Metre (poetry) words made no difference to the metre. A number of other ancient languages also used quantitative metre, such as Sanskrit and Classical Arabic (but not Biblical Hebrew). Finally, non-stressed languages that have little or no differentiation of syllable length, such as French or Chinese, base their verses on the number of syllables only. The most common form in French is the Alexandrine, with twelve syllables a verse, and in classical Chinese five characters, and thus five syllables. But since each Chinese character is pronounced using one syllable in a certain tone, classical Chinese poetry also had more strictly defined rules,
Iamb (poetry) of six iambic feet. In English verse, "alexandrine" is typically used to mean "iambic hexameter" Ye sacred Bards, that to ¦ your harps' melodious strings Sung th'ancient Heroes' deeds (the monuments of Kings) (Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion) Iambic Heptameter is a meter referring to a line consisting of seven iambic feet: Through iambic shortening, a word with the shape "light–heavy" or "short–long" changes to become "light–light". Iamb (poetry) An iamb () or iambus is a metrical foot used in various types of poetry. Originally the term referred to one of the feet of the quantitative meter of classical Greek prosody: a