I have decided to not move to England...
Dec. 18th, 2016 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shivver...because I really don't see how I will survive having to refer to music notes as semibreves, minims, crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, and hemidemisemiquavers.
No, really. "Hemidemisemiquavers"???
How in the world is this easier than whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, and sixty-fourth notes? How is a whole note a semi-anything?
When their music makes sense, then I shall reconsider.
No, really. "Hemidemisemiquavers"???
How in the world is this easier than whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, thirty-second, and sixty-fourth notes? How is a whole note a semi-anything?
When their music makes sense, then I shall reconsider.
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Date: 2016-12-19 02:03 am (UTC)I do have to agree with you, though; I'd never figure out such a system.
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Date: 2016-12-22 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-19 04:48 am (UTC)But I agree: those names are weird!
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Date: 2016-12-22 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-19 05:59 am (UTC)("Crochets"???)
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Date: 2016-12-22 01:40 am (UTC)It's still dumb, but at least there's a reason. :D
Edit: Okay, I just reread flowsoffire's description, and the French call the eighth note the "croche", while the British call the quarter note the "crotchet". So we have returned to not making sense.
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Date: 2016-12-19 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 01:46 am (UTC)I guess I'll have to learn it if I want to move. *grump*
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Date: 2016-12-19 08:52 am (UTC)(To be faier, you don't normally need to worry about anything more than a semi-quaver! I've never had to use the others yet. But aren't crotchets and quavers more fun than, er, what is the US equivalent, then? *squints* A whole and a half? How dull that must be. You poor souls!!)
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Date: 2016-12-22 01:51 am (UTC)On the other hand, you can't look at the name "Southwark" and figure out that's pronounced "suh-thuck". I swear, it's just a British conspiracy to keep everyone confused. ;)
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Date: 2016-12-19 01:27 pm (UTC)I think France is about the same actually: we have rondes, blanches, noires, croches, doubles croches, triples croches and quadruples croches :D Calls to mind my far-off Music classes memories. Those weren't so bad if you were used to them though: unlike the English equivalents, they're basically a description of what the note actually looks like on your sheet :)
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Date: 2016-12-22 02:02 am (UTC)I thought that your list of words actually shed some light on this, as you use the term "croche" and the British use "crotchet", but then I realized they are two different things - eighth notes for the French but quarter notes for the British. Sigh.
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Date: 2016-12-19 11:42 pm (UTC)Hemidemisemiquavers <3 I can imagine a British tv series when such a word is used in a casual conversation so non-native speakers can extend their vocabulary. #Watching_BBC_With_A_Pen_And_A_Piece_Of_Paper
I couldn't live in Victorian England because I couldn't handle dealing with money. There's pound, shilling, pence, guinea, florin, sixpence, half crown, you're making this all up, Arthur Conan Doyle!
On the other hand... *coughFahrenheitcough* ;)
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Date: 2016-12-20 12:56 am (UTC)I have to agree with you there! Having worked in labs for a long time, I'm much more attuned to C than F, and my home fridge is set to Celsius. Confuses the daylights out of most people seeing my fridge set to 4 degrees and my freezer to -20! I'm not even sure what the Fahrenheit equivalents would be, but I know that my enzymes belong frozen at -20C.
Although I do know that -6 degrees F is mighty cold (-21 C, and it was awful this morning!)....
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Date: 2016-12-22 02:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 07:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 07:50 pm (UTC)There are apps that convert it easily, but I just go with what I know.
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Date: 2016-12-22 02:12 am (UTC)It's pretty obvious in the Harry Potter books that JK designed the system of knuts, sickles, and galleons to make the money complicated like the old British system, but the old British system is far worse. :D
Fahrenheit... That can go take a leap off a high cliff, as far as I'm concerned. I'm accustomed to the system, but it's terrible and Celsius makes so much more sense. The worst part is that there's some amount of trying to get Celsius to stick here in the US, to the point where no one knows what you're talking about anymore. Case in point: It's common for very cold weather to be described as "below 0", but is that below 0 Celsius or Fahrenheit? One is much worse than the other. You'd think it'd be Fahrenheit, but no... People tend to say freezing weather (not horribly freezing weather) is "below 0" and they actually mean Celsius. ARGH.
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Date: 2016-12-22 06:50 pm (UTC)Yeah, knuts, sickles and galleons are pretty easy ;) Weird coins (too many of them, with weird names and weird values) is where it gets complicated and it was said galleons are gold, sickles are silver and knuts are bronze so at least you know what you've got. That system may even be more intuitive than modern British coins where sizes of coins tell you nothing about their values...
By the way, when it comes to "how many sickles make a galleon" stuff I'm sure JK just picked random numbers, but I wondered how many different coins the wizarding world would have, you know, to represent any price with lowest number of coins. But of course wizards wouldn't have thought of that and they probably have 1 sickle coins only and everyone knows the spell to make your purse weight less. Oh, the cultural differences between the Muggle world and the wizarding world!
Well, "freezing" actually means "below 0 Celsius", doesn't it? If the water outside turns into ice, it's freezing even if your thermometer shows 20F - I'd like to see it, it'd feel so weird ;) But, I'm getting that you're used to say "freezing" when it's much colder than below 0 Celsius. It's never good when words confuse.
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Date: 2016-12-20 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-22 02:15 am (UTC)