Talk:Dactylic hexameter
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I hesitate to make statements about how common thy terminology is, but I can say that all of the noteworthy poets at at least one prominent United States university use the terms "stressed" and "unstressed" rather than "long" and "short." I haven't thought of a way to add the other terms without making the entry unwieldy, so I'll leave it to your discretion. :-) --Koyaanis Qatsi
stressed & unstressed are right for English, but Greek and Latin poetry work somewhat differently -- though they both HAD syllable stress, the poetry is better thought of in terms of sung music with the lengths of notes. Greek also had pitch, but that's a different matter and not perfectly understood, anyway. So, think of long syllables as half notes and short syllables as quarter notes and you're not too far off - and it will help you remember that the poetry was mean to be performed orally even when it was composed on the page. This system was somewhat artificial for Latin and had been adopted wholesale from Greek metrics, but it worked. We should distinguish this on the entry. --MichaelTinkler
You're right; I was thinking only of English; and it's best to keep that distinction. I have no experience with Greek or Latin poetry, aside from reading them in mediocre to good translations; I think I'll defer to you. --KQ