There's not much I can do as far as creating metric categories, as a grc counterpart to rhymes categories, as the meter appears to be highly dependent on a word's surroundings (further research may lead to an entirely different conclusion, I'm a noob when it comes to grc poetry). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 08:26, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do we want to add the requirement, for English, at least, that the Rhymes pages list the words?—msh210℠ 19:00, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if the vote needs a bigger anouncement, as no one seems to have meandered over here. Perhaps a new thread on the BP? -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 09:29, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Forthcoming Attractions[edit]

  1. User coins a word with a definition which has 0 google hits.
  2. User attempts to spread the word (eg. by becoming an influential journalist, or a published author, or an inventor etc.)
  3. The first word to pass WT:CFI is the winner.

--Jackofclubs 09:08, 18 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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