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A scathing attack on Arabic, English, and perhaps other languages
Dear all,
I have been meaning to start a new topic for a while now, but I was too busy with work and on top of that, studying as well. As I am relatively free nowadays (maybe for three weeks or something) I thought I would start a string of threads to point out my dislike to the Arabic hymns, and thereto the consequently translated English hymns, or whatever other language. Of course if there is one language where the congregation takes care to translate the hymns directly from Coptic (keeping the musical tones and the overall structure of the tune) then that is exempt from my attack. The problem is, however, that Coptic language has many more vowels/syllables than do Arabic or English (the two languages I heard hymns sung in), and that corrupts the meanings of hymns. Needless is it to say that the melismata and the single notes in the music do contribute enormously (and that is not an exaggeration) to the words. I will be using some signs from the unicode character and symbol system used in MSWord, and I am hoping no one will have difficulties viewing. At the end, I should say that I have never studied music, except for two months when I was taught to play the "banjo" (probably; in Arabic we used to say "mandolin").
[coptic]oujai qen `P[C[/coptic]
I have been meaning to start a new topic for a while now, but I was too busy with work and on top of that, studying as well. As I am relatively free nowadays (maybe for three weeks or something) I thought I would start a string of threads to point out my dislike to the Arabic hymns, and thereto the consequently translated English hymns, or whatever other language. Of course if there is one language where the congregation takes care to translate the hymns directly from Coptic (keeping the musical tones and the overall structure of the tune) then that is exempt from my attack. The problem is, however, that Coptic language has many more vowels/syllables than do Arabic or English (the two languages I heard hymns sung in), and that corrupts the meanings of hymns. Needless is it to say that the melismata and the single notes in the music do contribute enormously (and that is not an exaggeration) to the words. I will be using some signs from the unicode character and symbol system used in MSWord, and I am hoping no one will have difficulties viewing. At the end, I should say that I have never studied music, except for two months when I was taught to play the "banjo" (probably; in Arabic we used to say "mandolin").
[coptic]oujai qen `P[C[/coptic]