You know the nuance, because you speak the language. Someone who speaks Italian might feel similarly about diminuendo and decrescendo. Personally (knowing no Italian), I always felt like diminuendo was more of an alright-slowly-become-quieter, whereas decrescendo was more of a you-need-to-be-become-less-loud-fairly-quickly. So, the decrescendo often undoes a crescendo and the diminuendo is more of a general trend over the next measures. But yeah, I am grasping at straws, since many composers will use them interchangeably (not least, because they may not speak Italian either).
But silent and quiet mean different things.
Silent is the absent of sound, quiet is the presence of sound at a low volume.
I was expecting a response like that. 🙃
You know the nuance, because you speak the language. Someone who speaks Italian might feel similarly about diminuendo and decrescendo. Personally (knowing no Italian), I always felt like diminuendo was more of an alright-slowly-become-quieter, whereas decrescendo was more of a you-need-to-be-become-less-loud-fairly-quickly. So, the decrescendo often undoes a crescendo and the diminuendo is more of a general trend over the next measures. But yeah, I am grasping at straws, since many composers will use them interchangeably (not least, because they may not speak Italian either).