Wiploc
Veteran Member
To me "squirrel" has 2 syllables and "girl" has only 1. So I am wondering. Are people who insist that this is a close rhyme squeezing "squirrel" into one syllable or stretching "girl" into two?
A one syllable "squirrel" is vaguely familiar. but a two syllable "girl" that rhymes with "squirrel" sounds quite exotic to my ear.
I can't see them rhyming, either.
"el" doesn't rhyme with "irl".
If you're going to pick random parts of the words so you can claim they don't rhyme, why not say that "gir" doesn't rhyme with "rrel"? If you want to be fair, you should either compare "rl" with "rrel" or "irl" with "irrel."
Try to pronounce an "L" by itself. You can't pronounce it without adding a vowel either before or after. You wind up saying something like "el" or "la."
When you pronounce the world "girl," you put an "e" sound before the "L," as if it were spelled "girel." That ending is a lot like the ending of "squirrel." A double "r" sounds a lot like a single one.
If I was scanning a poem with the word "girl" in it, I might call that 1.5 syllables. The reader will pronounce it as one syllable or two depending on which is dictated by the meter. And if that reader pronounces it the other way in the next line, she probably won't even notice the difference.
I infer from this thread that some people, or some dialects, usually stress or linger over the "rrel" of "squirrel" more than they do the "rl" of "girl." I don't have a problem with that, but it is new information.