Oh nooo…, I was not glad, when the Brexit took place… seriously. The English people are our friends… (and I know, you meant it as a joke, I know )
As a teen I worked several summers at a camp in Ohio which brought an RSCM choirmaster over for a fortnight to lead a choral workshop for U.S. choirmasters. I found the English terms for note-values fascinating, and while I naturally find quarters, halves, and wholes natural names for note values, I dare say that breve is a lot more appealing term than “double whole note.” And don’t both sides of the Atlantic share the name of a longa?
well, at least it’s not French terminology… a “long”, a “white”, a “black”, a “crooked”, a “half crooked”, a “triple crooked”…
not surprisingly, it took me a LONG time to get used to the americanised versions of note names.
Correction:
that should have read… a “round”, a “white”, a “black”, a “crooked”, a “double crooked”, and a “triple crooked”.
It’s double crooked. Butt see: even you get mixed up!
Actually its “quarter-crocked” “half-crocked” and “fully crocked.”
No, I’l make my way out…
sixty, sixty-ten! four-twenty, four-twenty-ten!
Not at all. It’s English, like Elvis!
oh my god! yes, you’re right!
crapolla!
I’ve been anglicizzzed!!!
Don’t even get me started…
I went on a tour (in French) at the Louvre one time and nearly thought I was having a stroke with all the dates flying around.
it’s funny because it’s just so second nature to French-speakers. We don’t even think about the weird way our numbers are constructed!
Doesn’t Canada use nonante instead of quatre-vingt-dix?
No, that’s actually a French (as in France) way of saying it.
Every time we hear “nonante” in a movie or something we pretty much all have the same reaction: “huh???”
Apparently, it’s an old Celtic way of counting, using groups of twenty. It survives in English in phrases like “the years of our lives are three score and ten”.
I’ve been told in Danish 50 is called ‘half sixty’.
You should try Danish numbering, then.
Threes, half-fours, fours, half-fives! A bit of a head-scratcher, I believe, for anybody trying to learn Danish.
Actually, a direct translation would be half-threes, meaning half-three-scores. It’s the halfway point between 40 and 60 (three scores).
Thanks for clarifying!
Makes a certain sense for counting digits, since at that point you’re out of fingers and toes.
Compared to the number naming systems in Denmark and France (in Switzerland and Wallonia [French-speaking part of Belgium] the names are less complicated), the German and Dutch system is simpler: one-and-twenty, two-and-twenty, […], three-hundred-four-and-eighty, etc.
Admittedly, as you can see, the ones place is mentioned here before the tens place, which may be more complicated than the English system, but it is still simpler than what the French and Danes do. But let’s be honest: it’s only difficult for people who are learning the respective languages as foreign languages.