Linguistics

[ysabetwordsmith]

Here's an interesting observation:

Hey ding-dongs, let’s have a chit-chat about Ablaut reduplication.

If you have three words, the order usually goes 'I-A-O.'
-tic-tac-toe

If there are only two words, ‘I’ is the first and the second is either ‘A’ or ‘O.’
-click-clack
-King-Kong


I can think of a few exceptions, like "bone-dry," and more rhymes like "helter-skelter." Some like "merry-go-round" seem to follow a similar high to low pattern.

Comments

[gs_silva]

Learning Chinese ruined this effect for me. Dong-ding sounds just fine now.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's a tonal language, the rules are different. Turkish has a set of vowel-pattern rules for its words too.