A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter P

Phonology

Prosody
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

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

The linguistic study of how sounds function within a particular language system

Detailed Definition
Phonology examines which sounds exist in a language and how they pattern, contrast, and combine to create meaning; it differs from phonetics by focusing on the abstract system rather than physical sound production. In poetry, phonological awareness allows poets to exploit language-specific sound patterns, creating effects that resonate deeply for native speakers; sophisticated poets manipulate phonological expectations to create surprise, humor, or enhanced emotional resonance.
Example
Example in poetry:
Phonology explains why English poets avoid ending lines with unstressed syllables in heroic couplets (due to stress-timing); In Arabic poetry, phonological rules of ʿarūḍ govern permissible meters based on consonant-vowel patterns; In Japanese tanka, phonological mora-count (not syllables) determines the 5-7-5-7-7 structure; English phonology permits consonant clusters that shape alliterative verse, as in “Beowulf”: “Grendel gongan” (phonotactically legal onset /gr/); In French versification, final silent -e is counted or not based on phonological context (e.g., before a vowel); In Russian poetry, vowel reduction in unstressed syllables affects how meter is perceived phonologically.
Additional Notes
Phonology is the study of sound systems in language, including how phonemes pattern and interact. In prosody, phonological rules govern phenomena like elision, liaison, stress assignment, and syllable structure—all of which directly impact meter and rhythm. For example, English phonology explains why "every" is often pronounced with two syllables (/ˈɛvri/) despite its three-letter vowels, affecting scansion. Comparative phonology also reveals why metrical systems differ across languages (e.g., stress-timed vs. syllable-timed). Prosodists rely on phonology to interpret poetic soundcraft accurately.
Also Known As
sound system phonological system
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