Ghillie brogues - why the dislike and resentment..?

[EagleJCS]

As a college student taking French classes, my professor impressed upon us that more important than diction and conjugation was the music of the language. We should strive to get the rhythm and the intonation just so, according to Professor Carton, and phrasing and pronunciation would naturally follow. So we spent hours alternately humming and whispering back the conversations we heard. It's a brilliant approach to language acquisition, and there must be a corollary in traditional dress, if we could just find it.

Apologies to the OP. I just wanted to take this as an aside to the thread.

I've long thought that understanding a foreign language - or even a foreign accent in English - comes down to the tempo, tone (pitch accent), phrasing (meter?) and stress accent (e.g. EM-pha-sis vs em-PHA-sis) of the speaker. Those are terms also used to describe music, both oral and instrumental. People who have a 'musical ear' can often pick up on nuances in spoken accents (I do pretty well with accents most of the time and I sing and play a handful of instruments, some better than others.)


To bring this back to the thread, tone might be likened to the hues of the attire worn, phrasing in how well the various parts of the ensemble agree with one another, stress accent in a bold color as an accent piece (red shoelaces or a strongly contrasting color for one's flashes compared to one's hose). Tempo I'll have to think on for an appropriate comparison.