Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 November 7

= November 7 =

America - Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
Is America called the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave? If it is, why is it called that? 86.140.121.38 (talk) 21:54, 7 November 2020 (UTC)


 * It's poetry. Have you read the article The Star-Spangled Banner? --ColinFine (talk) 22:16, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The OP Geo-Locates to the UK, probably Northern Ireland. Not all people are familiar with the words of the US national anthem. LongHairedFop (talk) 09:29, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yet the OP somehow heard the expression somewhere. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:20, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The phrase is far more well known than the song in the UK. A lot of us couldn't name the American national anthem if we tried, My Country, 'Tis of Thee and God Bless America being strong contenders in many minds, not least because the words fit the music so much better. Anyway, lots of people know odd phrase from the Bible, or the Prayer Book, or Shakespeare, or Kipling, without knowing the source, no need to criticise them for asking. DuncanHill (talk) 14:25, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Out of curiosity, what about the words of The Star-Spangled Banner doesn't fit its music, in your estimation? I know that the music was originally a drinking song, but its soaring phrases really strike me as fitting a patriotic song better. --Trovatore (talk) 19:38, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There are places (especially in the other 3 verses) where you have to stretch the lyrics a bit to make it work. But the main problem with the music is that it can be hard to sing because of the vocal range required. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:50, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Duncan didn't say anything about it being hard to sing. The claim was that the words of the other two songs "fit the music" better (which I took to mean in theme, but I suppose meter or syllabification is another possibility).  --Trovatore (talk) 19:53, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Being a drinking song, it becomes easier to sing (or so the singer thinks) once he's got a few pints in him. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:21, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * One line that's hard to fit the words with the music comes in the third verse, where it says, "Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution." A charming, uplifting thought. I keep waiting for someone to sing that verse at a ball game. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:24, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I must admit I've never heard it sung "straight", only the tortured caterwaulings from American sporting events, oozing fake sincerity and crying out "look at me". Part of it always seems to me to want to turn into "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" too. DuncanHill (talk) 23:37, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This is why they have a pro sing it at the Super Bowl and whatever else. The thing is that you have to start at the right pitch, otherwise you end up too high or too low somewhere along the way. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:25, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That's right.  I just discovered "sour grapes" is from the Bible. 146.200.241.2 (talk) 19:12, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Probably not in its usual meaning. There is Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 18, which use the term in the context of denying the idea that children will be punished for their fathers' sins, but in the sense of being a sore loser it seems to come from Aesop's fable of The Fox and the Grapes. --Trovatore (talk) 20:58, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * 146...2 is now blocked for being a sock of a banned user. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:45, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * According to National Anthem Project, plenty of Americans can't or at least couldn't remember the lyrics in their entirety either. I would hope only a few wouldn't recognise the words are in the anthem when they hear the words, but who knows I guess. Nil Einne (talk) 20:42, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It's mostly only the first stanza that's at all familiar to most Americans. Even that one has some pretty complicated sentence structure that took me a long time to understand.  I had long thought that we were watching the rockets' red glare over the ramparts, but if you read it that way, the next phrase makes no sense.  So we were actually watching the ramparts, not the glare, and the glare was giving proof through the night.
 * Canada's anthem is no better on this point. They keep changing the words, but in the version I learned, it turns out that Canada is being directed to command true patriot love in all her sons, and that also is a bit of a challenge to listening comprehension. --Trovatore (talk) 20:58, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It's "What so proudly we hailed... Whose broad stripes and bright stars..." that we're watching, as far as I can make out. It's not quite in the class of the Great McGonagall, he at least made sense. DuncanHill (talk) 23:40, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah, you're right that I mixed up the part of the song I was talking about. But no, we're not watching the broad stripes and bright stars.  The broad stripes and bright stars are gallantly streaming over the ramparts, and we're watching the ramparts.  It would be a great exercise to diagram that lyric, or otherwise build a parse tree for it.  --Trovatore (talk) 00:10, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I read it that we watched the broad stripes and bright stars over the ramparts - it's a poetic inversion, or whatever it's called. I think we can agree it's horrible English, whichever way we read it. DuncanHill (talk) 00:47, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No, we're definitely watching the ramparts. It's convoluted English, but there's really only one grammatical way to read it.  If we were watching the broad stripes and bright stars, then there'd be nothing left to be gallantly streaming. --Trovatore (talk) 00:53, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * This is technically called a garden-path sentence. You can get all the way through, and it makes perfect sense to read it Duncan's way, that we're watching the stripes and stars.  But when you continue it , that reading is no longer available. --Trovatore (talk) 01:04, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I think you are wrong. The only reading that makes sense to me is that we are looking past the ramparts and see the flag waving above.--Khajidha (talk) 14:06, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * That reading doesn't make sense, because it's not grammatical. If the stripes and stars are the object of "we watched", then they're not available to be the subject of "were so gallantly streaming".
 * Ramparts are something you watch. Not in the sense of looking at them to see what they do, because they don't do much, but in the sense of "stand watch over".  We watched the ramparts, over which the broad stripes and bright stars were so gallantly streaming through the perilous fight.  How does that not make sense? --Trovatore (talk) 17:50, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It's really both. Key is looking both past the ramparts and above the ramparts (of Fort McHenry), observing the flag. As I understand it, after a night of British bombardment, Key saw the flag being lowered and figured we were screwed. What they had up during the night was an all-weather flag due to the rain. By morning the rain had stopped. Imagine his exhilaration when a HUGE American flag was then hoisted. Thus inspiring him to write the poem. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:07, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The question in this subthread is grammar, not history. The grammar is (clunky but) unambiguous.  We were watching the ramparts, not the broad stripes and bright stars. --Trovatore (talk) 19:56, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * We watched the broad stripes and bright stars gallantly streaming over the ramparts. How does that not make sense? As for "The grammar is (clunky but) unambiguous" this subthread is a perfect refutation of that claim. Were it unambiguous, this discussion we would not be having. DuncanHill (talk) 20:03, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The broad stripes and bright stars can't be both the object of "watched" and the subject of "were streaming", not in that syntax anyway. The discussion does not refute that it's unambiguous.  It's a difficult sentence to follow, because of its garden-path nature, and lots of competent English speakers misinterpret it.  But there's only one correct reading. --Trovatore (talk) 20:08, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If lots of competent English-speakers misinterpret it then it is not unambiguous. DuncanHill (talk) 20:23, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * No, that's just false. --Trovatore (talk) 20:27, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The song is about the flag, not the ramparts. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:22, 10 November 2020 (UTC)


 * At least it's more singable, although the average Canadian might be hard pressed to belt it out the way Roger Doucet did. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:17, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm tired of this whining about the vocal range. Take some voice lessons and you'll be fine.  It's not that hard. --Trovatore (talk) 21:26, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * While researching below, I found that Mauritania abandoned National anthem of Mauritania (1960–2017) because it was too hard to sing, so there's always an option. For those who voted against Trump, now's the time for regret. Imagine you could easily have been singing 'Let's make America great. Again. Again, again. Again, again, again.....' 2 years from now instead of trying and failing with TSSB. Nil Einne (talk) 11:28, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The US national anthem might be the only one whose first verse is mostly a question. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:20, 9 November 2020 (UTC)


 * One thing to keep in mind is that TSSB is very young by world standards, as an official anthem. It was made official only in 1931, well within the memory of some senior humans. Prior to that, the USA was an anthem-free nation. So the cultural memory is still being formed. See Reference desk/Archives/October 2004 II. (Not that Australia can talk. Ours was first made official only in 1974, only to be bumped off by the next government in 1976, and then reinstated by the government after that in 1984.) --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:22, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "Waltzing Mathilda", right? --Trovatore (talk) 21:31, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Actually, no. In the national plebiscite in 1977, it came in in third place. This surprised many, but many others thought it was not sufficiently pompously vapid for a true national anthem. Odd, since pompously vapid is somewhat anathema to Aussies. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:50, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It was supposed to be a joke. --Trovatore (talk) 23:14, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * And an ancient and honourable one it is too. DuncanHill (talk) 23:31, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't get it. I blame you for this. :) --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  07:32, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Many modern countries didn't exist in anything like current form in 1931, so I'm unconvinced that something from 1931 is young by "world standards". Perhaps by the standards of Europe or the Americas. I had a look at List of national anthems and there are 45 before TSSB and I think 148 after. This does include stuff like Il Canto degli Italiani and Ja, vi elsker dette landet but that's probably fair from your comment. Even Gosudarstvennyy Gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii seems fair. In any case, I don't think taking these out will change most anthems only coming after. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority were only composed (even if the lyrics or music or both are older) after 1931. If your country was still a British colony or whatever, you might not have had time to come up with a national anthem especially since concept (along with modern conception of nationhood) is recentish. Nil Einne (talk) 11:28, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Interesting analysis. Thanks. --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  22:48, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

It rhymes with wave. Also Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2020_June_13. fiveby(zero) 21:29, 9 November 2020 (UTC)