The cacophony It is a phenomenon characterized by the unpleasant perception of sounds, which result from using similar syllables followed or repeated in the same sentence.
In general, the cacophony is the product of poor or sloppy writing, although it is sometimes considered a literary device.
Common forms of cacophony
During writing, words that are acoustically inharmonious may be used, which is due to a number of common errors.
The most common form of cacophony occurs when using words with similar endings such as some adverbs or diminutives. It is also common when narrating events using verbs in the same temporal form continuously or when words with similar prefixes are used.
Another fact that leads to cacophony is the repetition of the same vowel when it is at the end of one word and at the beginning of the next, as occurs for example in the following cases: "a breakdown", "the alert" , "much water".
Cacophony as a literary resource
Cacophony can be used to express ignorance or lack of language referring to another, or with a derogatory character. Great writers like Miguel de Cervantes have used this resource in their works.
Another use of cacophony occurs in the writing of playful texts such as tongue twisters, in which pronunciation out loud is difficult, making mistakes or changing words common, as is the case of the famous tale of the three sad tigers eating wheat in a wheat field.
How to correct the presence of cacophony in texts
The best way to show the presence of cacophony is to read the text to be analyzed aloud, looking for disharmonic sounds, repetitions or groups of words that are difficult to pronounce due to their similarity.
Once the conflicting words have been identified, one of them must be replaced by a synonym, change their order in the sentence, switch to singular or plural, modify the verb tense or even rewrite the idea.
The Spanish language has a series of grammatical rules that seek to solve the problem of cacophony. Such is the case of the use of an indeterminate masculine article before a word that begins with the letter a, even if it is feminine, examples of this situation are: "the water, instead of the water", "the handle, instead from the handle ”.
In the case of adverbs that end in mind, the grammatical rule expresses that only the last one must have this ending, while the previous ones must be replaced by the feminine or masculine form of the adjective. An example of this would be: “plain and clear” which should be changed to “plain and clear”.
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