Takk and tak

As part of my travel plans for the future, I'm back to learning Polish. There is this word, 'tak', which means 'yes'. So far so good, that's all quite clear (in some pronunciation you can even hear a bit of a 'd' sound at the start, so you can think of 'da' in Russian and know for sure that this word means yes). But in Norwegian (which we discussed at length, starting on 25th June) the word takk means thanks. I get just a little bit confused as I try to decide whether I'm saying yes or thanks. Solutions: get focused into speaking Polish and not have any other options for the 'tak' sound in my mind; or, concentrate on the different sounds between the two words - which are very different, if you get close enough to see all the differences - and associate different pictures and feelings with each one which will always be there when I use the words.

It may seem a small thing to be talking about. But once you know bits of a few languages, some of the bits can fall into some of the other languages, so I'd like to know what you do about that.

One great linguist (polyglot, or by definition, hyperpolyglot - speaking more than six languages fluently) - the first that I think of - is Richard Francis Burton, the great English ...well, there isn't a word for what he was, he was everything - and everything England was not, so we can be thankful for having him (1821-1890). He was one of the first Westerners into Mecca - he went in disguise, linguistically as well as everything else (you can read about this in Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Mecca). He translated the Arabian Nights (the Alf Laylah Wa Laylah, or "Thousand Nights and One Night") and the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - among others. Burton, who was supposed to know 29 languages, was an incredible man who went everywhere and did everything - fantastical, unlikely, impossible, but he did it. He even disovered the source of the Nile. Read something by him or about him. Then have a think about what you have to do to qualify as 'being alive'. Lord Derby said of RFB: "Before middle age, he compressed into his life more of study, more of hardship, and more of successful enterprise and adventure, than would have sufficed to fill up the existence of half a dozen ordinary men".

Improvisation

Did you know that George Gershwin was Leopold Godowsky's brother-in-law?

Did you know that Fats Waller had lessons with Godowsky?

Did you know that Godowsky and Rachmaninov and everyone used to go to hear Art Tatum play?

You do now!

Panic and calm

Well, there were four explosions here today. Again.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt as far as I am aware (going by police reports etc).

I was wondering about panic. We won't go into the mechanism of panic just now. But I was thinking about it because I always imagine that in an emergency people should help each other. This is not to say that they will, but it is to say that I think they should. (From what I heard of today, this did happen some of the time).

So what's your priority? Save yourself (easiest), save someone near to you (achievable), save everybody (hero)? And where is your sense of urgency in a mortal situation? Is it in you, in a tiny circle in your own centre? If you have a family it might be with them. If you consider yourself part of a wider family (the widest family), perhaps it could be with them - I mean, with us. If you feel part of humanity, or part of life as a whole, then if you can help someone, you know it will be someone important to you - always. As I said two weeks ago, you can do the things that you can do. You are not paralysed. On your own you can't stop the whole thing, but you don't need to try that. You only need to do what you can do. And for that, you have all the skills.

XHTML 1+

I was really excited when the XHTML 2.0 specification came out!

What is exciting about XHTML (to me) is that the code for an XHTML web page is almost all meaning. In HTML, particularly before we got to version 4, there was a lot of layout in there. All kinds of elements like tables, paragraphs, headings, the whole lot, they were all being badly abused in attempts to force web pages to look a certain way. A terribly confusing situation for browsers and everyone as we tried to make sense of this cobwebby mess. Just think, a table (like a table of results for something) should be used when you want to show a table! Rather than to fit objects on the page, exactly where the designer wants them - and exactly where they aren't going to end up once different browsers have tried to make sense of them. It was an attempt to make the visual element completely controlled, and the result was the opposite - a visual element that was never controlled, because it would always behave differently in different situations.

Now we can control the look of a web page externally. But this is real control, because we know that there is no control. We know that browsers are different. We know that people's settings are different. We know not to try to control down to the millimetre. Real control has flexibility in it.

More importantly, the content of the web page is now the content. Elements are used to signify what they were designed to signify, not just used because of the way we think they will look. It's getting dangerously close to real communication! And communication is the wonderful thing about the Internet.

Plenty of people complain about, well, everything really, but specifically in this context they complain about the new specifications. Yes, I guess they complain each time there is a new specification. There are grumblings about the W3C. But I have never found any substance in the complaints. I see the developments they are making as completely positive in all ways.

I feel a good feeling when I write in XHTML. I was starting to feel good with HTML 4.01. But I feel bad when I can write loose code without consequences. Imagine all those unclosed elements (even the empty elements)! Imagine the improper nesting! Ugh. So just be thankful that everything will make a lot more sense in the future, and get started making well-formed documents!!! Oh, and please don't complain about the new specifications. I have already heard it. All comments welcome about how good XHTML is looking!

Wishes

When you wish that things were different, you are shutting out the things you do have. Your mind is somewhere else.
How bad are things now? Probably not so bad. Whatever it is, there is something worse somewhere else.
Those things that are wrong, all of them are somehow part of your life and our world. Is that what you want to say no to?

...

But there is something special about wishes. They could be important.
It's easy to say: "I wish I had..." - you hear that word a lot. Watch out! You never know who's listening.
A true wish is like a star that guides you. Seeing it is part of saying yes. The other way, we might all miss something good that's coming up.

Editions

You need a good edition of the music you are learning. 'Good' means 'correct'. Correct means that what you see on the page is what the composer wanted you to see, in other words, that no-one has altered or improved the original.

Sometimes there are a variety of originals, so it's not a simple matter to make an edition. But you have to find the best one you can. Because you need your instructions - the notes on the page. If you haven't got that, then what are you learning?

For Chopin, I use Henle's Urtext Edition. I always used to play from old editions like Augener, mainly because I liked the printing. And when I first looked at Henle I was sure I didn't want to play Chopin in German. But now I need them, because my other editions don't tell me the whole story. They also have extra notes and words that I would like to forget now, please!

But having said this, Henle isn't perfect. Look at the beginning of Chopin's B Flat Minor Sonata (Op. 35). When you play the repeat from the end of the exposition back to the start, consider whether you should go right to the beginning (the introduction, "Grave"), or repeat from just after that (in B Flat Minor now, "Doppio Movimento"). Because only one of these is correct. The answer is: the exposition finishes in D Flat Major, and you repeat right from the very beginning which begins on a D Flat. The other way doesn't make sense, so I have applied myself to removing that from my Henle edition. (See Charles Rosen's The Romantic Generation for more details on this matter).

I'm busy

Did you think I would forget?