Being english i have to do a bit of translating sometimes when i read on some forums american folk talking about quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes etc. I'm still living in the land of quavers, semi quavers, demisemi quavers, and the ever beautiful hemidemisemi quavers - which is a bit of a brain melter, especially if you get asked "how many hemidemisemi quavers in a dotted crotchet" ? :-)

Lol, that would be a pain. What are quavers, semiquavers, etc. anyway? And.. a crochet? lol.

If I'm not much mistaken, I believe a quaver=8th note, semiquaver=16th, demisemiquaver=32nd, hemidemisemiquaver=64th, and crotchet=quarter. I'm not sure about that, though.

yups...i use 'crotchets', 'quavers', and all of that!In Belize, i don't really get to hear notes referred to as 'whole notes' or 'quarter' or well..like that much. Teachers do tell us that there is the English and American way of calling them, but i hear more of 'crotchets'.
WOW! QUASIHEMIDEMISEMIQUAVERS?!!!!!24 letters!
who can think of a bigger word???

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actually 23 without the 's'

Quavers? Semi quavers? I think I have heard of that before. I have never been out of the US, so it is really neat to hear other terms.

Uhh.. quasihemidemisemiquaver? I think i'll stick with 128th note, lol. It is interesting learning other terms though.

wow...you've seriously done your research...

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lol

Fun topic!

I did some semi-research on the longest word in English. So I enlightened myself by going to Wikipedia.


The longest word in any major English language dictionary is pneumo­noultra­microscopic­silico­volcano­coniosis, a 45-letter word supposed to refer to a lung disease, but research has discovered that this word was originally intended as a hoax. It has since been used in a close approximation of its originally intended context, lending at least some degree of validity to its claim.

The Guinness Book of Records, in its 1992 and subsequent editions, declared the "longest real word" in the English language to be flocci­nauci­nihili­pili­fication at 29 letters (More recent editions of the book have since aknowledged pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis). Defined as "the act of estimating (something) as worthless", its usage has been recorded as far back as 1741.[1][2] In recent times its usage has been recorded in the proceedings of the United States Senate by Senator Robert Byrd [3], and at the White House by Bill Clinton's press secretary Mike McCurry, albeit sarcastically.[4] It is the longest non-technical word in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Anti­dis­establishment­arianism (a nineteenth century movement in England opposed to the separation of church and state) at 28 letters is one of the longest words in the English language.

The longest word which appears in William Shakespeare's works is the 27-letter honorific­abilitudinitatibus, appearing in Love's Labour's Lost. This is arguably an English word (rather than Latin), but only because he used it.

I think it started to stretch during my post.
These words would be great for a spelling bee. Right now I'm thinking of a 10 year old asking someone to use "ACETYLSERYLTYROSYLSERYLISOLEUCYLTHREON..." in a sentence.

Going back to note values, I always wondered what the American for "breve" is? It's the length of two "whole notes". Not used in modern music.

I think we'd just call it two whole notes tied together.

i had to spell Anti­dis­establishment­arianism once last year..but i kept spelling it wrong...in the 'tarianism part.. i kept spelling 'terrainism

They are not obsolete. They are just part of a different terminology that is rarely (if ever) used in the U.S. It's like different systems of measurement. The U.S. uses inches, feet, etc. (quarter notes, whole notes...) and other parts of the world use meters, millimeters, etc. (quavers, semiquavers, breve....). it's just a different way of talking about the same thing.

I like the British names- they have more character

Accually I read in Physical Science that Feet, Inches, and Miles are "English units". I remember the book said the english unit term for "gram" is "slug".
The U.S doesn't use the term "slug" but we use most of the other English units.