Paraphrased, “Do not sing that freakin’ Banana Boat Song while working with my spreadsheets!” 
That should be a capital “I” in those brackets. I think VB is thinking it’s an italics tag.
Strangely, even wrapping “noparse” tags around it doesn’t help. Ah well, guess you just have to give up on putting a capital I inside square brackets. 
Wow. I know about choral vowel modification, but I’ve never heard of a set that was that restrictive. Usually there are eight vowels: ah, ay, eh, ih, ee, oh, ooh[sup]1[/sup], uu[sup]2[/sup]. (I’m not including the “French” or umlaut vowels, of course.) All of them are modified for singing purposes.
[sup]1[/sup] oo as in book
[sup]2[/sup] u as in rude
If I were able to use IPA and be understood, I wouldn’t need footnotes. [ɒ] [e] [ɛ] [ɪ] * [o] [ʊ]
Yup. I’ve sung in a lot of choirs over the years, and in every one, come Christmas, we were told to make it “eggshell-sees”.
At the very least, I would add [a], [æ] and [ʌ]. And, of course, the schwa ([ə]) which can take on all sorts of variations depending upon language and context. You also really need [ɔ] if you’re going to properly pronounce anything in French or German.
In ex-celcius day-ohhh
It translates to “The day after the world went back to Fahrenheit”.
I did leave out /æ/ which is opened up and brought further back, so I’m not sure of the correct symbol. But the rest of those vowels were intentionally omitted.
I was specifically told there is no “uh”, which removes [ʌ] and [ə]. The context where [a] would be still used is for /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, but, in both of those, [a] is to be avoided for being “nasty.”
[ɔ] is the odd one–it exists, but only as a modification of [ɒ] in the upper registers, where the rest of the vowels are merely made more close. I’m not sure why [ɔ] does not exist before [r], but I’ve been told that the vowels in cord and code are the same. ([r] is always treated as a consonant, not a vowel.)
I do want to point out that, even after being taught the standard, modifications were allowed to be made for languages other than English–but only in the choirs advanced enough to be singing in those languages anyways.
It will help to frame the discussion a bit more if we clarify whether we’re discussing choral diction or solo diction; since Malacandra’s teacher was specifically teaching soloists, that’s the context of my discussion.
I should preface that this is one of those subjects where you’re not going to get much agreement from person to person. Get 10 voice teachers in a room and there’ll be about 17 opinions on technique.
I would tend to say that while [ʌ] is modified slightly away from the dull “pure” sound, it still maintains a certain neutrality that I would still classify as [ʌ]. I can’t agree on the schwa. Like I said, schwas tend to be colored based on their particular context (schwa is more a concept than an exact vowel anyway*), but you cannot sing expressively and authentically in English without using the schwa. Consider what you would do with the word “little” with the second syllable elongated; what vowel would you suggest using there?
As for [a], I disagree quite emphatically, particularly in the case of Italian, French, and German. You simply can’t sing authentically in any of those languages without using [a] (that’s not to say that people don’t (and some very high level singers, too), but it grates on me when they do). There’s no reason for [a] to be “nasty” unless it’s spread, which is a deficiency of technique, not an aspect of the vowel.
Again, I disagree strongly (also on modifying vowels on the top, but that’s one of those voice teacher things that no one is going to agree on). [ɔ] features quite prominently in several languages. You can get away with not using it in Italian (although you’re Italian will suffer for it), but you really need it for French and German. You can’t make a distinction between “Wonn’” and “wohn” without using [ɔ]. (Lest you suggest using [ɒ] in “Wonn’”, I would ask what you would use for “wann”.)
And I would absolutely not use the same vowel for “code” and “cord”.
*To be clear, I’m referring specifically to the sound called “schwa” which is not necessarily the same thing as the “mid central vowel” although they use the same symbol.
[glawr-ee-uh in ek-sel-sis dey-oh, glohr-]
WTF?
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…zooombies eeeverywheeeeeeere…
In my Latin class years ago, we said Glo ree a een excell sis Day Oh
If only you had been a little quicker off the mark ten years ago.
Even zombies say it gloriah in exchellsis day-o.
Those are all bloody awful :mad:
The proper pronunciation is Ecks-chail-cease
An armada of annoying choir directors have continuously asserted that you can (and therefore should) get away with “eggshell-cease”, their reasoning being that the “ksch” sound you have to make between 1st and 2nd syllables is just too complex a consonant when you’re singing and has too many fricatives and sibilants so the choir will sound like a punctured innertube.
What makes them wrong is that no, it does not sound pretty much the same. You can tell that the damn choir is singing about freaking eggshells.
It’s sloppy singing.
Oh, and “sis” is just wrong for no reason. It’s cease, as in “cease and desist”, rhymes with piece and lease. And the middle vowel should be closer to the vowel in hail or pail than to hell or tell: chail, not chell.
Ya think? 
I totally read this as “zOOOOOOOOOmbies everywhere” and LOLd. Man, this thread has been revived quite a few times.
ZoooOooooOooooOoooooOoooooo-mBees. in X-L-seas-dehhh-O.
Merry Christmas!
Our Latin teacher could read , write and teach 11 languages and she didn’t say chelsis no chell with an h sound!
Well then she could not read write or teach medieval Latin apparently.