Lower your voice, please

All sopranos, basses, and tenors, please move along.

This sign is in the parking lot of a local grocery store.

The sign on the opposite side of this intersection facing the oncoming traffic just says "STOP" with no vocal part clarification. So, I guess you can go in, but you can't get out without singing. In harmony.

Now, before you go and tell me I'm stoooopid 'cause alto means stop in Spanish, let me assure you that I already know that.

I took a couple of semesters of Spanish is college. I can read it OK and can usually at least figure out a little bit about what I'm reading.

I just don't speak it very often at all. Certainly not nearly as often as I visit this grocery store parking lot.

It just struck me funny, here is our little town where the majority of the general population doesn't understand what you are saying if you don't speak with a southern lowcountry drawl. Much less a foreign language.

Maybe the grocery store is trying to drum up business from the Taco Bell crowd. It is, after all, in the same parking lot. You can even hear the Bell's drive through associate repeating orders on the loud speaker as you walk from your car into the grocery store. Except, I don't think any of them speak spanish.

It also made me think, if alto is the Spanish word for stop, what is the Spanish word for alto (as in, the lower female voice part)?

Which also made me think, if you sing the lower female voice part in a lovely Spanish choir and the choir director wants you to stop singing, does he say, "Alto, alto!"?

If the director were speaking directly to me, he would probably say, "Alto loco."

To which I would say, "adios and hasta la vista, baby."


The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Psalm 19:1-3