Wonderful words

I love an alliteration. Where the sounds of two words are meant to be together. They match. Starting with the same letter. Or the same sound. A repetition. A playful rendition. They have always captured my heart. Filled it with joy. Spilled into laughter. And delight. Wonderful words. Magical moments. Satisfying sounds. All amazing alliterations. I love them.

Getting up one morning. I slid back under the covers to give my husband a hug before starting the day. As I lay there with my arms around him I said out loud. Hugging husband. An alliteration. And announced to his sleeping self, and the empty air in the bedroom. That clearly it must be done. Hugging your husband. Because the words go together. They form an alliteration. And then my mind was off. And into the early morning light I shared some more. Curious Kristina. Running Roxy. Awesome Ace. Loving Loofan (Toffee’s nickname). Terrific Toffee. Happy House. ‘See!’ I exclaimed to my sleeping soulmate. ‘They are meant to be. They match!’ No response given. No response needed. I finally got up. To leave him in peace.

An alliteration is the repetition of sounds. Accidental or deliberate. Usually consonant sounds. Immediately after each other. Or close by. It is often used by writers as a way of linking words for impact. It is also knows as a head rhyme or initial rhyme. Well that’s an accurate description of my early morning word play. I was definitely sharing what was in my head, and it was first thing in the morning, so it was my ‘initial’ rhyme. But jokes aside, the reason for head or initial rhyme, is because the similarity is usually at the start of the word, rather than the end. Which makes an alliteration, all the more alluring (see what I did there). As it turns things on their head. It is an upside down rhyme. What a delight!

The playfulness of an alliteration is highlighted by the fact that the Latin poet of Quattrocento Italy who is attributed to have first coined the word, is named Giovanni Gionviano. With an alliteration for his name! His full name, originally included Pontano, and I cannot find any information about why this part of his name was dropped and he was then known only by his first two. Perhaps he wanted to embrace the alliteration too. One of Giovanni Gionviano’s collections of poetry, according to The I Tatti Renaissance Library, is ‘poetry celebrating love, good wine, friendship, nature and all the pleasures of life to be found at the seaside resort of Baiae on the Bay of Naples’. A man after my own heart. I love that he is the poet to bring to the world this joyful concept of the alliteration. I love that his entry in the Encyclopedia Brittanica shares that during the mid 1400s he served the Aragonese kings of Naples as an adviser and military secretary, but was dismissed in 1495 for ‘for negotiating peace with the French’ and that he ‘became a major literary figure in Naples after 1471 when he assumed leadership of the city’s humanist academy’.

So this beautiful concept of upside down rhymes, a world play bringing delight to our language, is introduced to the world by a peace loving humanist, who writes about love, friendship and wine by the beach. No wonder I love an alliteration so much!

I suspect I also love them, as I grew up with them. Reading them. Saying them. Thanks to Dr Seuss. Whose books I loved. We had them all. His alliterations were twisting on the tongue when read out loud too fast. And a delightful rhythm bringing song to the words when read at a reasonable pace. His books and alliterations capturing the magical fun of language, in all its beauty.

I was going to have a play with writing a little alliteration poem to share, but when I started reading Dr Suess again, with the sun warming my back, they were just too good not to include. They illustrate illusion and an alliteration illustriously all by themselves. (I did it again!) I thought the best one to share was from his well-known favourite, Fox in Socks. Be warned, Dr Seuss takes alliterations to their illogical extremes, creating them at both the beginning and the end of the words.

Happy Sunday everyone. Enjoy reading the battle of the Tweetle Beetles, out loud in the sun. Dr Seuss warns at the start of the book to take it slow, that his book is dangerous. And so it is. So please, start slow, and then have some fun, see how fast you get before you trip over your own tongue!

What do you know about tweetle beetles? Well...

When tweetle beetles fight,
it's called a tweetle beetle battle.
And when they battle in a puddle,
it's a tweetle beetle puddle battle.
AND
when tweetle beetles battle with paddles in a puddle,
they call it a tweetle beetle puddle paddle battle.

AND...

When beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle
and the beetle battle puddle is a puddle in a bottle...
...they call this a tweetle beetle bottle puddle paddle battle muddle.

AND...

When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles...
...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle.

AND... Now wait a minute, Mr. Socks Fox! When a fox is in the bottle where the tweetle beetles battle with their paddles in a puddle on a noodle-eating poodle, THIS is what they call... ...a tweetle beetle noodle poodle bottled paddled muddled duddled fuddled wuddled fox in socks, sir! Fox in socks, our game is done, sir. Thank you for a lot of fun, sir.

I am so incredibly grateful for my love and fascination of language. It brings such bliss and sunshine to my day. Today, I am especially grateful to all the alliterations in the world. They are the super heroes of language. Their super power: spreading joy to hearts young and old. And laughter, which sing from our souls as we stumble over them with carefree amusement.