| Joe, you are probably right about not translating too much, since adding information substracts clarity. We might include one mention to the differences, not more.
Now, we are using English here as international English, a lingua franca like Swahili, only English is not only a lingua franca but also the mother language of many people, with diffrerences in between.
Am I right in thinking that, generally speaking, "whole note", "quarter note" and "eight note" are generally understood but "minim", "crochet" and "quaver" are not?
If so, and without subscribing to any imperialism, I'd suggest to use the more easy terms for our purpose, as long as they are right and accepted.
(In Spanish, you would have rounds, whites, blacks and then untranslatable corcheas, semicorcheas, fusas, semifusas and cuartifusas... but the point is that it would be actually confusing to say enteras, medias, cuartas and so forth)
Manuel
Am 25/12/2006 um 13:25 schrieb Joe Neeman: On 12/25/06, Cameron Horsburgh <address@hidden> wrote: On Mon, Dec 25, 2006 at 03:14:43AM +0100, Manuel wrote:
> So you are really two countries separated by a common language... How
> do Canadians, New Zealanders and other natives manage in between? I
> think that for us non-natives, "fourth" is logically easier than
> "crochet", though crochet and quaver sound nice. Like the French
> "soupir" for a rest.
>
I learnt music in New Zealand and have lived in Australia for
nearly years, and I have always used the minim/crotchet/quaver
terminology. I don't think I'd ever seen the American system outside
of theory class. However, anyone learning LilyPond will learn the
American system for free, since the denominators of the name are the
same as the note length value.
I learnt music in the US and moved to Australia 8 years ago. When I first arrived in Australia, I had never heard of a crotchet except as something to do with knitting. On the other hand, I don't think I've encountered an Australian musician who doesn't know what a quarter note is (even though they may not use the term regularly).
I suspect that if you explain every possible term in both American and British English, it will add a lot of volume to the tutorial without really making anything more clear. At the risk of being an American cultural imperialist, I think you should just write the tutorial in American English and let people who don't understand the terminology spend 30 seconds on google.
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