Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 February 13

= February 13 =

Reading Old English
Are the majority of native English speakers able to read (and largely understand) the Middle English and Early Modern English literature, eg. Chaucer? Assuming an average, but more or less knowledgeable layman. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 08:45, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * As a native English English speaker, I'd say no for Middle. On the whole, yes for Early Modern, although the later the better. The articles you linked to, plus Wikipedia's Middle English site, give some good examples of what both are really like. Bazza (talk) 10:27, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You linked to the Old English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) Wikipedia there, Bazza; we don't have a Middle English one. As for the comprehensibility of Middle English bear in mind that it comes in different regional dialects, some of which are much harder for the Modern English-speaker than others.  Chaucer's dialect was a more-or-less direct ancestor of modern Standard English, and though students reading Chaucer have to use texts in which half the words are glossed it doesn't take long for them to get some familiarity with the language and read it more easily.  On the other hand Chaucer's contemporary the Pearl Poet wrote in a north-west Midland dialect which is a good deal tougher.  Also, Middle English was spoken for about 400 years and the earlier versions are more difficult than the later ones. Layamon (c. 1200) is even harder than the Pearl Poet (late 14th century). --Antiquary (talk) 11:40, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Oops. Sorry about that. I've removed the relevant text from my comment. Bazza (talk) 17:48, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I've just carefully subtracted 1150 from 1450 on my fingers and it turns out Middle English was spoken for 300 years. I'm getting old. --Antiquary (talk) 12:08, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

I took AP (college credit) English as a senior in high school, had had four years of French and German, and got into an Ivy League school on a full-paid scholarship. I found that I could get the gist of the introduction to the Canterbury tales, but only actually comprehend it with glosses provided for words and usages that have become obsolete or radically changed meaning or spelling. So, if the question is about the average speaker, the answer is a round no.

Even writing as recent as Oscar Wilde will be too much for an average HS graduate without a good background in literature. Proficiency in modern spoken colloquial American English alone will get only you back as far as the talkies, if that far. Now in the second half of my first century, I find that I have to ask for a lot of current slang to be explained, even though I was fluent in the jive spoken in 2001. μηδείς (talk) 17:07, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It's also important to remember that much of language is social context; unless one is familiar with the millieu where a word or phrase comes from, it is hard to internalize its meaning, even if one can intellectually understand its origin. A Chaucer-era farmer may well understand words related to the use of farm implements, but may find concepts such as vlogs or electric automobiles to be utterly perplexing, and the same is true in reverse.  The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  -- Jayron 32 17:26, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, listening to my weed-dealer neighbor talk to his girlfriend about music, drug slang, smart phones, social media, apps, games, TV shows and so forth is totally alien to me. I had someone ask to borrow $5 for a "sub" which I took to mean they were going to buy a sandwich when they meant an opioid suboxone pill! From the Age of Aquarius to the Age of the Opiate Crisis. And I thought methadone was so 70's! μηδείς (talk) 18:01, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah now over here in the UK, a "sub" is an advance or a loan on your paycheck, so if you ran out of money halfway through the month you used to be able to ask your employer for a "sub" to be taken from your salary on payday. Not just an example of modern vs modern English, but also US vs drug dealers slang vs UK English! --TammyMoet (talk) 14:54, 14 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Another personal UK perspective is that Chaucer's General Prologue and Wife of Bath's Tale were on our A Level English syllabus, which at first sight (aged 16) seemed unintelligible, but after learning to sound the words out phonetically and with the aid of a glossary for completely obsolete words, had the hang of it by the end of the first lesson. I later read Thomas Malory (about a century later than Chaucer) unassisted. Alansplodge (talk) 11:28, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Forming the perfect aspect in English without using "to have."
Hello, again!

As of late, I've been copiously reading the style guides of usage commentator Edward Good, and particularly his curious doctrine of "swatting bes." Sc., he argues—quite convincingly—that one can produce a cleaner, more fluent writing style by substituting different copulative verbs, for to be, either with a predicate adjective, or when using either the progressive aspect or the passive voice.

e.g.

This has now got me wondering: Is there a verb (besides "to have") that one can use when expressing the perfect aspect? In my humble opinion, using too many instances of the same verb at once—especially when writing a periphrastic form of "must"—produces a somewhat drudgerous writing style.

e.g. "I had had to have chocolate." Unlike, for instance, Spanish and Portuguese, English has only one verb (as far as I know) to express possession, completion, and (except in the present indicative) obligation. I'm curious, however: Do I err? Just as there are other verbs that somebody can substitute for "to be" in creating compound tenses, is there any verb that he can use in place of "to have"?

e.g.

Thank you. Pine (talk) 11:01, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Until early modern English, the perfect with "to be" was used for intransitives, and still is in archaic and set phrases, like "the time is come" and "Christ is risen". We don't cover this well, apparently, but see Perfect_(grammar) μηδείς (talk) 02:53, 15 February 2018 (UTC)


 * The OP might be interested in the article on the conlang E-Prime. It's a rather simple idea: E-Prime is a constructed language which resembles English in every way execept one: there is no verb "to be" or any of its forms.  There are linguistic, artistic, and philosophical reasons for using such a construct.  Reading it may lead the OP to interesting places.  Regarding the perfect in English and the use of "have", see Perfect (grammar) which would seem to imply "no" regarding the main question.  -- Jayron 32 16:57, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Jayron32 -- I'm sure that some people find E-Prime to be an interesting exercise in self-discipline, but it's also one of those ideas which non-linguists come up with that has very little interest or usefulness in the eyes of linguists (some others are Basic English, the ban on ending sentences with prepositions etc. etc.). You could predict that would be the case from its General Semantics background (the vast majority of scholars in the academic fields that General Semantics impinges on see very little point to it)... AnonMoos (talk) 18:44, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Like I said, it has artistic and philosophical applications as well; the notion of a ban on expressions of existance raises some interesting epistemological concepts regarding how language can be tied to knowledge; we say things are, but when our only interaction with the world is perception, (i.e. we cannot say "the apple is red", we can only say the "the apple looks red", because my experience is what I am expressing, not actual existence) then should we not also have language that represents that lack of real knowledge of actual existence? I'm not saying that's how we should think of the world, but it is a valid and well trodden philosophical school of thought, and the language is an interesting way to explore that limitation on human experience.  As with any conlang, it's useless and dead; to live is to evolve, and living languages are always evolving languages.  -- Jayron 32 19:04, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * No doubt the novel Gadsby also has some minor interest to literary critics, while from the point of view of the scientific study of language it's pretty much just an isolated flamboyant stunt... AnonMoos (talk)


 * It's a different sort of thing entirely, though. The arbitrary decision to write a novel without the use of a letter (which itself carries no inherent meaning) is quite different from the philosophical implications of a language which does not have ways to represent states of existence.  Since language, in many ways, shapes perception, the philosophy here is far more interesting than the literary or linguistic concerns.  -- Jayron 32 19:19, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I think each of your three examples, the meaning is significantly changed by replacing the auxiliary verb with a full verb. As a mechanical exercise in punching up an essay, it seems as inadvisable as the C-student's technique of replacing every third word with a synonym from a thesaurus. The past tense of "must" is "must", but this is rather literary. If you insist on avoiding "have" with a past participle, you could say "That's ten miles run by me today." It sounds rather Yorkshire English to me. Or the Hiberno-English "I'm after running ten miles". jnestorius(talk) 00:53, 14 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, you can avoid "have", but you'll have to use some auxiliary words instead. For example:
 * Instead of "I have done it", use "I already did it", or: "I did it already" (but "I have already done it" is more usual than "I already did it", mainly in British English).
 * Instead of "I hadn't known", use "I didn't know yet" (but "I hadn't known yet" is more recommended than "I didn't know yet", mainly if you want to use British English).
 * Additionally, American English speakers tend to use the word "never" as something that includes also the perfect aspect, so they may tend to avoid "have" when using "never", e.g. "I never was", meaning "I have never been" (In British English, however, use "I have never been").
 * HOTmag (talk) 09:10, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

OED for phrases
Is there a resource, academic or amateur, that attempts to trace the first use and developing meaning of (English language) phrases? The OED does it for words, of course, and it's long been a game to try to find antecedents for their etymologies. Yesterday I heard the cynical phrase "Deputy heads will roll", with the implication that one BBC functionary originated it recently. A minute with Dr Google suggests otherwise. Some phrases are ancient ("when my ship comes in"), some are catchphrases ("Where's the beef?"), but they enter our language and linger. Wikipedia is, no surprise, stronger on the pop-latter than the folk-former. Where might I find some approximation of the truth? Carbon Caryatid (talk) 15:14, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * There's The Phrase Finder. DuncanHill (talk) 15:20, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Most such things should be in either The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, or The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying and Quotation. Wymspen (talk) 16:26, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * There's also Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 21:17, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Some other books to look out for: Eric Partridge A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Nigel Rees A Word in Your Shell-Like, The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, and for that matter the OED itself which does deal with the commonest phrases as well as individual words. --Antiquary (talk) 21:26, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The OED itself does contain a fair sprinkling of phrases; e.g. from my Word-of-the-day archives: "much ado about nothing" is sv "ado"; "to scream (also cry, yell, etc.) blue murder" sv "blue murder"; "King of the Ribalds" sv "ribald"; "a Roland for an Oliver" sv "Roland"; "to put the tin hat on something" sv "tin hat". jnestorius(talk) 00:34, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * And finally (perhaps), all of these resources added together won't give you anything like the same coverage of phrases as the OED gives you of words. Sometimes if you want to trace their history you just have to go over to Google Books and do it yourself. --Antiquary (talk) 10:49, 15 February 2018 (UTC)