Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Rob C on September 26, 2016, 06:33:33 am
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Today, this seems both improbable and impossible. Only it wasn't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJOA_vLwevA
Rob
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What a time that truly was...
Thanks Rob,
Peter
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Yep, and this was always in the background, riding hard even if not always charting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggnfOWbgw9g
Rob
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I was born in 46, so this resonates. Every generation thinks their music was the best. The thing is; for us, it's true.
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I've been wondering... is there a correlation between the quality of the younger generation's music and their inability to speak a complete sentence without inserting "like", "ya know", "actually" or "basically" as every other word?
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Probably, Red. The stuff in the first link is the kind of thing that makes them mostly deaf. If you're mostly deaf it's hard to learn to speak properly.
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Probably, Red. The stuff in the first link is the kind of thing that makes them mostly deaf. If you're mostly deaf it's hard to learn to speak properly.
Russ, the young generation never heard that music!
Rob
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No. It was the boomers. I've got a ton of that stuff on CD's. The really heavy stuff got going around the time I shot this picture in downtown San Francisco. (I've posted it before.) That music was all around me and driving me nuts last time I was in Southeast Asia. That was early 73 to early 74. Then, at the beginning of the 80's I built the software for an outfit that was going to let you make your own rock music tapes. When the project crashed because of unbelievably inept marketing. I was given a complete set of the stuff they had on CD's. I also downloaded a bunch of it before the music companies went to court and shut down the free downloaders. Credence was my favorite group from that period. But I still crack up when I hear "Vehicle" by The Ides of March.
I was around at the start of all that stuff. Stan Kenton was the guy who actually started it, though there were a lot of others working at it.
This morning though I get deafened a bit by the tympanists favorite composer: Sibelius. "Finlandia." Now that's truly splendid stuff, especially if you're a tympanist. Then there's gentle "Valse Triste," which in the early thirties was the theme for a radio serial called "Follow the Moon," as well as for several later ones. Then there's "The Swan of Tuonela," beautiful. And Sibelius isn't even my favorite. Just one of them.
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I've been wondering... is there a correlation between the quality of the younger generation's music and their inability to speak a complete sentence without inserting "like", "ya know", "actually" or "basically" as every other word?
Didn't we have much the same thing with "groovy, man" & "far out" & etc? I have a cassette of my friends & I talking while sitting around a campfire, c. 1974, and our speech is full of what now sound like verbal tics. It's hilarious. :D
-Dave-
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Didn't we have much the same thing with "groovy, man" & "far out" & etc? I have a cassette of my friends & I talking while sitting around a campfire, c. 1974, and our speech is full of what now sound like verbal tics. It's hilarious. :D
-Dave-
There is no new thing under the sun. Including the older generation not understanding the following generations' manner of speaking or music. "Get off my lawn....."
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Let's not forget that a lot of slang (?) goes right back to the days of early jazz; even further, when you consider that addressing someone with whom you speak as 'man' is but a straight translation of the ubiquitous Spanish hombre used everywhere and every day in Spain, even by women referring to one another in all-female conversation. As, strangely enough, is the epìthet coño, a direct reference to an intimate part of their anatomy considered a bit OTT in most anglophone conversation, and a definite no-no in mixed company...
So really, some slang sticks - has the power and the just rightness, whereas some has not and is doomed to temporary currency.
Rob
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My friend Jeanne and her two best gal pals have been calling each other dude in casual conversation for as long as I've known them (nearly 20 years). They do not call me dude, ever. I'm merely "a guy." ;D
-Dave-
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My wife stresses about the degradation of the English language as we know it. She is a journalist/writer/legal assistant so proper English, at least when written and spoken formally is important to her. It does not bother me all that much. I'm an avid reader and enjoy etymology and accept that language is changing all the time. What we think of as formal English used to be slang, even semi-sacrelegious slang like 'good-bye' which derived from 'god be with you' and was considered a flippant use of God's name. This was in the 1700s maybe?
One that used to get to me was "irregardless". For some reason this was popular in the military. Now it is in the dictionary as an irregular use of regardless.
The one that still gets to me is the millennials use of the word "random" which to them only means odd or unusual.
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I'm on your wife's side, George. Yes, language changes and it's a good thing that it does. English constantly is picking up technical terms. It also adopts words from the French (the French won't reciprocate), German, etc., etc. With all the troops who've spent time in Asia, myself among them, we've also picked up a lot of GI slang with an Asian slant.
But that's not the same thing as the kind of ignorance that's growing and that's bugging your wife. Teachers nowadays don't know proper English, so they can't teach it to kids. One example is the widespread ignorance of the difference between the verbs "to lie" and "to lay." Even some of the best recent novelists have people laying in bed. They never explain what they're laying because they don't know the difference.
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But that's not the same thing as the kind of ignorance that's growing and that's bugging your wife. Teachers nowadays don't know proper English, so they can't teach it to kids. One example is the widespread ignorance of the difference between the verbs "to lie" and "to lay."
Sadly, as a seventh grader in 1961, I had an English (subject not nationality) teacher who insisted that the word "gnat" was pronounced "gat" completely ignoring the fact of the silent g. On the other hand, my daughter's teachers were all of them better than the teachers I had and her grasp of language and literature is consequently better than mine. She is 24 now.
That said, I am a curmudgeon about some things. Don't write lead when you mean the past tense of lead (led). I am now seeing that everywhere in sentences that are often unintentionally funny. I have seen it on this site. An example:"I was lead to my wife after dating other women." :)
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Language is always morphing from this into that. The rules and features that work survive & thrive while those that don't don't. Thinking the rules should be frozen in place at any particular time is conceit. Attempting to freeze them in place is futile.
I enjoyed my Chaucer class in college. The professor even taught us to read the Canterbury Tales aloud in something like the pronunciation of Chaucer's time. The Tales date to the late 1300s, just over 600 years ago, and are barely recognizable on the page or to the ear as being in the English language.
-Dave-
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"I was lead to my wife after dating other women." :)
Good one! :) Quite understandable too, considering.
-Dave-
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Language is always morphing from this into that. The rules and features that work survive & thrive while those that don't don't. Thinking the rules should be frozen in place at any particular time is conceit. Attempting to freeze them in place is futile.
I enjoyed my Chaucer class in college. The professor even taught us to read the Canterbury Tales aloud in something like the pronunciation of Chaucer's time. The Tales date to the late 1300s, just over 600 years ago, and are barely recognizable on the page or to the ear as being in the English language.
-Dave-
I cheated: Coghill.
;-)
Rob
P.S. Regarding lead and led: I have just blacked out and panicked, not remembering if I've fallen into that trap or not! But laying and lying are not my shibboleths; I do, however, try not to split those pesky infinitives!
There was always colloquial as well as written English, and people understood the difference, also where and when you might get away with using the former form. On the whole, I don't really like the goalposts moving.
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Even some of the best recent novelists have people laying in bed. They never explain what they're laying because they don't know the difference.
True, but if that gets printed, It's on the editor...Not that they would know the difference.
Peter
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Exactly, Peter. The editors went to the same schools the novelists went to.
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I get led and lead wrong, along with a lot of other fine points of English. But not when and where it matters. I know what my limitations are and when I'm writing anything remotely important I check myself. I would mention that the combination of autocorrect plus typos makes for interesting errors.
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I cheated: Coghill.
;-)
The class I took was Coghill free, though the professor encouraged us to read his translation outside of class. I wish I'd kept my cassette recordings of the proceedings, particularly those featuring me & my fellow students mangling spoken Middle English. The prof was a jovial cockney and the class was great fun.
-Dave-
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English constantly is picking up technical terms. It also adopts words from the French (the French won't reciprocate), German, etc., etc.
Someone bitterly remarked that the last technical term French contributed to the world was "chauffeur".
Unofficially of course, everyone puts their car in le parking, and they suffer under le management. And in one of the most amusing forms of revenge on the extremely conservative and right-wing Académie Française, the children of upper-class parents often pick up arabic phrases from their nannies and these gradually sneak into the language. The common term for a medical practitioner is "toubib", for eg.
Then again, sometimes the quest for precision is amusing: since the French for "to land" (as in an aircraft) is atterrir (put onto the earth), it was decided that a new word was needed when the Americans started parking things on the moon. hence the officially recognised "alunir."
There is of course the disadvantage that a new verb is needed every time someone bounces a space-probe off an asteroid or other bit of orbiting rock :D
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Someone bitterly remarked that the last technical term French contributed to the world was "chauffeur".
Unofficially of course, everyone puts their car in le parking, and they suffer under le management. And in one of the most amusing forms of revenge on the extremely conservative and right-wing Académie Française, the children of upper-class parents often pick up arabic phrases from their nannies and these gradually sneak into the language. The common term for a medical practitioner is "toubib", for eg.
Then again, sometimes the quest for precision is amusing: since the French for "to land" (as in an aircraft) is atterrir (put onto the earth), it was decided that a new word was needed when the Americans started parking things on the moon. hence the officially recognised "alunir."
There is of course the disadvantage that a new verb is needed every time someone bounces a space-probe off an asteroid or other bit of orbiting rock :D
Cross-fertilisation can be fun, and le weekend does seems to work in both idioms. I was out with friends yesterday - folks I knew in my late teens (old friends?) - and I'd suggested lunch in this French restaurant I usually go to because, I'd said, the man's cooking had that certain je ne sais quoi; during lunch the wife threw that little phrase back into the conversation and it led to another diversion into their own French wanderings... Old friends, mixed languages and good food are very pleasant companions.
There, that made everybody's day now, didn't it!
I'll give you a picture just for fun:
(http://www.roma57.com/uploads/4/2/8/7/4287956/d-2633_orig.jpg)
;-)
Rob
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Ah, evocative image... :)
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There is of course the disadvantage that a new verb is needed every time someone bounces a space-probe off an asteroid or other bit of orbiting rock :D
I imagine the verb for the Rosetta probe's recent "landing" on comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko will be quite a mouthful.
-Dave-
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I'll give you a picture just for fun…
Ah, that's my idea of a delightful way to spend a quiet afternoon.
-Dave-
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I know that I've been guilty of language and grammar mistakes. But I took heart when I heard the Rhodes scholar Tony Abbott say that "No one, however smart, however well-educated, however experienced … is the suppository of all wisdom." Thank goodness for Tony. I was feeling decimated about my lack of language skills.
I worked for a Canadian book publisher for 20 years (fortunately for them, I was not involved in the editorial side). I remember well some of the "all staff" meetings when the President would pull a quote or two from Richard Kipling of Jungle Book fame. Or tell us that the company would be successful if we all worked hard, irregardless of the downturn in the market.
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But I took heart when I heard the Rhodes scholar Tony Abbott say that "No one, however smart, however well-educated, however experienced … is the suppository of all wisdom."
Intelligence, knowledge and education are not necessarily the key ingredients to wisdom. I've known some very wise people with little or no education at all. I've known a whole lot really well educated and knowledgeable people with little or no wisdom at all.
And for those lean Judeo-Christian there is Proverbs 9:10.
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Graham, Dave: glad you enjoyed the snap! It would have been delightful to have been able to write schnapps instead, but that would be fakery: I think it was coffee.
;-)
Rob
P.S. Well, it is early morning for me, after all. 10:25!
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Café corretto ? ;)
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Café corretto ? ;)
Or even a carajillo, but I think they usually come with a smaller cup or glass, but I'm guessing: I always have a café con leche descafeinado de máquina. Much more pleasant than using the little sachets. (Some here, women, like to partake of herbal teas... I wonder why?)
I'm supposed to have no more than one coffee a day; on Wednesday, out with the old friends I met after so many years, I actually downed four, or possibly even five. Good reason for the solitary life: avoids temptation! Well, partly so.
Rob
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And for those lean Judeo-Christian there is Proverbs 9:10.
There are quite a few pithy summations. Keats, for example:
Beauty is truth; truth, beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
He stole adapted the thought from a rather earlier Frenchman.
Jeremy
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I took heart when I heard the Rhodes scholar Tony Abbott say that "No one, however smart, however well-educated, however experienced … is the suppository of all wisdom."
I've come across a few suppositories of presumed wisdom over the years.
There was a round a while ago in a very silly quiz (I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue), in which the contestants were invited to change one letter of a word to produce a useful new one. My favourite was "ignoranus": a person who combines knowing nothing with being a pain in the arse.
Jeremy
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;D
A friend of a friend mentioned last night that she was observing Ocsober, by which she meant "no alcohol for the month." This was in response to my offer of a shot glass of tasty Montelobos Mezcal Joven as we sat down to watch the Cubs/Giants baseball game.
A couple decades ago, when The X-Files was at the height of its popularity, I was part of an online chat group centered on the show. Over the years various typos were embraced and incorporated into our chat vocabulary. My favorite was absucted, which we used to describe the plight of anyone obliged to do something they didn't want to do.
-Dave-