Unfortunately, this post is not about me going to Napoli or Citivavecchia. But it is about music!
I had a clarinet lesson today, and come sempre, my teacher and I sightread some pieces. When I struggled to play a certain phrase that had triplets, he said: "You play like this: NA-PO-Li, NA-PO-LI." I laughed.
You see, I am accustomed to hearing in the States, "TRI-PL-ET, TRI-PL-ET." This is the little "trick" that the music teachers taught me to get the hang of the funky rhythm of this musical notation. So I found it funny that in Italy, they use a city to do the same. When I pointed that out (somehow in Italian) to my clarinet teacher, he laughed too and told me that to express quintuplet (5 notes), the Italians say, "CI-VI-TA-VEC-CHIA" (a major port near Rome).
Maybe we should do this in English, too. For triplets, we can say "BAL-TI-MORE, BAL-TI-MORE," and for quintuplets, we can say "PHIL-A-DEL-PHI-A."