Music?

[icarus]

Just got this email:

"All students on any UW campus can now get free legal music downloads under an agreement the UW signed recently with Cdigix, a local company. Their "Ctrax" service has over 2 million tracks."

Can we say, Whee?

Sanskrit test today. I think I did... okay? Stumbled over one unrecognizable squiggle, and I realized I didn't know some of the vowel forms as well as I thought I did.

Now we start Sandhi! *cue the echo of wails from Sanskrit students everywhere*

Icarus: "So, the spelling changes according to what sounds adjoin each other. 'What did' in English is really pronounced 'Whad did' and in Sanskrit that change is spelled out, correct?"

Teacher: "Yes."

Icarus: "And words are combined in Sanskrit. So 'What did' becomes 'whaddid'?

Teacher: "Yes."

Icarus: "Wait. This means that we have no way of telling where one word ends and another begins without knowing all these obscure spelling rules."

Teacher gives us her now you're catching on smile: "Welcome to Sanskrit."

Comments

wow.

[kagyakusha.livejournal.com]

Sanskrit sounds like fun -- in that painful sort of 'studying takes over your life' kind of way.

Now I want to take sanskrit!

....as for the music thing, why can't my school do that...
:( LUCKY.

Re: wow.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

This, my friend, is why I'm taking Creative Writing and a Music class this quarter. I think learning the alphabet this last week was just to soften us up, make us feel like we're getting this before things really get hard.

Icarus

[elfgirl.livejournal.com]

O.O

I am never complaining about Irish Gaelic ever, ever again.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I've heard scary, vague things about Irish Gaelic. What's the hardest aspect of the language?

[elfgirl.livejournal.com]

I once described it as “a language for which spelling and pronunciation appears to have been decided upon by two separate committees, divided by some deep fundamental differences" because they seem to have no appreciable connection to each other.

It's mostly the problem of trying to fit Irish pronunciation on top of the Latin alphabet. There are certain digraphs that don't connect at all to what we'd consider an "intuitive" sound for that letter combination. For example, bh represents /v/ or /w/, depending. So can mh. Irish Gaelic also makes fairly wide use of tripthongs, which are fairly uncommon in English and therefore, again, not very intuitive for an English speaker to use or pronounce. I think a lot of difficulty would be taken out of it if they did beginning Irish instruction using the traditional uncial alphabet because then you'd have the mental disconnect between the letters and what you think they should sound like. Alas, most classes and books start you off straight into the "modern" alphabet.

Irish, strangely enough, has some of the same issues as Sanskrit in that the pronunciation of certain words can change depending on what other words are around them. For example (stolen from the Omniglot.com page on Irish), the Irish for shoe is bróg, [brok] but my shoe is mo bhróg [mɔ vrok].

[skipmcgee.livejournal.com]

I'm not the biggest fan of Ctrax (my school got it 2 years ago) but hopefully you're experience will be a lot better than mine, since I don't want to rain on your parade (and mostly my problem with it is that you can't take the music off the computer unless you buy it, and if I'm going to do that I'll just use Itunes, you know?).

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's definitely less than ideal. But since I currently have zilch this is a step-up. (Sort of like going from no internet to dial-up.)

Icarus

[skipmcgee.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense. *Any* music is better than no music, for sure (unless that music is hardcore country, then I'll just take the silence, thank you very much).

[shezan.livejournal.com]

You knew Latin used to be written withput spaces between the words, right?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

No, I didn't know that. Gah, you'd have to look for all the this-ums and that-ums.

Sheesh. The innovations of the modern age.

[enname.livejournal.com]

*brain hurts*

All I have to say is that I am glad modern authors publish Latin with the spacing now. Damn stupid manuscripts don't have it unless they are high quality ones/cost a lot of money. Mine of course only have some spaces so I can never tell if what I am looking at is an abbreviation mark, punctuation or a word.

Older Japanese also has no spacing. Although at least characters like that make it a bit easier to work out.

[jaig.livejournal.com]

Sanskrit sounds terrifying.

[memorycharm.livejournal.com]

Whoa! Hey, do alumni get that too? I might actually keep up with my dues for perks like that... *g*

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

You do, but alumni and staff have to pay $5.99 a month for it.

Icarus