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).
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).