On Apr 10, 2004, at 4:53 PM, Ryan Beard wrote:
I'm working on a choir piece based on Psalm 23. I'm having trouble finding the correct syllabification of some of the King James English words like "maketh," "leadeth," "restoreth," "preparest" all those "-eth" & "-est" words. The dictionaries I have don't include these particular forms of the words.
You can treat -eth and -est exactly as you would treat -ing or -er. Your instincts are right: split before the suffix.
There is one school of thought that says always split after a long vowel, in which case you would have "ma-king". I've seen that in some 19th century British editions, but I think it's pretty much rejected now. If you agree with "ma-king" then you should also do "ma-keth" to be consistent. I mention this only to be thorough, I definitely don't recommend it.
By the way, am I the only one who has noticed lots of nonstandard hyphenations in _The Economist_ magazine over the past few months? Are they trying to make a statement, or is it just a crappy hyphenation program?
mdl
Our Roanoke Times certainly has a random hyphenation program. Certainly you have to stop sometimes and figure out what the word really is--which is a strong argument for correct syllable breaking.
I should also point out that Mark's suggestion makes reading the words much quicker and intuitive. But of course a singer isn't going to actually pronounce them that way. Tacking the consonant onto the 2nd syllable is good vocal practice: "may-keth," "lee-deth," "re-stoh-reth," "pre-pa-rest." In other words, the rules are different for printing (to make the word clear) and for singing (to make the words clear!).
John
-- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
