Talk:2771: College Knowledge

Did anyone else learn today that "chitin" rhymes with Triton? (I've always pronounced it chitten, like a chewy kitten, but apparently it's kai-ten!) College Knowledge? More like webcomic knowledge! Mathmannix (talk) 10:51, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, if you pronounce it "Tritin", it rhymes. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 18:14, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Rather than giving up because "their justifications for each visit become increasingly tenuous," I read the comic as indicating greater and greater complexity in scansion, which leads to increased difficulty in jumping rope, so the point where Ponytail is no longer able to meet the physical challenge, hence her giving up. I do feel like I'm missing something as to the ellipses and the meter in the 4th panel, though. JohnHawkinson (talk) 12:36, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

I think the ellipses are the chanter pausing to think of another heavenly body and what to rhyme it with. But usually the chants are already established and everyone says them in unison -- it's hard to do extemporaneous patter in unison. Barmar (talk) 13:38, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Betelgeuse only rhymes with Pamplemousse if you mispronounce both ... 141.101.98.8 13:41, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

You only have to mispronounce one, but you have to mispronounce it very badly. 172.71.30.96 15:04, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Theoretically, anything could rhyme with anything else if you mispronounce one or both words sufficiently poorly... 172.70.126.141 17:02, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah...but I think final-syllable rhymes are OK, aren't they? Like, if you chanted "You drink grapefruit juice - it makes your bowels loose", that would be fine. Well, it wouldn't, but as a rhyme it would. So "-geuse" rhymed with "mousse" is fine - the "betel-" and "pample-" needn't trouble us. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 18:10, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

-mousse pronounced in the French way (with stress on the final e) does not rhyme with any of the ways to pronounce --geuse - Either Gerse or Jooose ... 172.70.90.252 20:20, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

There isn't 'a French way' to pronounce it - sometimes it will sound like the English 'moose', sometimes with an elongated 's', sometimes with a pronounced 'e' (like 'Moussa') - all depends on the speaker, and sometimes the register, or what word happens to follow it....172.70.85.169 14:54, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

"Girls go to Mercury, to build more funiculæ; boys go to Betelgeuse, to cut down their metal use..." 172.71.178.136 12:56, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

I initially read that as "mental" and that fits with the theme, too. 108.162.238.162 13:06, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Girls go to OGLE-2016-BLG-1850L b to... er...172.71.178.187 14:59, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

The ellipses help to show that they're improvising the verses in real time. There are better rhymes for Mercury (e.g., "Marie Curie" instead of "Tim Berners-Lee"), but the players are finding it progressively harder to come up with them. Gmcgath (talk) 15:27, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Neither of those names are a great rhyme, but Marie Curie is worlds worse than Tim Berners-Lee. Unless Americans tend to pronounce it "ma REE-keree" and that somehow hasn't made it across the Atlantic. The emphasis is wrong for Tim Berners-Lee too, obviously, but at least his name has the right sounds in it.Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 18:04, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

As a DC area American, I pronounce them "Mir-cure-ree" and "Muh-ree cure-ree" which rhyme pretty okay 172.69.70.109 14:36, 5 May 2023 (UTC)Bumpf

Does the fact that Randall hates grapefruit have anything to do with the ending? Because pamplemousse can mean grapefruit 172.71.182.47 19:19, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

The rhyme my daughters came home from school with (30 years ago): "Girls go to Mars to get more bras" -- 108.162.249.4 (talk) 11:39, 5 May 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

During a general edit, I momentarily undid some other edit about "jump rope" (a.k.a. "skipping" in UK parlance - I know US has its own term, not sure which/what version is most used in rest of anglophone world) whilst not yet seeing which bits I was trampling on in resolving my own Edit Conflict notice, so did a favour on reinstating that bit by adding a wikilink. ("Skipping rope", as main title, a case where Rightpondian got there first. :P ) But though the intro mentions non-solo skipping, it has far more attention paid to the solo activity, and all its variations. I'm sure there's a better link out there (anthropological study of typical playground games, maybe?) for the group activity. Might be worth a link to that, instead or alongside. Or someone could vastly improve the target wiki article and then perhaps #anchor the cooperative version in the link, but that's probably a lot more work. ;) 141.101.99.97 13:03, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Science Girl may just be more proficient in astronomy (being true to her 'name') than extemporised poetry, causing the activity to fizzle out, but we can't really tell if this is her first (or last!) invitation to participate in the schoolyard game. (Half inclined to add this to the Explanation, but quite a lot of unknown factors, so it won't add much to be so vague.) 172.71.178.207 14:46, 5 May 2023 (UTC)