Do the words “lawyer” and “warrior” rhyme in your dialect?
I expect there’s a lot of variety in how these words are pronounced, but I wonder how closely they mirror each other.
Definitely not rhyming in general speech, but in a poem/lyrics, I could find them acceptable - at least for amateur writers.
The second syllable is pretty darn close - “warrior” has more of the “eee-or” diphthong, while “lawyer” has what I consider a consonant “y” sound.
The first syllables are pretty different - does “law” rhyme with “war”? Not in my Texan dialect.
Agreed. I could fudge the pronunciation enough in a song to make a rhyme out of it.
No. In my dialect, the syllable count is different. Law-yer vs Warr-i-or. I may blend the final two vowel sounds a bit, but, for me, it’s not as elided as “war-yer”. I voted #2, but, sure, for a poem it’s well within bounds if you’re not of the type that only considers “hard” rhymes acceptable (plus, if you’re being strict about rhyme, the accented syllable onwards has to rhyme, so it’d have to be “lawyer” and “woyer” for it to have a strict (in this case, feminine) rhyme.)
Elderberries. I put too much “loy” in my 2 syllable lawyer and too much “waaar” in my 3 syllable warrior. I’d let it slide in a song, raise an eyebrow at it in a poem, and call you out on it if for some reason we were conversing in rhymes.
No, they don’t.
Sometimes a comic poem or song uses a deliberately strained rhyme for comic effect. But I don’t think that even Gilbert & Sullivan could make this work.
The correct answer to your question is “No”.
What you could call them though is:
Half-rhyme
near-rhyme
lazy rhyme
approximate rhyme
inexact rhyme
imperfect rhyme (in contrast to perfect rhyme)
off rhyme
analyzed rhyme
suspended rhyme.
All of which are acceptable for poems. (Although, Lawyer and warrior would be a bit of a stretch in my opinion.)
A careful pronunciation of “warrior” has three syllables (as in “Shooting at the walls of heartache bang, bang I am the warrior”), so no. But I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a quick or “lazy” pronunciation of “warrior” that did rhyme with “lawyer.”
This is exactly why poetic licenses are issued. (close enough)
My extremely exaggeratedly lazy pronunciation of “warrior” sounds very different from “lawyer”, so that it would be ridiculous even in a bad amateur poem. (i.e. the combination would never even occur to a 14-year-old poet who talks the way I do)
What does work in my accent, using a little bit of “lazy pronunciation licence”:
Everyone is sorry you’re
Stuck on rhyming “warrior”.
It’d be close enough. Let me look through a book of Seamus Heaney poems I have and see what types of rhymes he has.
From Glanmore Sonnets I, I see:
ground/sound
years/tractors
breathe/lathe
field/tilled
sense/redolence
aprons/stations
rose/snows
“Lawyer” and “Warrior” are well within these bounds, I would say. Near-rhymes are quite effective (and, in general, a bit more pleasing to my ear than an incessant stream of perfect rhymes for most subjects. That’s a personal opinion, but perfect rhymes can end up sounding nursery-rhymish to me after awhile. Near rhymes are a bit more gentle.)
Try saying “lawyer”, but replace the “L” with a “W”. Now say “warrior” really fast. In most dialects, those are going to be pretty close. No, it’s not how most people would usually pronounce “warrior,” but you’d certainly be understood. That’s good enough for a poem, amateur or otherwise.
… your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
Your mother was a hamster, and not that good a dancer
Your father smelt of elderberries, unlike his contemporaries.
Those word don’t rhyme in conversation, but I call it “close enough for rock n roll”.
So I voted yes.
Shooting at the walls of heartache
I am the lawyer
Heart to heart, you’ll win
If you survive, the lawyer
The lawyer, I am the lawyer
Nope. Not working for me. At all.
In my very lazy Northern California accent, they are a perfect rhyme:
(first syllable rhymes with toy, second syllable rhymes with her)
loy - yer
woy - yer
I would call the local basketball team the Woy-yers.
To me they match like “clam sale” and “Taco Bell”