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The sound of language: alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia
This video will teach you all about the different ways you can use the sound of words for effect. Alliteration is when you use a bunch of similar consonants in a row; assonance is when you use a bunch of similar vowel sounds in a row; onomatopoeia is basically sound effects. You'll see.
Want to join the conversation?
- Does anyone have trouble spelling "onomatopoeia"?<--[I was corrected] 'cuz I do.(29 votes)
- Nah. Not me. In my school, we were asked to spell that word 100 times until we got the spelling.(11 votes)
- Take notes it will help you, understand this more better. If you don’t yet so just listen to me and do it.(9 votes)
- What are you telling(3 votes)
- The fact that he drew those figures that fast and they still look good. -_-(5 votes)
- It is because he fast-forwards the drawing, but he doesn't fast-forward it when he talks. That makes it look like he draws fast, even though he fast-forwarded it.(8 votes)
- What´s 1000 plus 300(7 votes)
- Good question, though unrelated to the video 1000 Plus 300 is equal to 1300.(1 vote)
- Is this a alliteration? magical Monday。(3 votes)
- Yes, you have produced an alliterated phrase. Now, use the same pattern and practice a few more. What could you do with Tuesday or Wednesday?
Might I suggest, "Too terrible Tuesday" or "wonderful wedding Wednesday"?
This could be a lot of fun!(8 votes)
- why do we need alliteration?(3 votes)
- Alliteration is just a style. It is not needed for anything.(2 votes)
- In assonance do all the words have to start with a vowel?(5 votes)
- That's what Paige said, and if it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me.(3 votes)
- How many words have to have the same consonance in a sentence in order for it to be an alliteration?(3 votes)
- Two. Like "car keys" or "back bench".(6 votes)
- in the sentence "Robert Park swam swiftly, surely, and straight ahead." swiftly, surely, and straight ahead sounds like it is violating parallel structure right? (i'm not sure about this please let me know if i'm wrong haha.)(4 votes)
- Parallel structure is a stylistic thing. It is not a grammatical rule to be kept, but a useful suggestion. Perhaps substituting "directly" for "straight ahead" would be parallel structure, but then there would not be the alliteration.(2 votes)
- why my teacher forcing me to do this(3 votes)
- YOur teacher has your best interests in mind. He doesn't want you to live ignorantly.(4 votes)
Video transcript
- [David] Hello grammarians, hello Rosie! - [Rosie] Hi David! - [David] So, You've
caught me mid-scribble in the greatest challenge of my career. Will I be able to write
the word ono-mato-poeia? - [Rosie] You can do it. - [David] Did I get it? - [Rosie] You did it. - [David] Yes! This is one of my least
favorite words to spell but one of my favorite
things to talk about. Because what we're talking about today is alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia. And these are all words that are related to the way language sounds. But let's begin with alliteration. Rosie, what is alliteration? - [Rosie] Alliteration
is when a series of words all start with the same consonant. - [David] So what's a
good example of that? - [Rosie] Robert Park
swam swiftly, surely, and straight ahead. - [David] So you can see that
all these pink words here, swam, swiftly, surely, straight
ahead, all begin with "S." And so this is why we
call this alliteration because "S" is a consonant and all of these things share a
similar consonant sound. Now I want to contrast
that with assonance, which is what, Rosie? - [Rosie] Assonance is
when a series of words all start with the same vowel. Althea abolished all anguish. - [David] So you can
see, all of these words in the sentence in the
same vowel neighborhood. - [Rosie] Right. - [David] But my favorite
of all is onomatopoeia, which comes from Greek, and
it basically means, like, onom, onomat, means a
name resulting from doing. So really, this is, this word just means sounds like what it does. So any, really anything
that you would conceive of as a sound effect, like a word that comes from a sound effect. So, the bees buzzed, for example. Like, what is buzzed? Well, it's the sound that a bee makes. It's what it does. But that word is derived
from the buzz sound. But that's not the only
example of onomatopoeia. We've compiled here a list.
What have we got, Rosie? - [Rosie] Okay, we've got splat. That's kind of the sound of
something hitting pavement. - [David] Splat. - [Rosie] Yep. We've got clang, which
is like the clanging of a bell. We've got bang, which sounds
like something exploding. Whoosh, which sounds like air or wind. Beep. - [David] Yeah. - [Rosie] Beep sounds like a beeping. (laughs) - [David] Like that is
literally, so if you, if you are trying to summon up the
actual sound of a thing and transcribe it and use
it as a noun or a verb, you're using onomatopoeia. I know it's a terrifying
looking word, right? Like, no one word should have
this many vowels in front of the other. I get it, I get it. I'm, I'm terrified of spelling this word, but I managed to do it,
apparently, and now you know what it means, and that should take away some of its scariness and
impart to you some of its power. Because here at Khan Academy, we want you to have the power to harness language, and specifically, today,
to harness these three different language styles. So, alliteration, repeating
the same consonant a bunch of times in a row, so swimming, swiftly,
surely, and straight ahead. - [Rosie] Assonance, where
you repeat the same vowel, like abolished all anguish. - [David] And onomatopoeia,
where you make a word that sounds like what
the word's effect is. So the bees buzzed, the
pudding cup went splat, the boxing bell fell to
the floor with a clang, the firework went off with
a bang, a flight of bats whooshed past my head, and the robot, the little baby robot
beeped at me, insistently. - [Rosie] I like those. - [David] How can a robot be a baby? - [Rosie] I think it's
just the size, right? - [David] Okay, sure. - [Rosie] Not the age. - [David] Okay, sure,
yeah that's legitimate. So okay, I guess the
question is now you know what these things are, but Rosie, why would a person want
to use these techniques in language, whether written or spoken? - [Rosie] That's a great question. Writers can use some of these techniques to basically use the sound. To get across a pattern. - [David] Um-hum. - [Rosie] Like if you're going to use words that all sound the same at the beginning, with a bunch of "Ss" that kind of, could potentially build some
momentum to your sentence. Like, it kind of makes the
reader sit up and pay attention, too, like oh, this is
an interesting pattern. So that could be one reason
why a writer might use, for example, alliteration. - [David] Yeah, so it's a
way to express a pattern and to build on what you were saying, you can also, it's just
a good attention grabber, and it's also useful for its own sake, just as a technique for
writing prose or poetry. Like, it's something,
it's a useful property of language to be able
to sometimes access. - [Rosie] Right, and a good
example with onomatopoeia, ono-mato-poeia, is
you're really capturing, you're really capturing
the sound, so the reader is really able to be
immersed in the experience even more fully. You can hear the sounds
that are happening. The buzzing of the bees, or, yeah. It just puts you even more in the story that the writer's telling. - [David] That's why you
would want to learn how to use assonance, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. You can learn anything. David out. - [Rosie] Rosie out.