Popular Poetry, Traditional Songs, and Adjectives

Posted on Mar 13, 2025 in English Studies

Popular and Traditional Poetry

In every culture, there are songs and poems that quickly spread. These poems and songs that people know, sing, and recite constitute popular poetry. Some works of popular poetry carry over time and are passed down from generation to generation through the centuries, so that eventually, no one remembers who the author was or when he composed it.

Characteristics of Traditional Poems

  • Oral Tradition: It is transmitted mainly orally, frequently through singing and music.
  • Musicality: It is set in predominantly short lines, with repetition and parallelism. These resources create rhythm and facilitate the memorization of the poem.
  • Anonymity: These are works whose author is unknown. Moreover, they do not have a single author because, as they are transmitted, changes are introduced.
  • Variants: As it is transmitted orally, it is common to find more than one version of a poem.

The Traditional Song

The song is a lyrical composition of variable length that is often in the first person. It addresses subjects related to love or everyday life (work, parties, etc.). Folk songs are usually compositions of a few verses, usually short, with a strongly marked rhythm. It is not uncommon to have a refrain that is repeated, and other types of repetition, which contribute to increasing the feeling of rhythm. Folk songs are classified according to the subject they address. There are love songs, holiday songs, work songs, etc. And there is a group of nursery rhymes to draw lots or to accompany games.

The Romance

The “Romance” is a poem composed of a series of eight-syllable verses (octosyllabic) with assonant rhyme in the even-numbered lines. Romances tell a story that happens to some characters. These compositions are epic or narrative.

The Adjective: Concept

The noun has to be accompanied in the sentence by a word that emphasizes its properties or limits its extent. Adjectives are variable words that accompany or refer to a noun, indicating a quality or an outstanding characteristic, or limiting its extension.

Classes of Adjectives

  • Qualifying: These adjectives, such as white and new, report the characteristics of the being named by the noun. They generally function as adjuncts:
    white car (**new** noun)
    brown cat
  • Determinative: These adjectives, like that and your, provide context to the noun and limit its extension. They function as determiners:
    That cat
    Your car

The Qualifying Adjective

The qualifying adjective accompanies, relates to, and supplements the noun, informing about its traits, qualities, or properties. They differ from nouns in that they can be combined with the neuter article (lo).

Form of the Adjective: Concordance

Adjectives take the gender and number of the nouns to which they relate: if the noun is feminine plural, the adjective is feminine plural.

  • Some adjectives have one form for the masculine and one for the feminine: brown cat / brown cat. These are adjectives with two terminations.
  • Other adjectives have the same form for masculine and feminine: Persian cat / Persian cat. These are adjectives with one termination.

Position of Adjectives

  • If they go before the noun, adjectives are often explanatory, highlighting a quality typical of the object or being to which they refer.
  • If they go after the noun, adjectives are usually specificative, pointing to a trait that distinguishes the object being spoken of.

Degrees of Adjectives

There are three degrees of adjectives: positive (fast), comparative (faster than…), and superlative (super fast).

  • Positive Degree: An adjective is in the positive degree when it expresses a quality without comparing it to any other element.
  • Comparative Degree:
    • Superiority: more… than
    • Equality: as… as
    • Inferiority: less… than
  • Superlative Degree: An adjective is in the superlative degree when it expresses the quality of the being referred to in its maximum degree. It is constructed as follows:
    1. Adding to the adjective the suffixes -ísimo/a or -érrimo/a, or a prefix like super- or requete-.
    2. Putting before the adjective an adverb such as very or extremely.