Talk:Linguavision Song Contest XVIII/@comment-5666680-20180204135357/@comment-5666680-20180204203119

There are several problems that I want to address.

Firstly, I would like to get a clarification on the rule considering number of allowed lines in English. As you know, the rule states: "Any nation who confirms with a song containing more than 15 lines of song in English will be asked to change their song. If they refuse, or neglect to respond, they will be disqualified, simple as that."

In the Linguavision Song Contest XVII Valkyria Confederation joined with a song Anti by Zico, which contains 18 lines in English. When I brought it up, I was told that one of the admins (Diamel) allowed the song into the contest, despite breaking the rule.



While this might seem strange at first, I took into consideration all the other possibilities that could lead to this song being excluded from the 15 lines rule (administration never provided the actual reasoning, so I took a look into all the possibilities).

1. The limit of English lines per song was changed from 15 to 18 or 20 lines, which would allow for this song to compete in the contest. However, that was obviously not the case, as Pustoyna's entry for Linguavision Song Contest XVIII, containing 17 lines in English, was not allowed for having too many lines in English. Same goes for Kiria's entry in Linguavision Song Contest XVII, containing 16 lines in English.



2. After asking for a clarification of the rule, I was told (by Diamel) that the song was accepted into the contest, because the rule was not enforced as strictly in Linguavision Song Contest XVII as it is in the 18th edition since administration "wouldn't care about additional 3 lines in English". However, that was not the case, as in the very same edition that the rule was not supposed to be enforced as strictly, Kiria's song was prohibited from entering for containing 16 lines in English, which is only one above the limit. That indicates that the rule was indeed enforced very strictly, as only one line too many could prevent your song from participating.



3. Another possibility could be the fact that according to Google Lyrics, 8 of the lines in the song are only-English, while 10 of them are mixed, containing both Korean and English. As there have never been any clarifications or further rules considering mixed language lines, I assumed that the mixed language lines don't count towards the limit, resulting in "Anti" having only 8 English lines and therefore being a valid song. However, that is not the case as proven by Kiria's entry in Linguavision Song Contest XVII. They originally joined with the song Miss U by Kim Na Young, but they got rejected for having 16 lines in English, despite only 4 of them being English-only and the rest being mixed Korean and English lines. The same could be said for Cambridge Republic's song in the 18th edition, although the number of full-on English lines really depends on how you count them or what you consider a line, so you could technically count up to 16 lines exclusively in English.



4. Another possibility could be in perception of what a line is. The original authors of the song usually don't provide the official lyrics to the song, leaving the process of breaking up the song into lines to different lyrics-providing websites. That makes it possible that the website you are using for counting the lyrics shows lines arranged differently or a different number of English lines than the website an admin is using. As far as I'm aware, no official website for observing lyrics has been decided, leaving the number of lines to free interpretation. Technically, one could find (or create) a website that recognizes the whole poem as one long line, resulting in all of the songs (even only-English ones) being viable for the contest.

Because I therefore can't rely on websites providing me an accurate number of English lines and there is no official website to do that, I assumed the lines would be counted by the definition of a line in classic poetry where a verse (a line) is defined as one line of  a written poem, followed and preceeded by a line break, usually consisting of a specific number and arrangment of units of rhythm. As most of the songs in Linguavision are not written (but rather sung) and many of them don't follow classic rhythm patterns and use a free verse (free line), that definition couldn't apply to this contest. So, some other (more modern) definitions define a line as a unit of a poem that represents one unit of speech that follows the rhythm of natural speech (for example, it's preceeded and followed by a pause in speech) and holds a rounded message, such as one clause. That definition could hold up and I've been using it to determine the number of lines in English, as it seems the most fair and objective way of arranging the lines.

5. Another option would be that it was all just a mistake that administration has done, as Arkmarken and Scones have pointed out. However, this seems unlikely, as Diamel knew about the number of English lines in the song as he had previously discussed it with Luka and I have even pointed out the problem in the comments, but got ignored. But even if it was only a mistake, the reprecussions taken after it don't match the procedure that was usually taken in similar situations.

In Linguavision Song Contest XIV Preasten and his nation Gallia joined the contest with Sophia Loren - Mambo Italiano, which is an English song, but they got accepted into the contest by mistake. Later on it was found out that the song is only English, followed by some controversial debates about how to punish Gallia.