When you listen to brilliant J.S. Bach cantatas in Latin or Samuel Barber's achingly sweet “Adagio for Strings,” it's hard to argue that music is anything less than a universal language. These pieces and hundreds like them automatically evoke triumph, sorrow and exultant joy. In a great boon to humankind, much of this music is available to almost anyone through modern music notation and audio recording.

Getting down to the notes and bolts of music and language, however, is a different story. Most American musicians with a few years of training can easily explain what mezzo forte means (medium volume). They might also know more erudite terms such as rubato (to rob from adjacent notes) or stringendo (play near the bridge). Tell these accomplished minstrels to put an accent on a hemidemisemiquaver, though, and you'll likely be met with giggles and confused faces. Surprisingly, all this eight-syllable British befuddlement of a word means is sixty-fourth note. In other languages, you say semibiscroma, semifusa or quadruple-croche to indicate one sixty-fourth of a beat. These terms are from Italian, Portuguese and French, respectively.

Similar verbal confusion comes with notes that are more common. To say quarter note in Portuguese, for example, the term is seminima. In the Queen's English, it's crotchet. In French, you say noire.

Fortunately, most musical notation software isn't picky about whether you call a sixteenth note a semiquaver (British), semicorchea (Spanish) or sechzehntelnote (Dutch). With top-tier composition software, you can create sheet music or digital music that is truly universal. That doesn't stop many top performers from hauling around music language dictionaries, however. Below is a short list of our favorite arcane musical-notation terms.

• Angel's Voice: The very high, ethereal tones created when the overtones of complementary notes sound simultaneously and overlap perfectly. This ringing effect is most common in choral music performed in cathedrals, where high dome ceilings create a perfect acoustic environment for harmonic reverbration.
• Bergamasa: A country dance that was popular during the European renaissance. One of these is featured in William Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream.”
• Bratsche: German for viola, this instrument slightly larger and slightly lower in pitch than a violin.
• Hemiola: When an entire choral ensemble moves from a 6/8 time signature to one that feels like 3/4 time for a single bar. This technique is used to glorious effect in classical masterpieces such as "And the Glory of the Lord" from George Frederic Handel's Messiah.
• Pesante: An instruction to perform a passage like a peasant would, in an intense, ponderous fashion. Our favorite piece that features this technique is the country-wedding portion of Bedrich Smetana's “The Moldeau.”
• Raddolcendo: Instructions to play a particular passage more and more quietly with increased gentleness and sweetness.
• Saltando: A command to play in skips or leaps by bouncing a horsehair bow across the strings of an orchestral string instrument such as violin, cello or viola.
• Tattoo: A bugle call with military origins that’s often played at lights out; it uses only the notes of a major triad.
• Znamenniy: A Russian liturgical chant developed during the Baroque era, from 1600 to 1750 C.E. (Common Era).

Whether you're rockin' to Led Zeppelin or using music notation software to create your own arrangements for a church choir, you know that the way music makes people feel has little to do with verbal language. Instead, it's about evoking and informing emotions and imposing intent on the noises that make up our everyday lives. Just remember that a 64th note, which the English call a hemidemisemiquaver, by any other name would sound as sweet. Music and language certainly aren't synonymous, but you can't create and share beautiful tunes with world musicians unless you understand some basic, and sometimes slightly bizarre, differences in terminology.

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