Whiling away the long dark teatime of my soul, I was rolling the word hemiparesis around and got to wondering if someone would be so kind as to provide a simple explanation of the differences between the three halves listed above. Cheers
Max Quordleplennui
the easy way out would be to point to 'hemidemisemiquaver' and answer "there is no difference"; and the fact of the matter is that they are just from different sources -- hemi is Greek, semi is Latin, and demi is French. (at least that's the way I remember it.)
hemidemisemiquaver
Thanks, tsuwm, that was one of the words that had me wondering. Is it possible that the three have each carved out a niche, or even a hemidemiseminiche? For instance, hemiparesis is a medical term, while to me, demi often as an air of the diminutive about it, as in demitasse. Semi seems to be the most common in everyday English, or at least in everyday Zild. Does the OED have anything to offer on this?
it *usually follows the root; i.e., Greek root > hemi... Latin root > semi. hybrids abound.
It *usually follows the rootBodhisattva! I knew that
I had followed the right route to finding an answer.
Many thanks.
Demitasse? Oh, Max, you do live in provincial NZ! Here in Wellington, we've progressed to having a demimonde! You can belong to it, watch it while drinking instant coffee from your demitasse, buy tickets and have as much fun as you like. It's alive and well and living in the Aro valley. During the day it's ritually washed and dryed and has creases lovingly ironed into its sleeves.
Bodhisattva. I see you like Steely Dan as well. What a coincidence!
I guess it's true that half a loaf is better than none.
Poster: Max Quordlepleen
Subject: Re: Hemi, Demi, Semi?
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Saw the above and thought we were having a Sing-Along !
Hemidemisemiquaver is what the Brits call a 16th note, isn't it?
The black note with a stem and three flags?
wow
{trilling "Hail Britannia" she's off to peruse other threads}
wow>Hemidemisemiquaver is what the Brits call a 16th note, isn't it?
Good guess, but actually, it's a 64th note!
Hey tsuwm, how many flags would that give it, exactly?
Shoshannah
Right! Goes to show you ... shouldn't post 'till the second cup of coffee.
wow
>how many flags would that give it, exactly?
oh, somewhere between 3 and 5, joe intercalated forcibly.
Quaver = 1 tail
Semiquaver = 2 tails
demisemiquaver = 3 tails
hemidemisemiquaver = exactly
4 tails.
A guy I know who is, among other things, a good composer, has a dog called Semiquaver, because it's nearly aways as pleased as a dog with two tails. Remember that, and you can do the count yourselves right down to hds-quaver.
Hell, I knew all that music theory was going to have a payoff one day!
And now a question for everyone. Why are they called quavers anyway?
Hey, Max - Quordleplennui. Were you really
that bored?
why quavers? quaver... "a note, equal in length to half a crotchet or one-eighth of a semibreve." but wait. let's give jazzo a chance to tell the story.... (please?)
And so, if you're composing on a small piece of paper, and consequently writing in tiny script, you end up with a
minihemidemisemiquaver
And if your hand shook as you held the paper, you would have a
quivering minihemidemisemiquaver
And if you dropped the paper, and it almost hit a puddle, but somebody caught it for you just in time, he would be a
quivering minihemidemisemiquaver saver
Whew.
An 8th note has one flag, a 16th has 2, 32nd has 3 and 64th has 4. Therefore a 128th has 5, a 256 has 6, a 512th has 7 . . . etc.
Now who's up for some Charlie Parker?
In reply to Max:
Why yes, the OED does have something to say!
(As usual, fonts with accents don't transfer to ASCII. I've tried to fix some of them.)
Hemi-:
[a. Gr. ™li-, combining element, from earlier *r‰li- = L. sUmi-, Skr. sQmi-, OTeut. *sâmi-, OE. sam-, all meaning ‘half-’. Several Gr. words containing this element were in use as technical terms in later L., e.g. hemicyclium, hemWna, hemisphærium, hemistichium. In the modern langs. they are very numerous, not only in terms adopted or adapted from Gr. (directly or through L.), but in new formations, scientific or technical, from Greek, or on Greek analogies. Words formed from Latin have the corresponding prefix semi-; but there are instances of hybridism in the use of both prefixes.]
(You know, the OED on CD-ROM has to be the best present I ever gave myself.)
Rouspeteur : the OED on CD-ROM has to be the best present I ever gave myself
Oh, lucky you ... all I have is the Shorter OED CD and I love it. I'm a great believer in presents for oneself. Who knows better what is wanted?
May I call on you if I get stumped?
wow
Wow, of course you may. I'd be more than happy to help.
Tswum wondered:
why quavers? quaver... Thanks for bringing up the names of notes, since it has reminded me of something that bugged me for the longest time when I was learning music, and I'd like your opinions, both informed and uninformed.
The names of notes in English in descending order according to note-value are:
Semibreve (whole note)
Minim (half-note)
Crotchet (quarter-note)
Quaver (1/8)
Semiquaver (1/16)
Demisemiquaver (1/32)
Hemidemisemiquaver (1/64)
The names of the same notes in Spanish are:
Redonda (whole note, it means "round")
Blanca (half-note, it means "white")
Negra (quarter-note, it means "black")
Corchea (1/8)
Semicorchea (1/16)
Fusa (1/32)
Semifusa (1/64)
(Since it is so seldom used, I have left out the Breve, that semibreve that looks like it's in jail. Also, I confess, I have forgotten the Spanish name for it, if I was ever taught it
)
It always appeared to me that there must be some kind of etymological connection between the terms "crotchet" and "corchea", and I cannot imagine how one came to refer to quarter-notes and the other to eighth-notes. Anyone have any ideas about this?
Also, where did the "fusa/semifusa" words come from? It seems unfair that Spanish musicians are deprived of the fun of endlessly splitting quavers into ever-smaller units with ever-longer denominations!
In reply to:
why quavers? quaver... "a note, equal in length to half a crotchet or one-eighth of a semibreve." but wait. let's give jazzo a chance to tell the story....
since jazzo ducked the chance to piffle this, I will tell you that a quaver is so-called because of the way it was originally sounded, with a tremble or quiver (i.e., the verb quaver was nouned!)
Dear Marianna,
In US I was taught note-names as you noted as a "translation" for the fancier names in English
The names of notes in English in descending order according to note-value are:
Open no stem =whole note
Open note with stem = half-note
black note with stem= quarter-note
black note w/ stem and flag = eighth note (1/8)
black note with stem and two flags = sixteenth note (1/16)
" with three flags= thirty second note (1/32)
" with four flags= sixty-fouth note (1/64)
A dot after a note means to extend the note by half it's value.
Do musicians in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and former British colonial possessions use the hemi, semi, demi names?
wow
> Do musicians in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and former British colonial possessions use the hemi, semi, demi names?
I did my first theory exam in Australia and learnt semibreves and crotchets etc; not to mention acciaccatura (grace note) and appoggiatura, my Italian favs. I think it's because the exams are similar to the Royal School of Music exams from England.
...by the time seventh grade theory had rolled around the required vocab was the least of my troubles!
In Canada we learned whole note, half note, quarter note, and so on. The national exam-administering people are called the Royal Conservatory of Music, but it's a Canadian institution, just to make things confusing.
Then again, we also have the Royal Canadian Mint, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, to name a few. But I was also reminded the other day in a Canadian knowledge quiz that the Canadian head of state is still technically the Queen! (And I did get the question right - social studies wasn't completely wasted on me!)
Note values
And what the Brits call the breve, the double whole note, is a whole note with vertical lines on either side of it. This is rarely used; I've only seen it in in baroque organ music.
Names for musical keys
What is also interesting are the different methods of naming the keys in music. The same system is used, so far as I know, by all English-speaking musicians, but the French/Spanish/Italian systems and the German system are different.
For instance, b-minor is called H-moll in German. What we call B is H in German and the German B is what we call B-flat. Thus, the tune B-A-C-H is actually what we call B-flat, A,C,B. A-major in German is A-dur. moll has the meaning "soft", dur, "hard".
In the Romance languages, the key names go by the tones of the scale, and are either "majeure" or "minuere" (in French -- Spanish and Italian have corresponding names). They begin with C, which is "ut", then D = "re", followed by "mi", "fa", "sol", "la", and "si". Thus, c-min. is "ut mineure", E-maj. is "mi majeure". I forget what they do with the keys incorporating sharps & flats, like F-Sharp-maj or B-flat-maj.
Solfege has different "words" for each of the 1/2 steps in the 12 tone tuning system. These "words" are independent of the lettered equivalent and have to do with relationships to a keys tonic, not specific nominations of hz.
The only one I can't imagine would be the "romantic version" of "ut" (instead of D'oh)
.
the Canadian head of state is still technically the Queen!I was reminded of this when I managed to decipher "GR" on the jackets of Canadian law enforcement officers. My high school french suggested that it was probably something like "gendarmerie royaume", aka RCMP. Here in NZ we have the anachronistic R in front of several government organisations as well. For those who read(past tense) adolescent detective novels, the Queen's representative here has the surname Hardie-Boyes (I kid you not)
I can't remember whether I heard this, made it up, or received it in a visitation from some linguistic gnome ~ take your pick, and feel free to tell me if I'm way off base.
Hemi- refers to things that are divided horizontally.
Semi- refers to things that are divided vertically.
Demi- refers to a smaller subset or version of the original.
Hmmm. Now that I type it out, it
definitely looks like the work of gnomes!
Hardie-Boyes is terrific!
Michigan's Lt Governor is one "Dick Posthumus." Leading at least one wag to remark, "you know, you can take Viagra for that now."
Dough, what I use to buy my beer
Ray, the guy that sells me beer
Me, the guy that drinks my beer
Fa, a long way to get beer
So, I think I'll have a beer
La, I think I'll have a beer
Tea, no thanks, I'm drinking beer
And that brings us back to (looks at empty beer glass) D'oh!
What we call B is H in German and the German B is what we call B-flat.
I'm wondering if this was made up by Bach enthusiasts after Bach composed his little B-A-C-H sequence to make to spell his name. A B H C D E F G makes absolutely no sense.
Dear CK: do you have any demireps who pick up demijohns?
I'm no musician but I'm surprised the history of the note names hasn't been mentioned. (Or it has and I'm stupid/blind: disregard if so.)
Mediaeval music was slooow: modern recordings of Perotin's Viderunt omnes clock in at around thirty to sixty seconds per syllable. The word 'breve' of course means 'short'. It was the short note. It's now so long that (two full bars) that it's never seen for most instruments.
Then the monks got hyperactive or started taking drugs that speeded them up, or something, and needed a 'half-short' note too, the semibreve, the length of a full bar.
Then came yet another division of this. Two notes to a bar?? Were they mad? This was obviously the smallest note it was possible to have, so it was called the minim.
Beyond that they had to give up naming them realistically. Half a minim was called a crotchet, 'a little hook', because it looked like one.
Then quaver is self-explanatory: some radical modernist microtonal trill.
I don't know when semiquaver and its babies came in.
"gendarmerie royaume" [for GR]
I think it's Gendarmerie Royale. belM may wish to confirm/deny this.
Actually, upon further thought, I think it's GRC - with the C being "Canadienne".
GRC = Gendarmerie royale du Canada (note: except for proper names only the first word in French titles are capitalised)
royaume = kingdom as in the example below:
le Royaume-Uni (de Grande-Bretagne et d'Irlande du Nord) the United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), the UK
In beautiful downtown Ithaca, NY there is a coffee shop which has all the exciting varieties available to the discerning neophile. Included are several varieties of latte (milk!) one of which is called breve. The breve is with half and half instead of milk. It comes in all the standard sizes including the smallest (or is it the middle-sized one?) called grande. Thus, at Juna's you can order a breve grande.
Bach and B-A-C-H
Jazz, I think you are under some misapprehension here. The naming system used in Germany was already in place when J.S. started working. Of all the myriads of works he composed, he used the sequence of tones B-A-C-H only once. It appears, briefly, as the last theme introduced in The Art of Fugue and comes in at the very end. The Art of Fugue was the last thing he composed; indeed, according to his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, it was composed literally on his deathbed (he dictated the last sections, as by that time he had gone blind) and the reason it breaks off abruptly is that he died at the point at which it ends (only a few bars after B.A.C.H comes in). It was, in a way, the culmination of his life's work, as it is a summary and demonstration of the rules and art of fugue writing, of which he was the greatest master, and which was at that time beginning to die out. Appropriately enough, B.A.C.H is a solemn and mournful tune.
Thank you, NicholasW, for the explanation. I'd been wondering what led to those seemingly contrasensical terms.
And many composers since Bach's time (or at least since Mendelssohn's rediscovery of Bach) have used that same theme in homage to J.S. Bach.
he used the sequence of tones B-A-C-H only once. Yes, I've read about the fugues in
Gödel, Escher, Bach. My main question is why in the world they stuck H after B. It doesn't make any sense!!
GRC = Gendarmerie royale du Canada Merci. One thing that struck my mischievous mind was why the jackets of the Mounties in question did
not follow the usual slavishly ubiqituous devotion to bilingualism I have come to expect of things Canadian. The jackets only had GRC on them, not RCMP, and the police in question were in Ottawa. Enlightenment, s'il vous plait?
JazzO's question may be pointed out in the answer to this: What "German" letters are representing the rest of the 1/2 steps? (I know not OF "them".)
Max,
Where did the "GR" appear and on what uniform? Was it the one most people know best, the red serge (the dress uniform with the red jacket) or was it the working uniform (standard police look - greyish shirt, black gun belt)? You are right that it should be bilingual. A thought struck me though, perhaps it is latin? Our coins have D.G. Regina for Dea Gratia Regina (Latin is not my forte so apologies for any misspelling) or, in English, by the grace of God queen. Perhaps it could be George Rex in honour of the sovereign when their name was changed from the Royal Northwest Mounted Police to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920.
Where did the "GR" appear and on what uniform?The jackets were what are called windbreakers here, and were being worn by officers executing a search for suspected terrorists. The jackets looked very similar to the ones so often seen with ATF, or FBI emblazoned across the back, except that these had GRC. It was only my fascination with the trivial, and delight at figuring the letters out, that caused me to note the absence of an English equivalent.
I think that might explain it. If it was involving the suspected terrorist currently on trial in LA the raid you saw took place in Montreal. My guess, is that the jackets come in either English, French, or both. Since in any case they would have POLICE (a bilingual word) on them as well so it probably isn't an issue.
In the same way, the Canadian Forces jackets have either Canadian Forces or Forces canadiennes but not both.
Since you mentioned bilingual, the government used a rather smart workaround to make its web addresses bilingual. It seems most US government addresses are something.gov. In Canada the homepage is www.gc.ca. Perfectly bilingual: Government of Canada or Gouvernement du Canada.
If it was involving the suspected terrorist currently on trial in LA the raid you saw took place in Montreal. My guess, is that the jackets come in either English, French, or bothThat's what I figured, except that the raid, almost six months ago now, was definitely in Ottawa. I never got to see the fronts of the jackets, which undoubtedly had the delightfully bilingual "police" on them, but I guess that you don't want people having to stop and decipher two sets of letters on somebody's jacket in the middle of a crisis situation!
I guess that you don't want people having to stop and decipher two sets of letters on somebody's jacket in the middle of a crisis situation! We (or at least I) don't really decipher, as such, we are just used to seeing both English and French form (in many cases, not just the RCMP). So whether I see RCMP or GRC, I think cops, if that makes any sense. Just like whether I see "milk" or "lait" I know I can put in on my cereal.
And it's a habit that if you pick up a container of something and attempt to read the label, and you don't understand it right off the bat, then you turn it over, looking for the English side (or French, depending!). This makes things really complicated when the package is from another country (for example, my husband's Norwegian handcream) - you turn it around several times before you realize there isn't ANYTHING on it in English!
What "German" letters are representing the rest of the 1/2 steps?
Eb is called Es, sometimes interpreted as S. This is seen in B-A-C-H style themes based on other peoples names. No good examples off hand.