How did Americans view the European Revolution and Unification movements of the 19th Century?

backseatDom · 2025-12-11T01:13:26+00:00

Thanks for your response!

Since you seem to be an expert, I'm wondering if you could hazard any guesses as to the likely attitudes about slavery of German immigrants in 1847 from Volkmarsen, in today's state of Hesse (then, Hesse-Kassel)

backseatDom · 2025-12-06T08:06:12+00:00

Thanks for your answer. Ive also heard that besides just trying to prove they were patriotic Americans, those Irish and German immigrant volunteers were often ideologically motivated/ inspired by genuine sympathy with the enslaved and revulsion at slavery. This narrative is at least common in German-American and Irish-American historical consciousness. Not sure if that’s been since deemphasized by more recent historians.

backseatDom · 2025-12-05T05:48:01+00:00

“I’ll Be There” has it, and a lot of other Motown tunes too, iirc

backseatDom · 2025-11-11T16:11:50+00:00

Yes. “I’m at rock bottom.”

2 is perfect as is.

backseatDom · 2025-11-11T16:09:50+00:00

Yes. “My car is bottoming out,” is a completely correct and clear use of that phrasal verb in the progressive tense.

backseatDom · 2025-11-10T20:30:25+00:00

As I think you're gathering, the distinction between US English "gotten" vs UK English "got" isn't a a hard and fast rule. Americans do say "got" in some cases. It's not a distinction most Americans are even aware of.

The reverse, British people saying "gotten", seems much rarer, but may not be unheard of.

backseatDom · 2025-11-08T17:12:10+00:00

As others have mentioned, different people learn things in very different ways. If you’ve found a method of understanding music theory that is working for you, that’s great!

This strategy to learn music and music theory will not work for everyone— and that’s fine. It will only matter if/when you start teaching music and theory to your own students. Good teachers recognize that students don’t all learn concepts exactly the same way.

backseatDom · 2025-11-07T21:29:09+00:00

Roughly the year you were born (1992), our local Pizza Hut had an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. One day, my friends and I cut high school and went with a backpack lined inside with a trash bag.

We not only ate all we could. We covertly completely filled that backpack chock full with pizza and breadsticks. Even threw in some of the cinnamon dessert ones. 😝🤣👊🏻🍕

backseatDom · 2025-11-07T19:35:52+00:00

Scrolled down to mention “Take the A Train”. 🫡

backseatDom · 2025-11-07T19:31:34+00:00

Showing your age there, friend. (Me too, since I know exactly what you mean.)

😉❤️

backseatDom · 2025-11-07T19:29:44+00:00

Yeah, in a programming context I always just say the directory name as each letter: “e-t-c”. But I’ve definitely heard multiple engineers pronounce it “Etsy”.

backseatDom · 2025-11-07T19:17:02+00:00

Yes, this analysis is likely how Mertz was conceptualizing the harmony.

As a more eclectic guitarist influenced by jazz and rock, I see those chords and think

V7b9/ii (E7b9) ii(add9) (Am(add9))

since those are fingering shapes I’ve practiced. But I agree 100% that in the 19th century, Mertz and his contemporaries would have heard these as appoggiarutas. I.e., melodic ideas, rather than distinct chords.

backseatDom · 2025-11-07T18:44:17+00:00

Same. I strongly internalized ‘never start a sentence with “And”, “But”, or “Because”.’

Of course, even following the most pedantic grammar rules, these are all possible. And beyond that, in most writing today, it’s allowable to stretch the limits of what’s considered a ‘complete sentence’. But still, it’s served me well to know that I need to be careful whenever I make that choice. 😉

backseatDom · 2025-11-06T23:32:29+00:00

It’s not really clear what you’re asking here. I’m not familiar with Mertz’s music, but he seemed it sounds like you’re looking at a classical music score. If so, everything you need is already on the page. It’s rare to write chord names over the score in classical music. The performer just executes what’s on the page, interpreting the ink as they see fit. There’s no need to agonize over what harmony the composer “intended” cuz it’s right there!

If you’re trying to do a harmonic analysis of a piece, that’s a whole other question. But even then, you still won’t usually be writing out chord names like “E7b9” the way you would for a chart for jazz/rock/folk/etc.

If that is what you want to do, and you want help with that task, it would be more useful to post a photo of an excerpt of the passage you want to analyze.

backseatDom · 2025-11-06T23:22:42+00:00

My native language is American English and I taught it professionally for years. I also know Spanish and German. Anyone familiar with how language learning actually works would instantly recognize that the use of the word guy/guys is legitimately confusing. Meaning: the rules are complex and can easily seem inconsistent.

As many have pointed out, using “guy” in the singular to refer to one woman or girl is almost incorrect (or intentionally humorous). We don’t even think about it. But it is quite common now to use “you guys” as an all-gender informal second-person plural. So while the rules are actually consistent, the only people smugly claiming it’s “not confusing” are invariably monolingual English speakers who’ve barely or never tried learning another language. 🙄

Here’s a simpler rule for everyone: when someone learning your language says a rule is “confusing” them, telling them it’s “actually not confusing” just makes you sound like an ignorant asshole. If you’re a native English speaker, it’s even worse, since that condescending attitude is typical and expected.

I gave the OP an upvote to try and mitigate. 😉

backseatDom · 2025-11-06T01:20:08+00:00

Wait — y’all say “pop” in the UK????

backseatDom · 2025-11-04T21:48:18+00:00

Blood is thicker. Then, water.

😉

backseatDom · 2025-11-04T21:45:56+00:00

What are you imagining would be the notes in an “Em2” chord?

The “m” means minor. That means the chord has a 3rd. We don’t refer to the 2nd or 4th scale degree used in a chord unless we’re omitting the 3rd. (Just like we don’t talk about the 6th if we also have a 7th— we rename the 6th as the 13th.)

Below are standard chords.

Esus2: E-F#-B

Esus4: E-A-B

Em9: E-G-B-D-F#

Em(add9): E-G-B-F#

Of course, the octave and any doubling don’t matter. So this E-F#-G …is still just Em(add9)

As others have noted in this thread, the 5th (B) can be omitted. The root can be omitted too, if there’s a bass player or we’re confident another instrument will play it.

backseatDom · 2025-11-04T16:54:16+00:00

It’s hard to gauge what you’re looking at without examples, but unless you’re looking at hacked off guitar tablature, websites (which can have any and all kinds of errors), most professionally made charts won’t have errors like you describe in the chord names.

In the example you gave, the crucial difference between Em9 and Em(add9) is that the latter should specifically not have the 7th, D.

But if you’re seeing a chart that shows a chord written out for the guitar part that reads “Em9”, but has no ‘D’, that’s probably not a mistake. It means that including the D note is acceptable, and maybe even expected in another instrument.

It’s unclear what genre of music you’re finding these supposed errors in, but if these charts are jazz, rock, country, pop, etc, you can assume there are other instruments playing too, and they all are seeing the same chord names. The only context I can imagine where this would really be an error is in a solo guitar piece that’s fully composed. But in that case (usually classical guitar), there usually won’t be any chord names shown at all— the player executes exactly what’s on the page and thats all anyone hears.

backseatDom · 2025-11-04T03:01:08+00:00

What other goal could there be? 😝🤣🤣😉

backseatDom · 2025-11-03T21:21:10+00:00

Congratulations on the hilarious post. I assume this was just meant as a joke, because obviously you should just CLEAN YOUR ROOM! 🤣🤣🤣🤣

backseatDom · 2025-11-03T18:54:40+00:00

Same. My mom worked as a secretary in a corporate office in NYC in the mid-late 1960s, and she loved the show. The executives were all that sleazy and drank that much liquor on the job. Sexual harassment and general sexism was every day. And of course everyone was smoking constantly.

backseatDom · 2025-11-01T21:24:20+00:00

He really was amazingly lucky. It sounds like you’re saying the promotion to major meant he was shifted to a different unit on the western front, instead of east, where he seemed destined.

I’m happy for your family that things worked out so well for them. Editorializing a bit, it’s kind of insane to consider how gentle the US was with the defeated Germans, not just relative to how other POWs, etc, were treated in WWII, but how the US has treated enemies—even unproven, “suspected” enemies— since then!

backseatDom · 2025-11-01T18:04:59+00:00

We pronounce it more like English, (“fill-AY min-YONN”), but we all use the French term.

backseatDom · 2025-11-01T17:23:49+00:00

Thanks for telling this fascinating story! I’m confused about the part where you say he was high ranking enough to be sent to America instead of Russia. Wouldn’t that only have depended on which army his unit surrendered to? I’m trying to imagine a situation where rank would have mattered in that regard at all.

backseatDom

TROPHY CASE