Talk:Persian metres

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A few presentation notes

@Kanjuzi: I've only had a chance to skim this new article, but it looks very good. Thanks. Here are a few tricks you might like to consider:

PERSIAN
زلف آشفته و خوی کرده و خندان لب و مست
پیرهن چاک و غزل خوان و صراحی در دست

TRANSLITERATION
zol-'āšofte-vo xoy-karde-vo xandān-lab-o mast
pīrhan-čāq-o qazal-xān-o sorāhī dar dast

LITERAL TRANSLATION
Hair tousled, perspiring, smiling-lipped, and drunk,
shirt torn, singing songs, and wine-flask in hand

FORMAL PARAPHRASE
Hair a right mess, in a haze, sweltering, lips smiling, and pissed,
Shirt in new tatters with brash singing of songs, flagon in fist

You can see the bits of markup I've used by editing source. I think this gives the various versions a little more structure, and the Persian is now flagged for machines. I've also added a formal paraphrase. This of course replaces Persian length with English stress/accent, but I think this is the only approximation that will come through adequately to English readers; of course rime translates nicely. Normally Wikipedia is quite aghast at any "art" being added to a translation, but I believe this practice is totally justified when the topic is prosody, and the encyclopedic focus is not on what is said, but how.

This is certainly not a required-by-WP:MOS format, just a suggestion that comes with its own pros and cons. I'm happy to discuss details (or other formatting options, if you don't like these) — or help with paraphrases if you like (although the strings of 3 and 4 longs may prove unconquerable!). Again, thanks for your work. Phil wink (talk) 21:52, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your feedback. I would be very happy to add coding, though I am not entirely sure what it does and what the meaning is of "rtl=yes", or what coding to give the quotation from Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script. However, it won't take long to do. – I very much admire the ingenuity of your paraphrase! But I think it might make the article too complicated to add two translations of each quotation; and I think it would be almost impossible to give a paraphrase of some of the poems, e.g. 'ey āšeqān "o lovers" in metre (– – u –) without either completely changing the meaning or detracting from the dignity of the line. For these reasons I personally would think it better not to add a paraphrase but to keep things as simple as possible. Also, if the page is made very wide with two versions side by side it might not look very clear on a small screen. Kanjuzi (talk) 20:37, 3 April 2017 (UTC) – Oh, I see rtl must mean "right to left". Kanjuzi (talk) 20:39, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Table test

@Kanjuzi: Hi again. It strikes me that the overall summary of meters would be clarified if put more or less into Elwell-Sutton's tabular format. With this in view, I've mocked up the first 2 patterns below.

Pattern	Scansion	Arabic	Code
1	u – – u – – u – – u –	Mutaqārib	1.1.11 (M)
1	u – – u – – u – – u – –	Mutaqārib	1.1.12
2	u – – – u – – – u – –	Hazaj	2.1.11 (M)
	u – – – u – – – u – – – u – – –	Hazaj	2.1.16 = 2.1.8(2)
	– – u – – – u – – – u – – – u –	Rajaz	2.3.16 = 2.3.8(2)
	– u – – – u – – – u –	Ramal	2.4.11 (M)
	– u – – – u – – – u – – – u –	Ramal	2.4.15
	– u – – – u – – – u – – – u – –	Ramal	2.4.16

A few caveats: I've been fooling around with this quite a bit, so I don't promise it reflects exactly either Elwell-Sutton's or your versions of these meters... its purpose is just as a formatting test (although I expect the content is at least mostly right). Also, I don't actually have a lot of experience with CSS properties, and several I tried did not have the expected effect; so unless we find something better, we're stuck with <poem>...</poem> (+ several additional properties, as implemented above), which keep line-initial spaces intact, but still reduce in-line spaces. So at the moment, we can never use 2 spaces in a row within the text of a scansion, only at the beginning. Let me know if this is something you want to pursue. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 01:03, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Phil wink: Gosh, that does look complicated in the formatting – but I must admit the result looks quite smart. In general I am all for simplicity and avoiding tables (especially as, at least until their latest version, tables disappear when the page is turned into a pdf). I think I may try it out here. I am still hesitating over the Roman comedy article, since when I tried a pdf the result didn't look very pretty. Incidentally, I certainly don't know everything about metres, so don't hesitate to make suggestions if you see anything amiss. When reformatting that other article, for example, I found a line which I had scanned completely incorrectly. I will certainly try this new Persian table when I have a moment. Kanjuzi (talk) 04:57, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Phil wink: I have now made two versions of the complete table in my Kanjuzi/sandbox 3, which you might perhaps look at. (The second version omits the leftmost column.) It does look a bit big and clumsy compared with the original version, but has the advantage that the patterns are more transparent. (Of course it is always possible for readers to click on the link and see Elwell-Sutton's original.) What do you think? Kanjuzi (talk) 17:46, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Kanjuzi: I tend to like just 1 header row, but if you prefer repeating it, then definitely the second (3-column) version. I recommend changing the (2)s to (×2) for clarity... initially I read these as some sort of second alternative of a meter. Another possibility: given the repeated header row, one could just break the table into 5 tables; then each could retain the brief introductions you've already provided. What would be lost is the visual impact of similarities across patterns, particularly the dominating – u u – – in the same position across P3 & P4. I can see it either way. Phil wink (talk) 19:59, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Phil wink: Yes, you're right, the version without extra headings looks better. Here is the correct link to my sandbox 3: Kanjuzi/sandbox 3 with the new version. I have stacked up pattern 5 so that the u u part corresponds to patterns 3 and 4. I have kept (2) rather than (x2), however, since that is what Elwell-Sutton and others who have copied him have put. Is there a way of removing the grey colour from the table? Kanjuzi (talk) 06:41, 2 October 2017 (UTC) - I have now removed it from my sandbox and put it in the article itself, where it looks fine. Kanjuzi (talk) 07:51, 2 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Kanjuzi: The table of contents seems pretty overwhelming (on the other hand, super useful if you know exactly what you're looking for). I'm not recommending for or against this trick, just noting that it exists... If you like, you can place {{TOC limit|3}} at the top of the page, which limits the display to only the first 3 levels (in reality, heading levels 2 and 3, since level 1 is the article title itself). Phil wink (talk) 04:07, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Phil wink: Thanks. That's a useful trick I didn't know! However, in this case, I personally find the extra levels very useful, whenever I want to remind myself of the metre of Rumi's Mystical Masnavi or whatever. I think the bare "Pattern 1" etc. wouldn't tell you very much. But to anyone familiar with Persian poetry, the titles I've given (such as "Hafez's Shirazi Turk" or "Saadi's Bani Adam") in most cases will bring the poem in question immediately to mind, since nearly all of them are well known and often quoted. No doubt in same way you could refer to English poems as "O wild west wind" or "In Xanadu" or "Waving not drowning" or "Lonely as a cloud" and people would know at once which poem was meant. Kanjuzi (talk) 11:54, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Aruz wezni

It has been proposed to merge the article Aruz wezni with this one. I would say it should not be merged, since that short 4-line article is full of misconceptions. Firstly, the name of the article should perhaps be changed, since the usual spelling in modern Turkish is Aruz vezni (see the article Aruz ölçüsü on Turkish Wikipedia). Secondly, the very first sentence "Aruz wezni, or aruz prosody, is a kind of Turkic poetic rhythm" (or, as the article originally said, a kind of "Uighur" poetic rhythm) is misleading, since it is not a kind of Turkic or Uighur rhythm, but an imitation of Persian rhythms in Turkish poetry. Thirdly, it leaves the reader with the impression that the rhythms themselves, rather than merely the system of describing them, are derived from Arabic. There is certainly scope for an article on Turkish metres, but I suggest it should be a separate article, similar to this one, with examples from Turkish poets showing how the different Persian metres are used in Turkish. There should also be citations from experts on the subject such as Gibb and Thiesen, rather than the Encyclopedia of China. Kanjuzi (talk) 04:26, 5 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Closing, given no case made, no support over many months; uncontested objection. Klbrain (talk) 11:04, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]