How to send a rhyming greeting or wish

Problem
No time to send a card for a birthday or even a greeting or wish you were here? Here are some options:

Answers
You have choice of: foreign card (photographed and emailed),
1 Facebook greeting - with added emoji (miniature funny face symbol)
2 Send a picture of the recipient on previous birthday or you are them with the greeting
3 Write a rhyme. and send a picture for someone special if you have time

How To  Improve A Rhyme
It's easy to improve a rhyme
All you need is a little time.

I just made that up. To find a thyme, pick a key word to end your opening and closing sentences.
From your own head, pick out some rhyming words, going though the alphabet.
You can do this with one word or two, eg
love: a/b above , d dove
love you
above you

Check rhyming dictionary and thesaurus for more.

Try changing rhyming couplets to alternating lines ie
instead of end rhymes aa bb
abab

Count syllables. The easiest is to make all lines end with the same number of syllables
eg 8 or 10.
Another popular scheme is second and alternating lines shorter eg 9797.

If your lines are different lengths, it is often easier to lengthen the shorter ones than to cut the longer ones.

Author
Angela Lansbury
zon See my books on writing poetry on Lulu.com and Amazon

Shakespeare - belated quotations - and intonation for understanding others when travelling

Better late than never (but better never late).

Shakespeare:
I can immediately quote:

1 To be or not to be.
(Hamlet.)

2 Neither a borrower nor a lender be.

3 Oh woe is me, for you are undone.

4 Is this a dagger which I see before my hand?

5 When shall we three meet again.
In thunder darkness or in rain.
(Macbeth, the three witches, opening scene.)

6 Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
(Watching Lady Macbeth.)

7 Out damned spot.

(Lady Macbeth.)

8 Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

9 If you cut us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
The Merchant of Venice.

10 All's well that ends well.
Title of play.

11 Once more into the breach, dear friends.
King Henry's speech.


***
At one point it was suggested that Shakespeare was outdated and should be dropped from the secondary school curriculum and replaced with computer studies.

This caused an outcry. By all means add computer studies. But do not take away Shakespeare. Why?

Shakespeare reminds us of English intonation. In English we usually emphasize the first syllable.
Your ENGlish TEAcher says:
"Good MORNing."

Take the sentence from Shakespeare's play:
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, darkness or in rain.
Emphasis is on the first syllable, and on words which are nouns (naming words or words naming objects or people, animal, vegetable or mineral). Insignificant words such as in, on, the are mostly not emphasised.

Prefixes (additions pre or before the word) and suffixes (syllables added at the end) are usually not emphasised.

In a court of law, you might hear somebody ask: "Are there any mitigating circumstances?"

If you are not speaking English as a first language, and somebody who speaks English cannot understand you, try saying the words again with English intonation. If you are English and a foreigner is asking for a place, try guessing where they would want to go and how it would be pronounced if all the syllables sounded the same weight, or you emphasised the last syllable.

For example, an English person would ask for Paris. A French speaking person would drop the last letter of the word Paris and emphasise and extend the last syllable 'Paree'. Somebody from China, Japan, Korea, or a Chinese speaking Singaporean might ask for Pa - Ris, emphasising both syllables equally.

When saying goodbye, you can quote most of Shakespeare's opening to MacBeth, "When shall we - meet again?"

Angela Lansbury, B A Hons, CL, ACG, English teacher and tutor.