I'm so bored today and so I just browsed around on Ebay, looking at piano-related things. There are so many goofy things that people sell! Here is one - you know those little coffee/tea creamers that you find on tables in restaurants? Well, here is just the top of one - the foil little piece that you pull off. It's got Chopin's picture on it.

When I flew to Prague last fall I got this coffee creamer. I never knew before that Smetana is Czech for "cream".
Maybe I should sell this on eBay.

Interesting... Next time I'm at a cafe, I'll ask for some smetana for my coffee.

Smetana is not cream: it is SOUR cream and sour cream only. Having first seen the word in Russian, it was only later I realised it seems to exist in all Slavic languages as well as in Romanian. If anyone saw you take that picture they must have thought you were off your bean.

Though ti be called "Mr. Cream" is not that bad, I am happy I have a surname that has no meaning!

Here is some cream to you too! the "c" stands for "s" and the "H" for am "n"

PS. As I was ataching this all the house shook: we have just had an earthquake!

Well apparently in the Chech Republic it does (also) mean coffee cream, which is definitely not sour (or should not be, hehe).

neither is sour cream sour. What is in a name?

OMG, Richard, what was the magnitude? Is eveything okay?

I missed that bit it seems. Any damage done ?
We have regular "earthquakes" in some parts of the northern province of Holland, due to underground gas exploitation. Not a big deal so far, and nothing like the real stuff of course.

Thank you, all is fine!

At the epicentre it was over 5. Unfortunately, for the journalists, nothing has happened and they are having to spin tales about "the panic". This must have been the fourth one I have been though. The one that wrecked Assisi woke me up in the middle of the night, though the one at Aquila did not travel so far.

When my brother used to live in Santa Cruz, Ca, he used to say the same things.

Had I discovered a few months earlier what smetana means, I would have been tempted to comment on the four-hand piano transcriptions from Ma Vlast which Chris and Andreas recorded recently, how well they brought out the creamy textures in the music.

By the way, I find myself a little confused about how the composer's name should be pronounced. I had only ever heard it stressed on the first syllable, SME-ta-na. I know one has to be careful about what to believe when looking things up on wikipedia, but they seem to be contradicting themselves. Look him up there, and the first thing indicated in his entry is the pronunciation of his name. It is given both in written phonetic form (IPA) and as a short voice recording of two people speaking it, who are tacitly implied to be native speakers.

The written version confirms stress is on the first syllable, and moreover a note in the page describing the Czech/Slovak-specific variant of IPA states that in these languages stress is always on the first syllable. But the recording clearly sounds like they are stressing the middle syllable, Sme-TA-na. What's going on

I found a couple more items just now...

I guess when I'm real bored, I can spend time putting together a Chopin puzzle (weird!).
The Chopin bored makes me laugh! I might have to buy it.

One word, different languages. In Czech (and possibly in Polish and other languages) it is SMEtana, but in Russian it is smeTAna.

Now, look at Janacek, whose name is not JAnacek, but JaNAcek, as I was taught by a Czech gril I met once and who knew all there was to know about classical music. She confimed me the stress rule, as you mention, but said that was how his name was pronounced, But then he was not Czech, but Moravian and he was a Slovak speaker.

Well isn't that an interesting doohickey?!

I think the only people who could solve that Chopin Jigsaw puzzle are people who know the piece and can sightsing, to know which chord goes where in the score or else you could put it together by the piano and play the chords one by one..

You could also sort of compose a new piece. That might be fun...

I need the "Chopin Board". I DON'T need the puzzle. I have enough trouble putting together his music, let alone a puzzle of his music.

Scott

PS. We need a Facebook style "Like" for a post, which I would have done here.