>I thought you may be alluding to this. Yes, it's not so good a rhyme and one I avoid in mine. OTOH reggae artists use this "ation" FAR too much - even adding their own: "My generation / too much sufferation" :-)

And you can't even shoot dem for dat, dey say you be da racista.

>English isn't a good language for rhymes.

As noted in "1984" - there are only four words that rhyme with "rod".

>You get p!ssed at the "ation" rhyme; I see red when I hear a pop song from ANY of the 5 decades where someone "falls into your ARMS, ... CHARMS", "DANCE ... given half a CHANCE ... for ROMANCE".

What were these stereotypes called before we had stereo? Monotypes?

>We have to rely on clever rhymes, such as teh splitting of a word over two lines - Ella's:
>
>"I've a cosy little flat in
>what is know as old Manhattan ..."

Now that's clever... although the technique was applied a couple of centuries ago

"mene moja nana
rani jabukama"

in folk poetry.

>OTOH the french simply rely on pronouncing the "e" at the end of words that's silent in speech, but used in songs, as "uh", for like MOST of their rhymes. I bet Latin would be a doddle to write rhymes in!

...and while Slavic languages are much easier in this respect, with all the dozens of forms of most of the words, I've seen some very ingenious rhyming schemes. For instance, rhyming without the last consonant (which is omitted altogether). What grates my nerves is not the stupid rhyming, which is really not so frequent, it's that they seem to always insert the same short words to fill in the missing syllables. Usually it's a "now" (sad) at the end of the verse, which usually makes no sense, and could have been avoided by choosing a different word elsewhere... but the writer was lazy.