Pedants' Paradise

[vinteuil]

... a free-for-all isn't necessarily a better way forward.

a) is any one proposing "a free-for-all... "? Not that I can see.


b) "... isn't necessarily a better way forward" - a better way forward than what?




.

[jean]

Than setting it in aspic, I suppose.

But in practIce, it can never be a free-for-all - speakers are constrained by the need to understand and be understood.

[vinteuil]

- speakers are constrained by the need to understand and be understood.

... aye, or mayhap understanded. "Understanded of the People" has a goodly twang....

[ahinton]

I was just about give the example I was seated,

Just add an organ bench in its customary position and all this would make me feel weary and ill at ease...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Than setting it in aspic, I suppose.

But in practIce, it can never be a free-for-all - speakers are constrained by the need to understand and be understood.

Tell that to Steph McGovern

[ahinton]

.... I like the Austen quote. It's almost like a "middle voice", neither active nor passive - didn't the Greeks have a middle voice?

I don't know but, at the risk of going temporarily off-topic, Busoni evidently thought that Richard Strauss had them all the time; he wrote in one of his many letters to his wife that, when composing, he "seems to write out the principal voices, then the principal middle voice, and afterwards cram everything that there is still room for in between".

As for "Bristol usage"... - well, discussion of that would almost certainly require a thread - nay, a forum(!) - all to itself! It has adapted the "i before e except after c" rule to "l after every vowel", me babby but, apart from noting that it must surely be the only such usage that detemines that its district known as "Knowle" be pronounced "gnaw", I'd better refrain from saying any more about that lest our illustrious FF Totterdown to 'Er'ford "bristling" with righteous indignation...

[french frank]

]apart from noting that it must surely be the only such usage that detemines that its district known as "Knowle" be pronounced "gnaw", I'd better refrain from saying any more about that lest our illustrious FF Totterdown to 'Er'ford "bristling" with righteous indignation...

Curiously, your comment about the local pronunciation of Knowle illustrates a phonetic point that I was going to make: that the (in)famous 'l' tacked on to the end of certain words is more usually, not an 'l' but a modification of the final to something more like 'aw' and then a sort of swallowing of the ending which non-residents 'hear' as 'Bristawl' but is a kind of diphthong, so Bristaw-oo, ideaw-oo, Victoriaw-oo Memoriaw-oo (the oo very short, a sort of something on the end which sounds 'l'-like). So Knowle which does have an 'l' at the end becomes Naw-oo). To my ears.

[jean]

That sounds remarkably like the Polish Ł.

[jean]

Thou beest is a dialect variant for thou art I believe...

Actually, it's the standard present subjunctive. I knew I'd seen it somewhere:

...If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true, and fair...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The West Country form of the verb "to be" is the most logical of all. Even Esperanto cannot claim to be much simpler:

mi estas
vi estas
li/si/gi estas

ni estas
vi estas
ili estas
etc.

[jean]

I thought it was correctness you were after, not simplicity!

As to the possibility of setting in aspic:

...Those who have been persuaded to think well of my design, require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in it without opposition. With this consequence I will confess that I flattered myself for a while; but now begin to fear that I have indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify. When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.

With this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength...

[vinteuil]

... no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability...

Nice to find such an Authority, in such a key text, quite happy to use "their" referring to a singular substantive.

Johnson - no Victorian he!

[french frank]

That sounds remarkably like the Polish Ł.

I was thinking that this morning and trying out 'Łukasz' - but does the ł ever come at the end of a word? A back l? I think people sometimes pronounce it without thinking about it in certain cases e.g. in a word like 'possible', as opposed to 'possibly'.

[jean]

Yes, it does - MICHAŁ is the Polish version of MICHAEL. I remember thinking it was pronounced exactly like Michael in the despised Estuary accent.

Less of an actual L than in (RP) possible, more of a W.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Polish pronunciation can be a minefield at first. I learnt some basic Polish when I was teaching a very shy daughter of a Polish doctor. At that time, the girl spoke no English.

However, my daughter-in-law is Cantonese.That's in a different league.