roweenie wrote:Well, that may or not be correct now, but back in the day, when I was a student at Manhattan School of Music, we were taught fixed-do solfeggio, and B natural was spelled (and pronounced), si. I guess they must have been wrong, too.
No, that's the "traditional" version, which is the only one I've ever seen, but there are others. Gbb would be Sibb, in that system. One of the alternatives, listed as "Sotorrio", splits the difference and makes it "Tsi" - and Gbb is "La" (shocking, I know!)
There are two of those fixed-do variants that use "so". One of them (Shearer) for G, the other (Siler) for Gb. But those are hopelessly obscure systems. Anything you're likely to encounter will use "Sol". The impression that there's a "So" apparently comes from pronouncing it only before "La".
Donn wrote:Good heavens, is Ackroyd guzzling Old Overcoat there?
There is a normal "fixed do" system, standard usage in France, Spain, Italy etc., that indeed uses those same old syllables and appends an accidental mark. G is "Sol". Then there's a lot of weird stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solfeggio (interesting mixup on that URL - the page is really at "Solfège", an unusual and possibly standard-violating use of a character value outside classic 7 bit ASCII. But the forum software can't see that as a URL, so here it's Solfeggio for a redirect.)
Well, that explains finally something from back when I was studying violin with Daniel Guilet. He offered what he clearly felt was a challenge to sing something in front of me in solfege.....and knowing the do re mi etc I just sang it using those names. He looked surprised and entirely shut up about it forever. I was never sure what was surprising but didn't really care.
Explanations abound. Languages change over time. Even if unnecessary, "so" must be serving some function to the speaker and listener. I think the most common use is to signal, I have started speaking, and I'm going to start with some background info, and it may take some time. Now (also unnecessary), in terms of meaning, it would make sense to me to start with "because". "Because Aunt Sadie ate the bad sushi, and because her dog has to stay in the kennel when she travels..."
About halfway, you realize this would all be solved my an intermediate "I told ya that to tell ya this....".
Ah, I didn't realize complaining about "so, ..." was "a thing." At NPR anyway.
Reminds me, for no particular reason, of a listener comment I heard some years back, on the topic of "an" used before words starting with H. "An historic" being the one that NPR usage was particularly strong on. I don't really remember the content - I suppose there were some examples of words starting with H that never rate an "an". What I remember is that he signed off as ...
Well, silly boy, they use "an" when they use a silent H. As in An Istoric whatever. An erb. Or A Herb if you pronounce the H, or A Historic if pronouncing the H. Anybody who says An Historic has got a double whatever going on. I guess this is a Pronunciation Police type of thing.
