Re: would 'gn' for G-natural be useful in \language "english" ?

[Brian Barker]

At 07:20 29/08/2014 -0700, Knute Snortum wrote:
> English speakers (at least the ones in my part of America) will say 
> "cee" or "cee-natural" for the note C. The latter is to emphasis 
> that you are not speaking of another pitch like C-sharp.

Agreed.

> In the key of D, say, some people will say "cee" when they mean "cee-sharp".

I've heard that only very seldom, and I've always thought of it as a 
simple mistake.

> "cee-natural" shows you haven't made this mistake.

It shows something to a human reader, but the suggestion I was 
responding to is that it should show nothing to Lilypond - that "c" 
and "cn" should be synonymous.

> So it seems natural (!) that LilyPond would include this sort of emphasis.

Not at all.

> Writing "cs" (with \language "english" and \key d \major) is 
> confusing to newcomers -- as evidenced by the section in the 
> documentation under Accidentals.

That's certainly true. But I see that as a good reason *not* to 
include "cn" as a notation: it would not help accuracy or 
communication with the program and would encourage those newcomers to 
maintain their confusion. I remember the time early in my use of 
Lilypond that I typed something like "bn" in the key of, perhaps, F 
major - no doubt whilst imagining the necessary accidental in the 
output. I was initially confused that it was objected to by the 
program, wondering for a second or two what the code for "natural" 
had to be if it wasn't "n", but this experience forced me to remember 
(and learn) that I needed to be writing in Lilypond-speak, not in 
Music-speak. If I hadn't had that jolt, I would soon have been 
writing "b" when I meant (and needed) "bf".

> "cn" in LilyPond would be like speaking "cee-natural" -- it would 
> assure the reader that you really mean C-natural. The compiler would 
> just ignore it.

But the compiler is the only reader: there is no other! Well, that's 
true for my input files, anyway.

Brian Barker