Syllabic verse stress accent (as English does). This means that the French metric line is generally determined by the number of syllables. The most common metric lengths are the ten-syllable line ("décasyllabe"), the eight-syllable line ("octosyllabe") and the twelve-syllable line (the so-called "alexandrine"). Special syllable counting rules apply to French poetry. A silent or mute 'e' counts as a syllable before a consonant, but not before a vowel (where "h aspiré" counts as a consonant). When it falls at the end of a line, the mute "e" is hypermetrical (outside the count of syllables). Polish syllabic verse is similar to French. The
Vietnamese poetry syllables. Whereas in English verse syllables are categorized by relative "stress", and in classical Greek and Latin verse they are categorized by "length", in Vietnamese verse (as in Chinese) syllables are categorized by "tone". For metrical purposes, the 6 distinct phonemic tones that occur in Vietnamese are all considered as either "flat" or "sharp". Thus a line of metrical verse consists of a specific number of syllables, some of which must be flat, some of which must be sharp, and some of which may be either. Like verse in Chinese and most European languages, traditional Vietnamese verse is rhymed. The