Talk:Kural (poetic form)

message: ===Rationale===
I'm making a few notes about my recent expansion of this article so that my rationale will be as transparent as possible; this way other editors can better improve my work, or better argue against it, as the case may be.
As I state in the mainspace, this description of kural structure does not reflect its conception in authentic Tamil prosody. However, I've made every effort (and I hope you'll correct me if I've failed) to ensure that the structure I'm describing in Western terms is prosodically equivalent to the authentic Tamil verse. I see this as analogous to classical Arabic verse, which is also described by its practitioners in terms of units that tend to hover just below, and just above, the level of "syllable" ... yet which can be accurately described in terms of syllables. I trust this will be taken, not as imperialism, but rather as an effort to be comprehensible to our readers (and even my "simplification" will surely be incomprehensible to some ... possibly a "for dummies" section is needed, too!).
Authentic Tamil prosody absolutely should be described in English Wikipedia, but I believe this should appear in Tamil prosody, not under specific verse forms -- imagine the amount of remedial prosodic background that would have to be repeated on every single Tamil verse form page before we could get to the actual structure of the specific form in question.
But there are real risks in my strategy: for example, when I cite a source in support of an assertion about syllables, that source typically is not explicitly talking about syllables at all; rather I'm combining what it says about eluttu and acai and "translating" that into syllable-talk. This can be done precisely, which is my justification of why my work does not constitute WP:OR. However, it will certainly be good if other editors check my work. The benefits from this procedure? I think the only other options are (1) a massively detailed authentic Tamil prosodic description that will be incomprehensible to almost all readers, (2) a very brief and superficial description that in the end will not be terribly accurate, or (3) don't talk about the structure. In my view, my path is at least better than these. Phil wink (talk) 17:33, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Expansion Notes

message: I'm making a few notes about my recent expansion of this article so that my rationale will be as transparent as possible; this way other editors can better improve my work, or better argue against it, as the case may be.
As I state in the mainspace, this description of kural structure does not reflect its conception in authentic Tamil prosody. However, I've made every effort (and I hope you'll correct me if I've failed) to ensure that the structure I'm describing in Western terms is prosodically equivalent to the authentic Tamil verse. I see this as analogous to classical Arabic verse, which is also described by its practitioners in terms of units that tend to hover just below, and just above, the level of "syllable" ... yet which can be accurately described in terms of syllables. I trust this will be taken, not as imperialism, but rather as an effort to be comprehensible to our readers (and even my "simplification" will surely be incomprehensible to some ... possibly a "for dummies" section is needed, too!).
Authentic Tamil prosody absolutely should be described in English Wikipedia, but I believe this should appear in Tamil prosody, not under specific verse forms -- imagine the amount of remedial prosodic background that would have to be repeated on every single Tamil verse form page before we could get to the actual structure of the specific form in question.
But there are real risks in my strategy: for example, when I cite a source in support of an assertion about syllables, that source typically is not explicitly talking about syllables at all; rather I'm combining what it says about eluttu and acai and "translating" that into syllable-talk. This can be done precisely, which is my justification of why my work does not constitute WP:OR. However, it will certainly be good if other editors check my work. The benefits from this procedure? I think the only other options are (1) a massively detailed authentic Tamil prosodic description that will be incomprehensible to almost all readers, (2) a very brief and superficial description that in the end will not be terribly accurate, or (3) don't talk about the structure. In my view, my path is at least better than these. Phil wink (talk) 17:33, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Rationale

message: What I'd like to do next is provide 1 or more formal paraphrases of kural couplets; this is an English version that duplicates -- as exactly as is possible in English -- the formal properties of the original, so that non-Tamil-readers can have some level of primary experience of the rhythms and effects we're talking about. While literal exactitude must be sacrificed to form when necessary, these formal paraphrases can remain surprisingly faithful: perhaps my proudest moment is "Chaos! Chaos!" at the bottom of Spenserian stanza. A closer analogue for kural is this (which I'm also quite proud of, but was not used in mainspace):
As will be necessary with Tamil, this formal paraphrase replaces long/short with stressed/unstressed. But given that, it exactly duplicates both the meter and rime of the original, and you can see that it remains very faithful to the content. I'm not sure this is exactly the formatting we'll want for kural, but you can see where I'm going.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to choose 1 to 3 kural and provide me a literal translation as well as an exact map of their individual prosodic structures, which I can then reproduce in English. Ideally, we might have 1 of each of the types that Niklas lists:
# enticai-ceppal: only vencir-ventalai occurs throughout the stanza;
# tunkicai-ceppal: only iyarcir-venlalai occurs throughout the stanza;
# olukicai-ceppal: vencir-ventalai and iyarcir-ventalai both occur within one stanza. (p. 181)
Also, ideally, the concepts in the couplets will not be very exotic, as common ideas are more likely to give me more room to play with synonyms. We can do the work here on the talk page, or (since this will naturally result in some back-and-forth) we might move our sausage-making to my User:Phil wink/Translation workshop. Let me know what you think. Cheers. Phil wink (talk) 17:33, 6 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Formal Paraphrase