A nod to Winston Churchill.

[DAS44]

30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965

 

A fantastic speaker who thw world would be very different without.

[Mark]

Yea, I recently saw a movie about him, HBO I think and I was impressed

[jannusguy]

30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965

 

A fantastic speaker who thw world would be very different without.

 

you are absolutely correct. he was a giant and yet just a man. i imagine the sound of his voice was a great comfort and inspiration to so many during those war torn years. hat's off to WC on the 45th anniversary of his death.

[NeoConMan]

Read some of his quotes.

He could have been a standup comic.

 

One of my heroes.

[albertjohn]

Many many great quotes.

 

But here is my favourite.

 

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?

Woman: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…

Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?

Woman: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!

Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

[Big Bill]

The man was just amazing. He also wrote and published several stories of the macabre, although the ones I read were short stories. Very great reads. He was also quite the artist, I seen a couple of his paintings.

 

Dom,

 

I just thought I would throw this back at you for chuckles.

 

http://forums.gibson.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=27781

[albertjohn]

The man was just amazing. He also wrote and published several stories of the macabre' date=' although the ones I read were short stories. Very great reads. He was also quite the artist, I seen a couple of his paintings.

 

Dom,

 

I just thought I would throw this back at you for chuckles.

 

http://forums.gibson.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=27781

[/quote']

 

Hey Big Bill. Didn't you know he had the most phenominal collection of vintage Gibson mandolins?

You didn't?

[Cruznolfart]

Dom' date='

 

I just thought I would throw this back at you for chuckles.

 

http://forums.gibson.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=27781

 

 

[Big Bill]

Hey Big Bill. Didn't you know he had the most phenominal collection of vintage Gibson mandolins?

You didn't?

 

 

I wonder how much those are worth!

[tulsaslim]

I am a loyal American and I've said for years that every home in the Western World should have a picture of Winston Churchill in a place of prominace. We who live in a free, democratic society owe a whole lot to that man.

[brundaddy]

[milod]

Okay, I may get in trouble for this, but I think Churchill's somewhat jingoistic "History of the English-speaking Peoples" hit on what it is that had made English the language of music for likely some 100 years.

 

The language, the culture that surrounds the language, lend themselves to absorbing various influences without really changing the fundamentals of either language or culture.

 

Then when "others" pick it up elsewhere, like Django and such, and add another sort of culture, then that change is adopted back easily. The Anglophone linguistic culture lends itself to artifacts of back and forth musical assimilation too.

 

I personally don't care for some of the "look at the great Brit rockers" who are better than the American rockers of the era, or vice versa, 'cuz in ways I see all Anglophone cultures as sharing some frequently unrecognized similarities largely due to the screwy nature of the language itself that's neither Germanic nor Romance.

 

In effect, to me it's like saying southern US musicians are "better" than Australians or bands from Manchester. The language itself has bent our heads. The heads too, I think, of those who adapted well to the language.

 

Churchill basically said the same sorta thing even though he wasn't pointing at "rock."

 

One reason I have great respect for non-native speakers of English who do the language well is that I'm told it is incredibly difficult to learn to speak well. Koreans have told me, for example, that German is much, much easier.

 

Why is it considered so difficult? Perhaps because it is so extremely flexible that it's difficult to assemble grammar, tense, case and general speech patterns simultaneously in a dual Germanic/Romance language culture. I dunno. But isn't that also a parallel to the "trick" to music?

 

m

[DAS44]

The man was just amazing. He also wrote and published several stories of the macabre' date=' although the ones I read were short stories. Very great reads. He was also quite the artist, I seen a couple of his paintings.

 

Dom,

 

I just thought I would throw this back at you for chuckles.

 

http://forums.gibson.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=27781

When its a man who did as much as he did its perfectly alright.

[Lowdown]

One reason I have great respect for non-native speakers of English who do the language well is that I'm told it is incredibly difficult to learn to speak well. Koreans have told me' date=' for example, that German is much, much easier.

 

Why is it considered so difficult? Perhaps because it is so extremely flexible that it's difficult to assemble grammar, tense, case and general speech patterns simultaneously in a dual Germanic/Romance language culture. I dunno. But isn't that also a parallel to the "trick" to music?

 

m

 

Well sorry to veer off the beaten track,but I have to weigh in with my thoughts(and first hand experience on a daily basis) -

It really isn't so much the above highlighted that you mention but the local slang.Euphemisms etc. That is what makes English so hard(or any language for that matter)to learn,get a grip on.

 

There's always been a fallacy(IMO)that English is the be all and end all of modern language as it's more easier to learn and advanced. Yet is it? I'm great at speaking gibberish?

 

 

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

French writer (1900 - 1944)

[grampa]

Churchill once described the US and Great Britain as two great countries separated by a common language. But then there have been a lot of quotes attributed to Churchill that weren't his. It is much like Mark Twain or Groucho Marx, many things have been attributed to them that they didn't say.

[milod]

Okay...

 

Most folks in my era suggested the line about separation of us and UK by a common language was from G.B. Shaw. Others said Oscar Wilde. Bertrand Russel has been quoted with a similar comment. Churchill less frequently.

 

I think there's decreasing difference due to the common language having so many more "media" ways to listen to and consider stuff spoken and written in near "real time" by others.

 

m

[albertjohn]

This frere bosteth that he knoweth helle,

And God it woot, that it is litel wonder;

Freres and feendes been but lyte asonder.

For, pardee, ye han ofte tyme herd telle

How that a frere ravyshed was to helle

In spirit ones by a visioun;

And as an angel ladde hym up and doun,

To shewen hym the peynes that the were, ,

In al the place saugh he nat a frere;

Of oother folk he saugh ynowe in wo.

 

I can't believe I have just posted some Chaucer on this forum.

 

I've no idea what it means but it is/was English in the 14C. There's a translation on Wikipedia.

 

And I made the bit up about Churchill's mandolin collection. It was banjos.

[grampa]

Banjos? I heard it was tubas.

[milod]

Yeah, Chaucer's neat. It does sometimes help to read it aloud. Remember there were no real standards for spelling in those days and - even "worse," it was written as far as I can tell prior to the so-called "great vowel shift" that gave English its "long" vowels.

 

For example, the first person personal pronoun "I" is but one letter, yet is considered by those of some other language cultures as having two syllables!

 

"Ah-Ee."

 

In fact, Koreans do write it in two syllables.

 

Use the "European" system of pronunciation and it makes better sense, too. E.g., the town in France is "Nees" and the English word for something appealing is "Nah-ees" even though they're spelled the same: "nice."

 

<grin>

 

Actually I wish I were better at reading Chaucer. It's even more fun to read one of the variations of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the original. I'm told Anglo-Saxon is very, very similar to the current Frisian dialect of "Dutch." I dunno.

 

m

[albertjohn]

Milod.

 

I am no scholar when it comes to the English language and I know nothing of Chaucer.

 

But I could not pass up the opportunity of posting some. Is this a first for the Gibson Forums? Don't ask me why it came into my head. I dunno.

 

I think you should have your own lounge so we can drop in and out and discuss such topics.

 

Cheers Milod.

[milod]

Albertjohn... Heck, I ain't no scholar. Just an old country newspaperman too stupid even to complete a uni course.

 

But discussion of language and its usage does have a strong relationship to music, IMHO.

 

I "ran into" a nephew of T.S. Eliot, who resides in the UK, in another forum. <grin> He thinks rather highly, it appears, of his well-known uncle's writing and character. I never met the St. Louis-born writer, but I think highly of his poetry and perhaps more relevant to this forum, his criticism of poetry.

 

By extension, that's also relevant to writing of music (I think especially "blues") and even posts on this forum.

 

Eliot wrote that poetry is far better written in reflection of emotion than during the heat of emotion. It seems to me that great blues is the same - and that posts and even complaints to mods here are perhaps written too often in the heat of emotion rather than after some deeper analysis.

 

I would have a hunch you're the first to quote Chaucer.

 

Chaucer, btw, forces us to consider that today's society is rather more priggish than we might consider. Some Chaucer can't be taught in state-supported schools for students under age 18, it seems, because it's "dirty."

 

But then, the first reference to the tune of the Christmas carol "Greensleeves" is that it was a "dirty ditty." Shakespeare wrote with much bawdy reference. Chaucer was just a bit more blunt. <chortle>

 

Chaucer's tales - as Boccaccio's - are marvelous ideas for story-writing and song lyrics, even as "antique" as they are.

 

As for a lounge section of my own - I think not. Perhaps some day when I grow up.

 

On the other hand, we've had more than a few folks here discuss lyric and composition... which I think is more than appropriate as a guitar "lounge" subject in today's world of "popular" music.

 

m