Rhyme and adasismo

Rhyme and adasismo

Every Esperanto noun ends -o and every past-tense verb -is, so a rhyme on the ending alone is free. That kind of rhyme is called adasismo. Antoni Grabowski named it, and the Parnasa Gvidlibro of 1932, a poetics handbook by Kálmán Kalocsay, Gaston Waringhien and Roger Bernard, treats it as a fault.

The test: does the rhyme reach into the root?

A shared ending is not the fault in itself. The proverb Ne ŝovu la nazon en fremdan vazon rhymes on -az-, which is root, and the object -on simply comes along:

• nazon / vazon - a real rhyme that also shares an ending.

Adasismo is a judgement of style, not grammar. Nobody will call the poem wrong; they will say it was easy.

The word order verse can afford

The accusative -n marks the object wherever it stands, so a poet can move words to fit the line:

• La knabo vidas la hundon. - The boy sees the dog.
• La hundon vidas la knabo. - The same: the boy sees the dog.

La Espero splits an object round its own verb, and the -n on both halves holds it together:

Ne al glavo sangon soifanta / ĝi la homan tiras familion

It does not draw the human family towards the sword that thirsts for blood. Homan and familion agree across tiras. In prose, keep the plain order: see word order and style.

Mistakes English speakers make