This question comes from OEDILF, and I don't even know if it really is a linguistics question, but I am told it is.

Judah posted this limerick:

Tea, milk, sugar—they stirred contemplation:
Distinct when they're in isolation...
They swirled and spun;
When the mixing was done,
What were many was one: adunation.

We didn't like line 1 because it was, as Mark Mironer said, "a mouthful."

Mark suggested this:

Tea, milk, honey—they stirred contemplation:
Distinct when they're in isolation...
They swirled and spun;
When the mixing was done,
What were many was one: adunation.

"With this comment: "honey" would be better also because it's metrically smoother (You can say "teemilKUNny" but you have to say "teemilk SHUgar" which is why the stress is so tough here.)

[I wish I knew the linguist terms to describe this stuff- I just know how it sounds in my head, which sounds like a line designed to get me commited to an asylum- except I don't really, because unless I knew that I was speaking to another linguist type, I'd want to avoid jargon. But I digress]"

Is there a linguistic term for this? I promised him I'd ask. I see his point; the honey works better than sugar because honey seems to flow well with the first 2 words, but "sugar" is a whole new sound. At least that's my thinking on it.

I can't really think of a term, Kalleh, but perhaps the first syllable of sugar, makes the last syllable of milk, heavier, whereas honey, beginning with a vowel does not. Elision? In any case, the first version takes more time to utter than the second one, again because it has more sounds at the problematic juncture. Hope that helps.

I hadn't heard of elision before. That very well may be it, from reading the definition of it. It is an omission of an initial (or final) sound in the pronunciation, which is exactly what this would be with honey versus sugar.

Here is question #2 from there:

"It's not just elision, is it? Even after you drop the H, there's the same number of syllables. It's the lack of "weight" on the end of milk, as your linguist called it, that we need a term for."

Perhaps there is no linguistic term for that?

It's called syllable weight. Graphically, what I was trying to say is tha "milk, sugar" vs "milk, honey" is:

CVCCVC vs CVCVC

where the h in honey, just becomes a short bit of aspiration on the word final k. I suppose we could run it through some sound-spectrographic software.

Thanks, Zmj, and I passed it along.

Even though you don't post on OEDILF, many know you there.