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bulbul

Birds
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A bulbul is a small, melodious songbird, often associated in Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and other literary traditions with roses, gardens, love, longing, and lyrical song.

Detailed Definition
Bulbuls are Birds of the family Pycnonotidae, found chiefly in Africa and Asia and known for their varied, musical calls. In poetry, especially poetry influenced by Persian and South Asian traditions, the bulbul is often portrayed as the rose’s devoted singer or lover, making it a symbol of beauty, desire, and yearning. English poets may use the word to evoke an idealized Eastern garden or a rich, perfumed, dreamlike landscape rather than to identify a bird scientifically.
Example
Example in poetry:
In William Sharp’s “The White Peacock,” the speaker imagines a fragrant, exotic garden: “As though from the gardens Of Gulistan, Where the bulbul singeth Through a mist of roses A breath were borne” Here, the bulbul is used in its literary sense as the singing bird of a rose-filled Persian garden. Its song, carried “through a mist of roses,” helps create the poem’s lush atmosphere of scent, color, heat, and dreamlike beauty. “Singeth” is an archaic form of “sings.”
Additional Notes
The word bulbul comes into English through Persian and related languages; it is ultimately associated with the Arabic word bulbul, meaning a nightingale-like singing bird. In Persianate poetry, the bulbul and the rose are a famous symbolic pair: the bird is often the passionate lover, while the rose is beautiful, distant, or sometimes cruelly indifferent. A bulbul is not always the same bird as a nightingale in scientific classification. However, English translations and literary adaptations sometimes treat “bulbul” as a nightingale-like bird because of its poetic association with beautiful singing. Related poetic symbols include the rose, nightingale, garden, and Gulistan, a Persian word meaning “rose garden.”
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