Culture: Music: Style
Gregorian Chant Children's Songs   (+11, -2)  [vote for, against]
Tone down those shrill young voices

Plus teach an appreciation of dead languages. There's more benefits, too.

Probably.

Maybe...

well, I'm just guessing.
-- lurch, Mar 29 2008

Gregorian Chant http://youtube.com/...s60&feature=related
It's good, but I don't understand anything they say. [Amos Kito, Mar 30 2008]

I have actually done something quite similar to this with Mediaeval Baebes songs in Latin with the children i helped with Latin.
-- eleventeenthly, Mar 29 2008


Hello [eleventeenthly] and welcome to this here halfbakery. Glad to hear you are helping children with Latin because no one helped me and as a result I hated it and gave it up.
-- wagster, Mar 29 2008


impressed 11teenthly and welcome.
-- po, Mar 29 2008


waves to [eleventeenthly] I predicted your name to your Dad! Have fun here!
-- xandram, Mar 29 2008


Thanks for that.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 29 2008


Daft! +
-- DrCurry, Mar 29 2008


I'm against anything that involves monks and children.
-- quantum_flux, Mar 30 2008


//Plus teach an appreciation of dead languages//

I thought you had to be a math or physics major or engineer to truly appreciate dead languages. To be honest, I never much cared for the Gregorian Chant as a child. Anyhow, are they buddhist or catholic monks that are continuing to beat that dead language to a pulp with their depressing sounding chants?
-- quantum_flux, Mar 30 2008


Considering that in general, dead languages were previously spoken by ordinary people, that can't be true, except that it might help to be very pedantic. Sorry. It might help to have an eye for detail.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 30 2008


WIFRT I imagined the Gregorians intoning 'Humpty Dumpty'.
-- pertinax, Mar 30 2008


//I thought you had to be a math or physics major or engineer to truly appreciate dead languages.//

The connection is rather more complex than that. Living languages are nowadays usually taught in a way that emphasizes empathy and de-emphasizes formal structure and syntax. So, if you're the sort of nerd that is likely to become a 'math or physics major' at university, the only way you can get high-school language teaching appropriate to your brain-type is to learn a dead one.
-- pertinax, Mar 30 2008


[pertinax] - //Gregorians intoning 'Humpty Dumpty'//... exactly the right idea. We first tried it on "Pop Goes the Weasel", but then found it was markedly better with "London Bridge is Falling Down". Sorry, I don't know enough Latin to translate them off the top of my head, but we all figured it would be the next illogical step. (Or maybe Klingon.)
-- lurch, Mar 30 2008


Klingon is a great language for cursing in, but is not renowned for its choral tradition. That could be because pretty much all Kilngon music sounds like pounding on a table with a bat'leth when drunk ....
-- 8th of 7, Mar 30 2008


Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
-- Klaatu, Mar 30 2008


[pertinax], that's rather a depressing thought, and sort of confirms yet again my decision to give schools a wide berth. It's still possible to learn a language in terms of its formal structure. One of the results of this is that when i listen to Finns, i can understand their word endings but not their actual words.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 30 2008


Good idea - especially if this pervades children's television where, apparently the criteria for employment are that you're below 25 and so constantly and noisily extrovert and happy that any reasonable person would be convinced you're on drugs or suffering from some sort of life-threatening hyperactivity disorder.
-- hippo, Mar 31 2008


My kids love it when they sing "Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem", then bonk themselves soundly on the head. They laugh and laugh.
-- globaltourniquet, Mar 31 2008


Do flat foreheads run in your family ?
-- 8th of 7, Mar 31 2008



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