Alliteration

Alliteration (from Latin ad 'to' and litera/littera 'letter') is a literary stylistic figure or a rhetorical decorative element in which the stressed root syllables of adjacent words (or components of compounds) have the same initial sound (anlaut). A special form of alliteration is the tautogram, in which each word begins with the same letter.

In phonetically written languages, in which a sound has only one spelling, the first letters then also match (e.g. "frank und frei" or "man and mouse"), as the translation from Latin suggests. However, since the German writing system is not a purely phonetic one, the identical sounds in alliterations are often not written with the same letter. Conversely, it is not automatically an alliteration if the stressed syllables in word structures are written with the same initial letter. In "beautiful and clean", for example, it is not an alliteration, because here the letter "s" represents different sounds. In "beautiful", the "s" is part of the grapheme <sh>, which represents a [ʃ], while the "s" in "clean" represents a [z]. Examples of alliteration in which the root syllable anlauts are represented by different letters would be "The early bird catches..." [deɐˈfʁy:əˈfoːglˈfɛŋt].

Where regular alliteration underlies the construction of verse, we speak of alliterative verse or staff rhyme or alliterative verse. Stab rhyme is thus a special case of alliteration. Historically, however, alliteration occurs primarily in free form. Related sound figures are the homoioteleuton (same word endings) and the assonance (same internal vowels).

Alliteration can emphasize the connection between related expressions. It also results in better memorability, which is why it is often used in advertising texts (e.g. "Spiel, Spaß und Spannung" or "Milch macht müde Männer munter") and in pointed phrases (e.g. "Land und Leute" or veni vidi vici) - also in poetic/literary texts ("Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot"). In addition, alliteration as a sound figure structures the text on the phonological and musical level.

Literary alliteration

Alliteration was and is widely used in poetry and rhetoric of many languages. Heraclitus expressed an essential idea of his philosophy thus: Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστί Polemos panton men pater esti, German 'War [can also be understood in the sense of strife] is the father of all things'.

The Romans also had a penchant for alliteration. Cato was known to end every speech in the Senate with Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam 'For the rest, I think that Carthage should be destroyed'. Another famous example is Caesar's Veni, vidi, vici 'I came, I saw, I conquered'.

In the Germanic verse form of staff rhyme, alliteration was developed into a strict principle. Both the Norse Edda and the Old English Beowulf poem are written in alliterative meters. The earliest evidence of a Germanic alliterative staff rhyme is an inscription on a gold horn of Gallehus: ek hlewagastiz holtijaz horna tawido 'I, Hlewagastiz, belonging to Holt, made the horn'.

In modern times, the Finnish Kalevala, which sometimes even uses meaningless words for the sake of alliteration, is probably the richest in alliteration. There is also a strong tradition of alliteration elsewhere in Finnish poetry and rhetoric.

In German, literary alliteration is also very common up to the present day, especially in the Germanizing attempts of the second half of the 19th century (Wilhelm Jordan: "Da wallen und wogen die Wipfel des Waldes"; Richard Wagner: "Weia! Waga! Woge, du Welle, walle zur Wiege! Wagala weia! / Wallala weiala weia!"). The use of such phenomena, often perceived as unintentionally comic in today's reception, which takes the place of the once intended heightening of an out-of-time pathos, has been replaced in more recent times by the use of alliteration to enhance "voluntary comedy". For example, in Heinz Erhardt's G-Sketch, all words begin with the letter G. The sketch seems improvised, but it is completely planned out, including the apparent pauses for reflection.

Special forms

Within a word

In words like jumble, knickknack, mishmash, zigzag, clutter, singsong and others, both syllables begin with the same letter, or more precisely, with the same initial sound. Often the whole syllable is doubled - except for the vowel. In German, the vowel of the second syllable often follows the third ablaut of the vowel of the first syllable. That's why these kinds of words are called alliterative-ablautend. Some of these words also imitate in their sound the thing they describe or the process they describe (onomatopoeia).

Intensiva using the connective -itze-

Special forms of alliteration within a word are the formations using the linking syllables -itze-, which are usually used to strengthen the properties of colors and are usually found in southern and western German language areas in dialect variations. The original derivation is thought to be in the word Blitz, the first or first two letters from the anlaut of the adjective is/are presented in the word and connected with the link -itze-. Examples:

• lightning blue
• light yellow (simplified it became: quince yellow)
• gritzegrau
• gritzegrün
• Hot Red

Beyond these intensives on colors, one finds corresponding dialectal word formations with other property words, for example

• spick and span
• britzebreit
• teeny tiny

Blitzeblank is to be understood here as blitzend blank. An analogous alliteration with a noun (anlaut + -itze- + word) is Hitzeblitz (effervescent person), the regular formation would be Blitzeblitz. To avoid repeating the whole word, the anlaut was omitted, later reinterpreted as "heat".