Hard consonants

[Brian G Turner]

I haven't seen much mention of this - or if I have, I've forgotten that I saw it, I'm afraid!

Basically, I flirted with stand-up comedy at one point, and in a book about it there was mention about using hard consonants to make punchlines punchier.

It was only mentioned in passing, but from my notes from the book:

[FONT=&quot]hard consonants for added punch when drama is required: K, hard C, hard Qu, also - T, P, hard G, D, and B.[/FONT]

A simple example:

a) Soft consonants:

I hate singles bars. Guys come up to me and say, "Hey, sweetie, can I buy you a drink?" I say, "No thanks, but I'll take the three dollars."

b) Hard consonants:

I hate singles bars. Guys come up to me and say, "Hey, cupcake, can I buy you a drink?" I say, "No thanks, but I'll take the three bucks."

The reason I mention this is that I noticed recently editing a sentence I put in a stronger verb with a hard consonant, and it worked better. Because of the verb, or hard consonant, or both?

Anyway, it's something I've put in my notes to look out for when editing - would swapping key words for ones with hard consonants work better?

I know stand-up is about speaking aloud, but when I hear my own voice narrating when reading, so I wondered if anyone else looks at this.

Also - I appreciate that the rhythm and poetry of words demands that not everything should take a single form - of which hard consonants is only one.

I just wanted to raise the issue for further discussion, in case this is something anyone else uses sometimes to emphasise drama.

 

[HareBrain]

It makes sense -- I think all swearwords have at least one hard consonant and sometimes two in only a few letters, and swearwords are designed to create as much drama as possible.

A similar piece of advice I've heard (I think I've mentioned it before) is to end a sentence on the word you want to have most impact, often the verb or subject.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

A similar piece of advice I've heard is to end a sentence on the word you want to have most impact, often the verb or subject.

Yes, I've heard that, too, and occasionally employ it (when the sentence would still make sense and not look funny). I don't know if it works on readers, but it makes the sentences look better in my mind.

 

[Toby Frost]

I've never used this concept (mainly because I've never thought of it). Personally, I find some words more amusing than others, and that even that depends on the sentence in question (I recently spent a while trying to work out whether "acquired" was better than "contracted"). I'm also wary of reading jokes aloud, since the effect of reading and speaking is quite different. To my mind, it's a question of finding which word works in the individual case.

 

[Kylara]

You look at that sort of thing a lot in poetry Brian. Word choice can be exceedingly important and often poets choose soft consonants or hard consonants for particular impacts. Also take into account the act of sibilance (s sounds) which can turn soft consonants into a greater impacting collection of words. Plosives work as well for impact words (Bs and Ps at the beginning of words)

PS for plosives just think how in evangelical churches the word "Preach!" is yelled out a lot - it is the plosive P at the beginning which makes it work so well.

 

[sknox]

Toby Frost makes an excellent point: there is a huge difference between speaking (as in stand-up comedy) and reading (which most folk do silently). As valid as the observations are about fricatives and sibilants and gutturals and the rest of the phonetics crowd, I don't think it applies to writing. Except for poetry.

 

[thaddeus6th]

An interesting point. I agree with Toby that some words are inherently amusing ('todger' seems, from experience, to be one that Americans especially like).

I wonder if something comparable occurs with written humour.

One thing that would be interesting would be Latin jokes, because the way the language works means you can put the words of a sentence in almost any order (because meaning, such as subject/object etc, is determined not by place in a sentence but the suffix of a word), so you can 'hide' the amusing revelation/twist until the end of a sentence very easily.

 

[monsterchic]

I like this. I find myself doing it often, not just in writing, but even in speaking. I don't do it consciously, but upon looking at it...I really do.