A study in Sinhala of how rhythm works in the language — in written prose, in verse, and in ordinary speech. The title translates as "Rhythmic Qualities of Sinhala Prose and Verse", and the book is the work of Mahagama Sekara, the poet, lyricist and filmmaker whose songs and verse are among the most widely known in modern Sinhala writing. Here he turns to the analytical side of the same material: what it is in the sound and timing of Sinhala that makes a line scan, a phrase stick, or a spoken turn of phrase feel measured.
The book is written entirely in Sinhala. There is no English text and no facing translation, so a reader will need working Sinhala to use it.
Something of its approach can be gauged from the one chapter that has appeared in English. Under the title "Rhythm and Speech", it was translated by Garrett Field and Ravinda Mahagamasekera, edited by Richard K. Wolf, and published in the journal Ethnomusicology Translations. That chapter deals with rhythmic figurative language in everyday speech; original rhythmic constructions in poetry and in song lyrics; prosody in storytelling for children; colloquial expressions; the rhythm of proverbs; and the moraic structure of doublets, or yugala pada. The range gives a fair sense of the whole: Sekara treats rhythm as something present across the spoken language, not confined to formal metre.
Readers likely to want it include students and teachers of Sinhala literature and linguistics, poets and lyricists, performers and translators working between Sinhala and other languages, and researchers in South Asian music and prosody who have met the translated chapter and want the surrounding argument. For readers of Sekara's poetry and songs, it is also a chance to see how he thought about the technical foundations of work usually encountered only as finished verse.
The publisher is Godage International Publishers of S. Godage & Brothers, an established Colombo house issuing scholarly and literary titles in Sinhala and English.
- Author: Mahagama Sekara
- Publisher: Godage International Publishers
- Language: Sinhala
- Pages: 212
- ISBN: 9789552042881
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