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So, when did you stop beating your house?

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Monday, April 12, 1999, 15:42
Kou scripsit:

> [E]very Chinese music video from time immemorial has had Chinese > subtitles. Cassettes and CDs obligatorily come with the lyrics -- > something optional with their English counterparts. And every Chinese > opera I've ever attended had an overhead projecting the libretto to one > side of the stage.
I was thinking of less 20th-century examples. Is it plausible that when mothers sing to their (non-infant) children, the children don't have a clue what the lyrics are about? Is the following dialogue plausible? [In the rice fields by the canal.] Warlord: "Arrest that peasant! He's singing a subversive song!" Peasant: "I was not either!" Warlord: "Well, scholar, was he or wasn't he?" Scholar: "I can't say for sure, my lord; his singing sacrificed too much tonal information!"
> I don't dismiss this out of hand, but not being a > musician or composer, I don't understand how such a system would work.
Much like the noble Duke of York, I suppose (who "had ten thousand men/And marched them up to the top of the hill/And marched them down again" --- sounds very Chinese, somehow). High notes for high tones, low notes for low ones, rising notes for rising tones, etc. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org You tollerday donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty anglease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! 'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)