Sh vs. S, Alliteration or Not?

A th- sound and a f- sound then. Still not the same thing.

... You could say that about anything. Literally anything.

"If you put an "s" in front of "up", the "u" is still there."

What's the argument here? That the second letter doesn't suddenly disappear? Nobody is saying it does. We just put more stock into the beginning of the word, the first letter, than what follows.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 16th 2020 at 4:00:58 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Nevermind, thought was directed at me

Edited by sgamer82 on Apr 16th 2020 at 2:03:12 AM

Let's look at the word 'think'. Does it sound closer to 'tink' or to 'fink'? Or is the 'th' its own sound?

Based on how I hear it pronounced and how I have been taught, 'think' is pronounced 'fink' (or very close to it).

The rules of English grammar is complex, and alliteration is based on the stressed syllables more than strictly beginning with the same letter. There is the name of the letter and the pronunciation, which often produce different sounds. There is also the long and short versions of each letter, different letters that produce similar sounds as well variants with specific pairs. Charred and Charade don't alliterate, while Clump and King does.

Barring unusual cases, s and sh words would be alliteration.

I would call th its own sound there. You're looking at tee, thee, and fee to my ear.

To me, "think" and "fink" don't sound anything alike. Maybe if someone is saying "think" with a stuffy nose, but that's about it.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 16th 2020 at 4:07:33 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

See, and to me tink and think and fink (in this group) sound way more similarly than sink and shink (these two together).

---

And of course F and PH alliterate. PH at the beginning of a word is pronounced as /f/ in English. I wanna say always. :-)

---

Can you comment on choosing chef? Visually the same letters. Completele different sounds, though.

Edited by XFllo on Apr 16th 2020 at 10:07:40 AM

A long, long post.

A quick search seems to back up XFllo's side here, in that in modern English it's the sounds that matter in alliteration.

Edited by Albert3105 on Apr 16th 2020 at 1:15:49 AM

And to me, "Sink" and "Shink" sound more similar than "Sink" and "Stink", even if not by much.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 16th 2020 at 4:10:20 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

My main point has been that S and SH sound similar enough to allitterate.

I don't suspect most of the people firmly in the alliteration-yes camp contest that. I think the issue in question is closer to "Is it close enough to be considered alliterative?"

Edit: To reiterate my stance, I don't think they should be, but the woefully arbitrary rules of English, according to my english major relation, say they are in most cases, and thus, I say they are in most cases now.

Edited by Florien on Apr 16th 2020 at 1:13:32 AM

My point was that 'st' represents TWO sounds, and 'sp' also represents TWO sounds, while 'sh' represents ONE sound (despite being two letters).

I guess it all comes down to what is more important - the letter or the sound. For example, would "Surefire Socrates" be an alliterative title or not? Both words start with the same letter, but not the same sound.

Alliteration is not the same as rhyming, which is about the whole word or last syllable. But the sound should read alliterative and not be based on accents.

Some accents do drop various sounds because there isn't a comparable sound in the native language. I know Indians struggle with the TH sound in like Think, sounding like Tink, while we have Japanese Ranguage as its own trope because of their struggles with L.

To me, "Sh" also represents two sounds, rather than one. It's just that the "s" and the "h" blend together more.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 16th 2020 at 4:16:33 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

EDIT: This thread moves way to quickly.

---

Surefire Socrates is a wonderful example to dispute.

To me, not alliterative. If we consider "visual alliteration", then yes.

---

/sh/ as phoneme is not two sounds. That's linguistics, i.e. science.

Edited by XFllo on Apr 16th 2020 at 10:18:00 AM

Oh, there's the conflict we have. Some of us outright have heard these sounds pronounced radically differently in our region. This seems to indicate to me that this might end up being a "First come first serve" sort of thing, like with periods in and out of quotation marks, or oxford commas.

Edited by Florien on Apr 16th 2020 at 1:18:42 AM

And that is the core of the issue, isn't it. To me 'sh' is one sound (and represented by a single letter in our language), while to you it's two sounds.

Edited by shadowblack on Apr 16th 2020 at 11:17:23 AM

Right. There's no "sh" in the English alphabet.

There should be though. there not being one should not be the determining factor for whether or not alliteration is the case.

Right. For us, it's just the combination of two separate letters.

Why should there be? English just works differently.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 16th 2020 at 4:23:47 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

"sh" is a common digraph to represent a singular phoneme, a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative, /ʃ/.

Edited by Albert3105 on Apr 16th 2020 at 1:26:49 AM

Should or should not, there isn't.

Again, you can't compare sounds and letters. Especially when English orthography is as complicated as it is.

• Surefire Socrates

• Choosing Chef

Same combination of letters. Pronounced differently.

So then would you hold the same rule for "Super School", "Sewage Stopper", and "Small Spark"?

What of "Cinnamon Candy", "Great Giles", or "Easy Ending"? All of those sound more different than, say, "Silver Shark" do, to me.

And as we keep saying, the difference to us isn't notable enough to not count as alliteration.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 16th 2020 at 4:29:26 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness