[Magdalen] Music question

[Charles Wohlers]

German Fraktur is certainly not as easy to read as is text in Roman fonts, 
but it's by no means impossible - especially by someone even slightly 
familiar with the language (such as myself). I do have an older US BCP in 
German online, so you can see for yourself: 
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/German1892/German_1892.htm. I have 
no trouble reading it.

I suppose that old thesis might be unreadable if it was handwritten, but if 
it was typeset, there's really no excuse (IMHO).

Chad Wohlers
Woodbury, VT USA
chadwohl at satucket.com



-----Original Message----- 
From: James Oppenheimer-Crawford
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2016 4:03 PM
To: Magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Music question

An erudite friend of mine speaks fluent German, and often counsels the
choirs he is in about the correct pronunciation of the text of stuff we're
singing. He mentioned that he still has his father's doctoral thesis, but
cannot read it. It is in the German script that was in vogue prior to WWII.

I told him that my wife knows how to decode old scripts but I guess he
doesn't want to read it badly. Considering how most of the writers don't
want to even look at their theses after they get their committee to "buy"
them, I cannot say I am surprised.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 4:59 PM, Marion Thompson <marionwhitevale at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I remember learning at boarding school to write cursively, those sweeping
> capitals, and rows of 'c's like waves on the lake.  Then my school 
> switched
> to 'round hand' and that was fine.  Then in Grade Six, I was at a 
> different
> school and did my tidiest round hand.  The teacher huffed and said I 
> should
> write properly, 'we don't print here."  So I incorporated some aspects of
> cursive so that it would pass for acceptible.  About ten years later I 
> fell
> under the spell of some English young men who were very good at italic and
> I got an Osmiroid pen and Pelikan ink and added that to the mix.  I rather
> like my writing :-)
>
> Marion, a pilgrim   ... today my sail I lift ....
>
>
>
> On 11/20/2016 4:29 PM, Sibyl Smirl wrote:
>
>> On 11/20/16 8:18 AM, Scott Knitter wrote:
>>
>>> No, it's the 1996 agreement on spelling simplification:
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography_reform_of_1996
>>>
>>> On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 3:49 AM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen
>>> <magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> couldn't  do so now without a thorough grounding in the new
>>>>
>>>>> orthography>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm guessing (maybe only partially?) that you mean the switch from
>>>> the medieval Fraktur script to modern Latin based characters.
>>>>
>>>
>> I don't know now which friend it was, whether the war-bride of an
>> American veteran friend, or a cousin-in-law who fits the same category, 
>> but
>> both were young schoolgirls during WWII.  One of them told the story of 
>> how
>> shattered she was after working very hard to learn her penmanship, when
>> they changed things, and it would no longer be useful in her writing.
>>
>>
>>
>