English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

tchrist

12:45 AM

> Hoo's a high-spirited ooman..an' I'm afeared as hoo'll wear yo' aat.

Mitch

1:29 AM

@RegDwigнt are you posting this on meta then? That might help.

RegDwigнt

1:09 PM

@Robusto now that you made me watch bass videos, YouTube insists I must check out Polish funk.

Kinga Głyk - Joy Joy

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Some nice slapping, mind.

And the video is like straight from what we had in the no-longer-Soviet no-longer-Union anno 1993.

Rather perplexing. None of these people were even alive at the time. How'd they even know.

RegDwigнt

2:06 PM

It really bothers me when YouTube shows me ads in French, and then can't even be bothered to translate it completely.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Is the message that if you listen to this for a few seconds you turn into a puff of smoke?

RegDwigнt

How many people have Google working for them? Fifty billion? And not one of them can spare three seconds to translate "none of the above" and "skip ad" into French?

@Robusto Good question. I've listened to it a couple times, but I'm still in plasma state.

OverDrive

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This one is like seven different songs in one.

It's like every genre ever.

Robusto

I just wonder how she can play the bass left-handed and right-handed at the same time.

RegDwigнt

Well that's what the plasma state is for.

Kinga Głyk

Kinga Głyk (* 27. Januar 1997 in Rydułtowy) ist eine polnische Jazzmusikerin (E-Bass, Komposition). == Leben und Wirken == Głyk ist die Tochter des Vibraphonisten Irek Głyk. Bereits ab dem Alter von zwölf Jahren trat sie mit dem Vater und dem Bruder (am Schlagzeug) in der Familienband Głyk P.I.K. Trio auf. Mit 18 Jahren nahm sie ihr erstes Album unter eigenem Namen auf, Rejestracja. Nach Auftritten mit einem eigenen Trio auf dem Stuttgarter Festival Jazz Open oder dem Festival da Jazz in St. Moritz folgte 2016 das zweite Album mit dem Titel Happy Birthday, eine Live-Aufnahme aus dem Teatr Ziemi…

Wiki has this in German and Spanish and even Dansk, but not English?

Slackers.

English is basically Dansk but you take the hot potato out of your mouth for a minute.

Anyway that other dude we discussed previously actually did play the bass with both hands at once like.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Interesting. I looked it up in English Wikipedia but found nothing.

RegDwigнt

2:16 PM

Not through Soviet-era digital trickery.

@Robusto English wiki is too busy updating the article on Kanye West.

Robusto

No doubt.

RegDwigнt

No, that's a different band.

Robusto

I should check German Wikipedia more often. They seem to have their thumb on the pulse of former Sov-bloc countries.

RegDwigнt

Well half of Germany is the former Sov bloc.

Robusto

My point exactly.

RegDwigнt

2:19 PM

And the other half has been invaded by meeeee.

So really they have no choice.

That's why they have to play the accordion all the time.

Robusto

They were playing the accordion long before you arrived.

RegDwigнt

Yes, but they didn't have to. Now they do.

Robusto

Sucks to be German.

RegDwigнt

It's really quite interesting, actually. The conservatories and stuff, from what little I can tell, are firmly in German hands. Some Austrian professors, maybe. An occasional French guest speaker.

But at the everyday level, it's all Sov bloc all the time.

You look for a piano teacher, you'll really struggle to find one from Germany.

All Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, Romanians, Lithuanians.

Robusto

Funny, but there's a lot of that here as well.

RegDwigнt

2:25 PM

I come to my music school, there's always some music playing through some door that really shouldn't be playing here at all. In Sofia, yes. In Moscow, maybe. But not in what basically amounts to Strasburg.

@Robusto well from what I gather, all those folks, the teachers that is, all came here to study. My violin teacher flat out says, German music education is the best.

But then they stick around.

And as you know, there's no earning a living as a musician. So they teach.

Robusto

Correct.

RegDwigнt

And the conservatory stuff, or staff if you will, is explained by the red tape.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt I guess Hindemith's "Elementary Training for Musicians" really started something.

RegDwigнt

You a professor in Germany, or even just a primary school teacher, you're a state employee. You cannot be fired.

So it really takes quite a while and quite some hoop jumping to even get to the exams.

Like being able to speak German, for one.

And so, like, every single teacher at my high school was a German.

And it's the same in every other school.

Maybe an occasional third-generation Turk or Italian.

But music schools are not part of the system. Anyone can start one.

It's the private sector, as Ghostbusters put it.

We did have Vengerov for a couple years as a guest professor at the high school for music. But that's really a honorary thing. At that level they don't ask you to pass an exam in German. But you're also not an employee.

Robusto

2:47 PM

My last piano teacher was Ukrainian, IIRC. Which is the nationality that has all the -dze endings to surnames?

Pichadze was his name in English spelling.

@RegDwigнt ^

@tchrist: Teens in Argentina trying to eliminate gender in language.

> In France, a school textbook promoting a gender-neutral version of French prompted the prime minister to ban the form in all official government documents.

Well, that's l'Académie française for you.

> In Germany, dozens of influential figures protested local efforts to adopt gender-neutral language.

I only hope they succeed.

On the other hand, I suppose none of this will relieve one from having to remember all the original genders of nouns ...

Which in Spanish isn't hard, but in German is problematic.

All of which makes Japanese look like a very simple language. Which it is, basically. No genders for nouns, few plurality markers, no conjugations of verbs, a very simple tense system. Levels of politeness are tough, but that's a cultural artifact.

> “Les muchaches peronistas, todes unides triunfaremos.”

Hmm, shouldn't that be peronistes?

tchrist

4:22 PM

@Robusto No, because -ista words don't change their final vowel just because you flipflop them between el and la.

Robusto

4:46 PM

Happy birthday, James Galway! 80 years old today!

James Galway

Sir James Galway, (born 8 December 1939) is an Irish virtuoso flute player from Belfast, nicknamed "The Man with the Golden Flute". He established an international career as a solo flute player. In 2005, he received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Classic Brit Awards. == Early life and education == Galway was born in North Belfast near the Belfast docks as one of two brothers. His father, who played the flute, was employed at the Harland and Wolff shipyard until the end of the Second World War and spent night-shifts cleaning buses after the war, while his mother, a...

RegDwigнt

5:10 PM

@Robusto Georgian.

@Robusto that's the thing really. It's grammatical gender, completely separate from semantic gender. They can't get rid of it because then the language would simply stop working altogether. So what they do instead is they introduce a second word with the same meaning but a different grammatical gender. And so as a result, not only do you still have to remember all the genders of nouns, you now have to remember them for twice the number of nouns.

So you still have the word for table that is somehow masculine for no reason at all, but now you also have a second word for table that is somehow feminine for the sole reason of fuck you.

I would say that's political correctness gone mad, but seeing how political correctness is feminine, it would probably get me tarred and feathered, so let me think for a minute and invent a different word for political correctness that is masculine.

I remember when Angela Merkel became the first female chancellor of Germany. And naturally all the papers said just that. You could say in German just like you can in English.

Not anymore you can't.

tchrist

5:27 PM

The Angela she is no more female chancelling?

RegDwigнt

No, now there is a word that also means "chancellor" except it's feminine. For lack of a better illustration, let's call it "femalechancellor" in English.

But it still means just "chancellor".

So as a result, obviously you can't say "Angela Merkel is the first female femalechancellor" anymore. As opposed to what, being the first male femalechancellor?

But neither can you say "Angela Merkel is the first femalechancellor". Because that makes it sound like she was the first chancellor of Germany, ever, of any gender.

So in a weird strike of karmic justice, Angela Merkel is now not only the first female chancellor of Germany, but will forever remain its last.

No girl in Germany, ever, can become chancellor again.

Same for other professions.

If you're a girl in Germany, sucks to be you. You can never become an astronaut or a pilot or a lawyer or a composer or an inventor.

You can only become a girlpilot, a girllawyer, a girlteacher, a girlstronaut.

In a futile attempt to fight imaginary segregation in a few corner cases, people have created actual segregation across the board.

No matter your profession, you are now different from your colleagues if you don't have the right private parts.

Well done.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt But the just referred to her as die Kanzlerin, right? They didn't note that she was a "female" Kanzlerin, because that would have been overkill.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto Angela Merkel war der erste weibliche Kanzler der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.

Robusto

Ah.

RegDwigнt

Die Kanzlerin came later. And that's what I'm talking about.

Robusto

5:37 PM

Sie war auch die erste Kanzlerin, nicht wahr?

RegDwigнt

Now you can't tell your daughter she can become a Kanzler anymore.

@Robusto well yes and no. Jein. That's the thing I'm talking about. What you're saying there can be taken to mean she came right after Hitler.

No Adenauer, no Brandt, no nobody. Hitler, then Merkel.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Does das Mädchen, being neuter, have working private parts? Just wondering.

RegDwigнt

The girl is not neuter. The word is.

And even the word isn't. The -chen suffix is.

Robusto

I know. Just shining you on.

RegDwigнt

You can add the -chen onto anything to make it grammatically neuter.

Robusto

5:41 PM

@RegDwigнt Well, now you're splitting ~~hairs~~ suffixes.

RegDwigнt

Just like you can add -keit onto anything to make it grammatically feminine.

Robusto

Or -ung.

Or -heit, etc.

RegDwigнt

If you recall Germany's national motto, it's "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit".

Two of these words are feminine. One neuter. Nothing for men on the table. Fuck men.

Justice is feminine. Democracy is feminine.

Criminal is male. Rapist is male. Burglar is male.

And somehow no one is rushing to make up female counterparts for those

Optimism | Epic Film Soundtrack Music

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Robusto

@RegDwigнt Similarly, all the countries in the Americas, while resenting mightily our arrogation of the name "America," somehow know where to point when someone cries "Death to America!"

RegDwigнt

I don't even know anymore. That's not epic, that's not film, that's not soundtrack.

@Robusto it's funny how it works, isn't it. When lives are on the line, everybody suddenly drops the act and understands perfectly well what is actually being meant.

Goes to illustrate how much of a first-world problem it really is. People are bored. They've got nothing to do. They have to make up their own entertainment out of thin air. And so they complain that the word for "book" is female. Or male. Or neuter. Or that there is a word at all. Or that there are too many.

Robusto

5:50 PM

@RegDwigнt Kubrick might have used it had he lived long enough. Remember the soundtrack for "Eyes Wide Shut"?

RegDwigнt

I remember it and I remember it quite fondly.

He wouldn't call it "epic".

He would call it "fitting" or some such.

Robusto

Eyes Wide Shut - Musica Ricercata: II. Mesto, Rigido e Cerimoniale (Piano Tutorial Synthesia)

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RegDwigнt

Not every two piano notes played together are "epic".

Robusto

Agreed.

I would call those the minimal elements of composition.

Certainly not epic.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto now that's a good example where you can hear how even the piano sound font is nothing like an actual piano.

Robusto

5:53 PM

Aye.

RegDwigнt

I couldn't listen to that for 180 minutes.

Robusto

Listen to the decay, for example.

RegDwigнt

I would if it had any.

But he might as well be shouting the names of the notes aloud.

A! G! G! C! A! A!

Robusto

@RegDwigнt My point exactly. A real piano has an attack and a sound that vanishes quickly and beautifully.

RegDwigнt

For strings it's even worse with their slow attack. Everywhere you go, you'll see not one but two sound fonts, one doctored with to have an immediate attack like no instrument actually does, and the other also doctored with to have an even slower attack than any instrument could possibly have.

You'll see them labeled like "strings" and "slow strings".

And so for their epic orchestral I-wanna-be-Hans-Zimmer garbage, everyone uses slow strings. And then they get so used to that, they just use it all the time.

Robusto

5:59 PM

I played that game for a couple decades. I found that you can get quite close to an actual instrument's sound, but you really have to use eight or more doctored patches at a time.

And who has time for that? Just get a fucking banjo player, fer chrissakes!

RegDwigнt

And so then you go and look at some score, and half the string section is notated like 3/16 ahead of the beat.

Because people are relying on some font where that's how long it takes the strings to get rolling if you want the audible note to change on the beat.

It's insanity.

Robusto

That's the internet for you.

2

RegDwigнt

I'm wondering why that guy with his Epic Piano video, with his only 28 subs, and the 2 views on it, one of which is probably himself, and the other me, why he decided to publish that video as a Premiere. With chat and all.

Did he expect people to actually turn up on the hour and talk about it live?

I've seen channels with upwards of a million subs where like just a couple hundred people show up for the premiere.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Like a mouse crawling up an elephant's leg with rape on its mind?

RegDwigнt

That's a flowery way to put it but I'll take it.

And really all those people who show up to premieres, that's invariably the worst audience anyone could possibly wish for. They can only show up, on whatever random date and time you set, because they literally don't have a life and have nothing to do.

And it's their "thoughts" that you then have to sit through. Their "feedback" that is preserved for all posterity.

Really what YouTube should do ideally, if anyone shows up to a premiere, let them have a talk amongst themselves alright, but then just take all that dross, put it in a chopper, make a nice list of all the accounts involved, and purge them all forever.

That would solve like half of YouTube's problems in less than a week.

Likewise, anyone who's ever posted a comment saying "first", just take their account and delete it. Gmail, Picasa, everything. All of it.

I know there'll be a whole department of suits at Google who will argue they absolutely must cling to every account for monetary reasons. Every person is a potential source of revenue. You sell things to them, you sell their data.

But that's a red herring. People who sit on YouTube commenting "first" will never buy anything from you, and nobody will want to buy their data.

Robusto

6:18 PM

@RegDwigнt Or anyone who says "Who's here from [movie name]?"

RegDwigнt

Oh fuck those yeah.

Like, it's not a new revolutionary idea or anything. At its core it's what the Ancient Greeks did already. Nobody was allowed to be a politician. But absolutely everyone was forced to be a politician for a year.

You want to be a politician? Excellent. Now we know for a fact that you must never be allowed to run for any kind of office.

You don't want to be a politician because you're busy being a blacksmith or a baker and fuck politics? Excellent. Now we know you're just the right person for the job.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Agreed.

RegDwigнt

You really really want to be a soldier in Afghanistan? Why, that's the sound of you never going to find yourself anywhere near the armed forces or a gun of any kind.

So yeah. Same for this thingie.

You really really want to be the first person to see a video? Good, watch it, and now fuck off, and the world will never know you even existed.

Anyway. That's quite a bit of a tangent for someone posting two piano notes as Epic Movie Soundtrack.

Robusto

What did you say? What we need is more women playing rock riffs on hurdy gurdy? Well, you asked for it!