English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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12:05 AM

Here's a list of the questions:

Left:
1. The government should redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor.
2. My country should give more foreign and developmental aid to third-world countries.
3. Equality is more important than economic growth.
4. There is at heart a conflict between the interest of business and the interest of society.
5. Government spending with the aim of creating jobs is generally a good idea.
6. Import tariffs on foreign products are a good way to protect jobs in my country.

Mitch

@Cerberus there were more than just that not much more

Cerberus

12:26 AM

@Mitch I don't remember.

8 hours later…

Færd

8:38 AM

@Mitch Unfortunately not.

2 hours later…

RegDwigнt

11:06 AM

@Robusto well the last three bars are a throwaway placeholder. You will get your flute part alright when you get the full piece. I'm just warming up the embouchure at this point.

Note how the clarinet only gets to play three notes in total. And the harpist has fallen asleep after five bars. And two out of four hands at the piano are at this point just turning pages for the other two.

Suffice it to say, that's not how things can stay from there onwards.

I don't invite eighty musicians to play three notes for me. A percussionist maybe. But those don't play the clarinet very well.

I just don't like my players not warmed-up, either. Every part always starts with a couple easy notes of no consequence. And only gradually works its way into prominence. The flute in particular usually starts by lingering on a low D or some such. In this case, the low H even.

Oh btw, the latest Orchestration Online video from last night actually talks about the flute. Discussing a rather weird quote from Adler.

Orchestration Tip: Superb Poetry of Flute Middle Register

►

I don't have the Adler (it's like five hundred bucks or something) so can't cross-check. But it's certainly a weird thing to say.

3 hours later…

Mitch

2:09 PM

dbq — duìbùqǐ 对不起 — "sorry"

xswl — xiào sǐ wǒ le 笑死我了 — "LOL" (literally means "makes me laugh to death")

bhys — bù hǎoyìsi 不好意思 — "excuse me; sorry"

sjb — shénjīngbìng 神经病 — "psycho" (informal; usually refers to people who speak or behave annoyingly or offensively, rather than people who literally suffer from mental illness)

xxj — xiǎoxué jī 小学鸡 — "childish, immature people who speak or behave stupidly" (literally means "pupil chicken")

awsl — A wǒ sǐle 啊我死了 — "Ah, I am dead (because this is so cute / admirable / incredible…)"

3 hours later…

RegDwigнt

5:18 PM

1° Gnossienne For An String and Percussion Ensamble

It baffles me that people don't so much as proofread their pieces' titles.

If you can't tell an A from an E in your writing, the reader immediately makes a mental note that they can't trust you with telling an A from an E in your music, either.

(Of course it also baffles me that people would go and arrange Satie for percussion. But that's a whole nother story entirely.)

RegDwigнt

5:47 PM

@RegDwigнt: I find it curious that my comment was deleted but not all the references to it. That seems a bit unfair. — Robusto 20 hours ago

Haha, only just saw that.

(Pro tip: for better results, ping me here in chat. On the main site I literally never read comments by anyone.)

Anyway. I would presume that someone just went and flagged a bunch of comments as "answer in comments", which is sadly quite rampant these days.

And then some mod got a bunch of flags all at once and couldn't be arsed to read through them all individually and just clicked "OK" once, which just wipes out everything wholesale.

I'm not guilty of that myself, but only because I choose to sidestep the issue by never handling flags on the main site at all. (Which is just as not ideal, but does at least save me the single click.)

I would try and resurrect your comment, but I'm not seeing how. Have they removed that link? It used to say "X comments deleted" and then I could go and read them all. But now I can't. What's up with that.

tchrist

6:06 PM

@RegDwigнt Your “English is just German with no grammar and French vocabulary” cracked me up!

They made it a hieroglyphic. The bottommost one there under the score, the one with the exclamation point and the number 6 to its right.

I deleted those. There were flags that they were redundant now.

I don't care myself.

tchrist

6:34 PM

@Robusto I restored your comments, but migrated the whole kit and kaboodle off to its own widdle chatchroom.

3 hours later…

Færd

9:41 PM

Can I say "Your vacation was as good as mine sucked"?

Cerberus

I would say no.

Færd

Thanks. I found a similar structure in a novel and it seemed curious.

Cerberus

You'd have one as modifying an adjective, the other a verb.

So I think that parallel is slightly ugly.

But I wouldn't be totally surprised to see it written.

Færd

Hmm.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Yeah, it is weird. I first thought it might have been because he was writing in the era of wooden flutes, but the dude was born in 1928, so ...

@tchrist Why was that particular comment deleted in the first place? It wasn't offensive or even argumentative. This whole thing about comments is getting way out of hand. Apparently there isn't a legitimate use case for them, given how often they get deleted. So why have them at all?

RegDwigнt

10:02 PM

@Robusto ah sorry, I forgot to notify you. Comments were created specifically for me, because that's the only thing that I ever post.

No other reason.

Same reason they made this chat here, really.

2 hours later…

RegDwigнt

11:49 PM

@Rob dig this. Someone's actual question:

> Can somebody pls do Breathe by AB6IX?!
(Flute if you can)

Someone's actual answer:

> I would be glad to take it on! About what difficulty would you prefer? I've never written for flute, is there anything about the flute I should know before I start? Also I'm not very quick at arranging

I've been crying with laughter for the last ten minutes like.

Oh, for reference, the piece is this thing here:

AB6IX (에이비식스) 'BREATHE' M/V

►

Not that it matters.

Just the audacity to say "I've never written for flute, is there anything I should know before I start".

And then on top of that to ask about the desired difficulty level.

What if they actually reply, "intermediate". Or "I'm in my third year". Or "C3PO" or whatever academic difficulty grades there are. What do you do with that information, if you don't so much as know if there's anything to know at all.

Heavens my Heavens. I don't want this huge manatee. Gimme another one, mine's all borked like.

You could do a killer arrangement of that song for the flute, actually.

But you as in you. I sure couldn't.

I can picture all the different sounds in my head. But I wouldn't know how to begin to write them down.

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