We explain what a cacophony is, how it harms speech, its characteristics and examples. In addition, other vices of language.
What is cacophony?
A cacophony is called vice of language which consists of an unharmonious or not very aesthetic association of sounds within a prayer or a fragment of text. This can mean different things in specific, but generally it is unnecessary or exaggerated repetitions of words or endings, which make the text ugly and distract in the transmission of the message. message.
This term comes from the Greek words kakos ("Bad" or "bad") and phone ("Sound" or "voice"), and it is antonym of euphony ("that which sounds good"). In general, it is a criterion to take into account when writing a text, and it can be detected by reading it aloud.
However, sometimes the language presents grammatical criteria to avoid cacophonies, as occurs with the change of Article feminine to masculine in the case of nouns like "water" or "soul", to avoid the repetition of the initial vowel ("lto toguide »or“ lto tolma ”).
Characteristics of cacophony
The cacophony is characterized by the following:
- It is a vice of language, especially of the written word.
- It consists of the excessive repetition or reiteration of sounds that break with the natural cadence of the sentence, or distract from the meaning of it.
- Sometimes it can be used intentionally to generate playful effects in what is said, such as tongue twisters or word games.
- It usually occurs when repeating specific word endings in a compulsive way, such as adverbs ending in "-mente" or nouns ending in "-ción", for example.
- The best way to detect it is by reading a text aloud so that you can hear what it sounds like.
Examples of cacophony
Examples of cacophony are:
- "Pedro ran quickly to reach and nimbly climb into the boat in which he would probably find his assailants"
- "At the end they were filming with a video camera"
- "The situation in the region has no comparison"
- "I don't know if I want what I want or if I want what you want"
- "Three sad tigers swallow wheat in a wheat field"
Other vices of language
In addition to cacophony, the following are other vices of language:
- Barbarisms. Incorrect or colloquial use of words, conjugations or other terms that do not correspond to a cultured or correct handling of the idiom, and that denote linguistic poverty or lack of education formal.
- Pleonasmos. Also called redundancies, they consist of the reiteration of what was said through the use of unnecessary words, which could be eliminated and the text would win stylistically.
- Solecism. Inaccuracies or ambiguity of the syntactic construction of a sentence, so that the order of the elements of the sentence is imprecise, incorrect or poor.