Active and passive case

Latin Learning Latin
21

Help, Essorant!

I went to a bar last night and tried talking to some girls, using only correct English words like you suggest. But they seemed uncomfortable and wouldn’t give me their phone numbers, and the bartender called a cab for me when I wasn’t even ready to leave yet… I thought, “No worries, they’re just the ignorant masses,” so today I decided to go hear a visiting lecturer at my university. But when I asked a question in the Q&A time, he snickered and answered my question in a patronizing tone; I think he thought I was a bum who had wandered in off the street… And when everyone was mingling over wine and cheese afterwards, no one would talk to me!

So I’m starting to think that language might have a social dimension. I was so persuaded by your arguments about the correct meaning of words… But I’m afraid that the opinions of the 500 million English speakers who are alive today might make more of an impact than the opinions of people who lived before the Norman conquest… What should I do? :slight_smile:

22

Si haec invenire vis, OED eme. // Buy the OED for: frith, swelt, thester, douth, dwine, tharf, soothfast, behote, forlet, frover, blin, yare, yark, nesh, swike, kithe, fere, arist, swench, shalk, swime, tharms, swie.

Ibi autem haec non invenies. // You won’t, however, find these in it: tungle sibsome lichhame queam frood thind.

As for foreign words, English itself must qualify as a foreign language unless you spring from West Germanic stock, if you imagine linguistic purity exists somewhere.
Quoad barbarismos, si linguam puram ubicumquè exstare imaginaris, Anglicum ipsum pro omnibus non stirpis Germanicae Occidentalis lingua aliena vocandum est.

Salve Damoetas,
Triste nuntium, quod tu nec in cauponâ nec alibi vicisti. Obdura! Saltem unus vel una ê quingentis millionibus te demùm intelleget // Sad news about the bar and elsewhere. Keep trying! One at least of the 500 million will understand you eventually.

23

Use correct English. It is not disrespectful to people. What is disrespectful is they treating you that way for doing so or not conforming to their usage. If you need to conform to their language in order to be respected, it is they that are being disrespectful and extreme in their expectations. Using and encouraging correct English isn’t at all on the same level as mistreating people because they don’t conform to an erroneous usage that is among the majority .

24

Adriane


My main point was more about dictionaries in general. But I am imprest to hear those words are found in the OED.
I hope to take a closer look at that dictionary.



As for foreign words, English itself must qualify as a foreign language unless you spring from West Germanic stock, if you imagine linguistic purity exists somewhere

English is not foreign to English. The distinction is words of the dialect itself, such as father and soul, distinct from words that are not dialectically English, such as Latin pater and Greek psyche. Yea, English-speakers may use the Greek word psyche sometimes, but that doesn’t make it natively and dialectically English.

25

We are already talking about that here.

No one will be disrespectful to you for saying “muchel”, I think. Showing off and unfair criticism, however, can invite a lack of respect, if that’s what is communicated in a follow-up triggered by incomprehension. I’m over-educated in some regards but I love and respect all my friends, no less those who say of themselves that they are under-educated. They are equally intelligent, if not more so than I, in many ways. They often imagine that university degrees are a badge of superior intelligence. In that regard at least, I definitely know better. You are disparaging a majority opinion that says “nearer” is good English by judging English today against a standard of Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, despite understanding the word “nearer” and the reasons why people use it.

As for foreign words, you write like there is one dialect in English. There are many dialects in English today and there were in the past, and a good dictionary such as OED attempts to acknowledge them rather than promote only one.

You write as if antiquity and pedigree gives authority to words. I disagree. Usage gives authority, and usage is always relative to groups (Damoetas’s social dimension). Groups change and the authority changes in time. Believe that some Anglo Saxons were moaning about the introduction into their language of certain “foreign” words that we imagine today are “pure” Anglo Saxon because the historical record is imperfect. Linguistic purity and meaning are all relative—to groups that change in time and place, and groups within groups! New words are introduced into a language by and large because they are useful. When that happens, they are no longer foreign. They have linguistic citizenship!! Are you less Canadian if your distant ancestors weren’t born in Canada?

Nor is meaning even fixed within the group as regards vague matters, because individuals may interpret in their own way things by definition vague. And so very many things are indeed vague. Only an extreme, positivist academic would dare to teach that nothing is vague, and uncertainty itself a treatable pathology.

Adopt a relativist perspective when it’s time to evaluate where an absolute one has taken you.

Sic nos hîc jam perpendere intellege.

Vanitatis autem et reprehensionis iniquae indicia, quae confusionem sequentia se ostendunt, deprimenda sunt. Effusionem quarumdam doctrinarum habeo, sed omnes amicos amo honoroque, etiamsi sunt in numero qui dicunt se malè educatos esse. Pluribus modibus, isti aequi intellegentes quàm ego sunt, immò intellegentiores pluriés. Saepè credunt litteras graduum academicorum signa intellegentiae superioris esse. De hâc re, pro certo meliùs sapio. In anglico horum dierum contra consuetudines Anglo-Saxonum probando, quod pluribus bonum anglicum videtur detractas, et sensu nato et ratione usui benè quoquè conceptis.

Quoad vocabula peregrina, scribis sicut dialectos una in Anglico exstet. Sunt interim nunc sicut olim plures, et est boni dictionarii (illius OED, exempli gratiâ) eas omnes agnoscere, non unam solam promovere.

Scribis sicut creatur auctoritas vocabuli per aetatem antiquam atque stemmatem. Dissentio. Per usum creatur, et usus semper ê contextu sociale et proprio surgit, ê dimensione sociale apud Damoetan, ê gregibus. Mutant in tempore et greges et auctoritas. Crede praeter silentium chartarum historicarum ut Anglo-Saxones ipsi (quidam saltem) adventum barbarismorum complorabant,—imperfectae enim illae chartae. Integritas ac significatio sermonis res dependentes sunt,—ex gregibus qui per tempore et inter locis mutant dependentes, non minùs ex gregibus intra greges. Vocabula nova quià ferè utilia accipientur. Tunc aliena non ampliùs erunt. Paenè cives linguae fient!! Esne minùs Canadianus si atavi alibi nati sunt?

Necnon immobilis est significatio intra greges quoad res obscuras, cuius numerus certò permagnus est. Omnis singuli est suo proprio modo res obscuras apprehendere. Academicus intemperans et positivisticus solus qui audenter docet nihilum obscurum exstare et dubitationem dumtaxat querellam quae semper sanari potest esse.

Cum tempus est ut, conspectu absoluto secuto, locus in quo invenis sit aestimandus, relativisticum conspectum sumes.

26

You are disparaging a majority opinion that says “nearer” is good English by judging English today against a standard of Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, despite understanding the word “nearer” and the reasons why people use it.

Indeed, just as I judge that “more” is correct and “morer” is not. Not every usage or form is “born equal” and correct. The “equippment” of the language itself establishes such things regardless of how many people misuse the equippment.


As for foreign words, you write like there is one dialect in English. There are many dialects in English today and there were in the past, and a good dictionary such as OED attempts to acknowledge them rather than promote only one.

No, I don’t mean it doesn’t have other dialects. But I mean a dialect such as Latin is not one of those dialects. Latin is Latin not English and English is English, not Latin. English-speakers may use the Latin words labor and doctor and heaps of other Latin words, but those words are still not English anymore than you are I or I am you. English is its own language and words/forms distinct from those of other language. And that is a very important distinction that people are becoming more and more ignorant of these days. That is not linguistic purity, but just distinguishing one language from another, just as we distinguish one person from another.

I don’t have any problem with people using foreign words, but I do think there is a problem when they no longer make any distinction of those words being foreign, but ignorantly call everything and anything “English”. Yes, it is much easier to do, and the majority may do it, but that doesn’t make it right.




You write as if antiquity and pedigree gives authority to words. I disagree. Usage gives authority, and usage is always relative to groups (Damoetas’s social dimension). Groups change and the authority changes in time. Believe that some Anglo Saxons were moaning about the introduction into their language of certain “foreign” words that we imagine today are “pure” Anglo Saxon because the historical record is imperfect. Linguistic purity and meaning are all relative—to groups that change in time and place, and groups within groups! New words are introduced into a language by and large because they are useful. When that happens, they are no longer foreign. They have linguistic citizenship!! Are you less Canadian if your distant ancestors weren’t born in Canada?

I don’t mean antiquity and pedigree gives all the authority. But a language as old as English is one whose past determines it more than its present. English is over 1500 years old. Its past is the first and foremost part and what gave the largest contribution to the language, and established it long before we came along, therefore indeed, it does have much more authority than we do . We don’t get to use the language anyway we want to, for the language is already established by the strength of the ages behind it and that in fact is what keeps it strong. In comparison to what and how the past established the English language, and how people use “modern” against the past today, it is “modern” that is both the far less relevant and trustworthy aspect by which to judge by.

27

Do you see the racial implications in the things you say, Essorant? You seem to say that only words that come from the dialects of Angles, Saxons and Jutes may count as true English words today, but not words from anybody else.

Videsne eas res quas dicis substantialiter fontibus phyleticis seu stirpibus discriminare? Sola verba de dialectis Saxonum, Jutarum, Anglorum non illa aliorum nunc ut vera anglica numeras, id mihi videtur.

28

Do you see the racial implications in the things you say, Essorant? You seem to say that only words that come from the dialects of Angles, Saxons and Jutes may count as true English words today, but not words from anybody else.

If you are part of a family/race, you are nevertheless still yourself, Adriane, not your mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, cousins, etc. That is the point I am making about English. English is a member too, distinct from other members such as Latin, Greek, etc, even though it belongs to the same “family”

29

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Origins_of_English_PieChart.svg

30

Due to cross fertilisation, Modern English is not as distinct as was Old English 1100 years ago.
Confusionis specierum causâ inter linguas, non tam distinctum hodie quàm erat abhinc annos milia centum est Anglicum.

31

Sometimes I think there are too many foreign words, but I think the lack of discrimination between the native words and the foreign words is what makes makes for a much worse lack of distinction. How may the average English speaker today respect the word soul as English and psyche as Greek, when they are indiscriminately presented as one and the same "English? Even those that know better usually don’t direct English-speakers to make such a distinction. The dictionaries are called “English” but include words as foreign as yin and yang. Therefore there is almost nothing that encourages the distinction or prevents people from more and more treating words even as foreign as yin and yang as if they are “English”.

32

I imagine it’s because they don’t agree with you.
Non tecum concurrunt, ut imaginor.

So you didn’t like my suggestion that naturalization is a process that applies to words as it does to people?
Nonnè amavisti quod de donatione civitatis tam vocabulis quàm populis pertinente suggessi?

33

But WHY is it important to keep the words distinct? Why is it important to distinguish one language from another?

What do you mean “we don’t get to use the language any way we want to” – who is going to stop us? How do the ancient Anglo-Saxons have “authority” over us? Is it some kind of moral authority that “ought to” restrain us?

And what does it mean for a language to be “strong”? Can you give some examples of strong and weak languages?

34

I am definitely not one of them, but I believe that there are many in this forum, Damoetas, who, while not agreeing with Essorant as regards English, would be more likely to agree if he substituted the word Latin for English, and Classical Romans for Anglo-Saxons.
Ego insisto me non in numero eorum esse, sed sunt multi, credo, in hoc foro, Damoeta, qui cum Essorant dissentiunt quoad opiniones de linguâ Anglicâ etsi libentiùs consentiant si Latinum pro Anglico et Romani Aevi Classici pro Anglo-Saxonibus substituentur.

35

Adriane,

So you didn’t like my suggestion that naturalization is a process that applies to words as it does to people?

No, because it suggests that words/forms of any language may be English, which is not true. For English’s own are what make English special and distinct from other languages. The English language is “English” specifically because it has soul as its own word/form distinct from Greek’s psyche and Latin’s anima, ghost as its own distinct from Greek’s pneuma and Latin’s spiritus, work as its own distinct from Greek’s ergon and Latin’s opus, etc in conjunction with distinguishing sounds, syllables, grammar, etc. People from any country may become Canadian because Canadianness isn’t inherently “planted” in just a specific group. But linguistic Englishness however is inherently planted in only a specific dialectic group of words/forms that have distinct shapes, sounds, grammar and etymology, differentiating them from words of other languages. Father is inherently English and distinct from the cognate pater. The special sound-differences such as f instead of p and th instead t are characterizing aspects that distinguish this word as being of a different language from pater. For a word such as psyche we don’t even need to go further than the ps- which is a sound combination that no English word begins with . Even the average numbers of syllables in words distinguish English to some extent. Unless a compound no English word usually exceeds three or four syllables, while exceeding that many syllables is commonplace in Latin and Greek. Even the letters or letter-groups that words begin with have distinguishing aspects. Beyond some dialectal deviants in English itself (vane, vat, vixen, jowl) no English word begins with j, v, x, or z. Also no English word begins with sk/sc for that sound became sh in English. Prefixes, suffixes, certain manners of making compounds, relations between words (doom/deem, moot/meet, God/giddy etc) are also distinguishing. All these things are not just Indo-European, and not just Germanic, but a special combination that is English and sets apart only English words as being dialectically English, not words of other languages.

36

Salve Essorant

Surely British doctors foreign-trained in medicine perform very skillfully. Similarly, practitioners just British-trained cure people quite effectively. Equally, take different students getting university degrees,—imagine nursing, dentistry, literature, journalism, science, engineering subject areas.

Am I writing English when I avoid words of unique Anglo-Saxon origin? Do words of Anglo-Saxon origin stop being English in the plural, with a “French” -s?
Scribone anglicé in vocabulis originis Anglo-Saxonicae solae fugiendis? Pluraliter per “-s” terminationem “gallicam”, consistuntne vocabula originis Anglo-Saxonicae in sermone Anglico esse?

37

Also, I know that the word doctor is a fully naturalized English word and no longer a Latin word because it obeys English laws, with a plural “doctors”, and regular verb form “to doctor” and an English adjective “doctorly”. It belongs now to the English language.

Etiam, anglicè “doctor” vocabulum donationem civitatis anglicae plenè accipisse scio, non jam latinum esse, quià legibus anglicis paret. Nec “doctores” pluraliter, nec “docere” verbum, nec “doctus” adjectivum anglicè dicimus. Ad linguam anglicam id nunc attinet.

Actually, Essorant, I wouldn’t worry about the number of foreign words in English diluting its unique identity as a language. No matter how many new words are introduced, the really important words remain characteristically English. In the real world, who wants to write English by avoiding words of Old English origin when they are so centrally important? http://www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/wordfrom/revisedcoed11/?view=uk

P.S. I read in Steven Pinker’s Language Instinct (p.259) that linguists estimate that the characteristic traces of any language endure 10000 years at most.

Verum dicere, Essorant, numeri vocabulorum peregrinorum in linguâ anglicâ non tibi cura sit. Neque jacturam naturae linguae lugeas. Non refert quotcunque peregrina addantur, restant vocabula maximi momenti unicè anglica. Quis vocabula originis Anglicae Antiquae omittens utiliter anglicè scribat, cùm tàm necessaria illa vocabula?

Post scriptum. Apud Stephanum Pinker (The Language Instinct, p.259) legi ut linguistae vestigia cujus linguae propria decem milia annos non plus durare aestimant.

38

I’m not a linguist so apologies in advance to anyone who is.

I was thinking again about your gripe with “nearer” as incorrect English, Essorant. I read that the use of “near” as a positive in places in Old English indicates the influence of Danish Old Norse but I want to propose something more strange, just for the fun of it and precisely because I know so little about it.

As an Irish person saying “nearer”, I pronounce both r’s pretty clearly but a South-Eastern (Kentish) English person practically loses the final r. Similarly, many South-Eastern English people pronounce “near” as “neah’”, so you have “near”, “nearer”, “nearest” pronounced as “neah (as a single long syllable)”, “neareh” (but now with “ea” as a short sound), “nearest” (again with “ea” as a short sound). Is it just me or is that not pretty close to Anglo-Saxon “neáh”, “neárre”, “nýhst/néhst”?

Now, is it possible that the progression pos. → comp. → super. to the ear is single syllable → two syllables → two syllables, with the result that the words ner → nerrer → nerrest in Middle English is a good way of ensuring orthographically that the extra syllable in preserved in a Kentish accent, while being consistent with the regular terminal -r (the addition of “-or”) in comparatives in OE? It shouldn’t be equated with making a mistake like “better” and “betterer” or “more” and “morer”.

I read that there are Old English variations in spelling “neárre”, “neár”, “nyr” for Modern English “nearer”. But there are variations between Anglo-Saxon dialects, aren’t there? I wonder, is “nyr” (nearer), "fyr (further) a more northerly dialect spelling and “neárre”/“fyrre” a more Southerly spelling?

Linguista non sum, ità cuicunque sic est ab initio aio, me excuses.

Denuò, Essorant, quaestionem tuam de gradu comparativo cum “near” anglicé pondero. “Near” sicut adverbium positivum quidem in anglico antiquo nonnumquàm invenitur, ut legi, quod indicat linguae danorum effectus. Ego autem aliam explicationem proponere volo, pro deliciis et pro illâ ratione ut verè tam paululum de hâc re scio.

Ego hibernicus in “nearer” dicendo ambas “r” liiteras clarè sono. Quidam de regione Angliae australe et oriente, Cantia enim, aliter sonat, secundam r litteram omittens. Me rogo utrum r terminans in orthographiam “nearer” adverbii anglicam non soloecismum signficet, sub affectu linguae nordicae antiquae danorum, sed ostentui sit ne secunda syllaba aboriatur (si verè in duabus syllabis “neárre” seu “neár” consistit), dum simul sic faciens id ad casus comparativos per “or” congruat.

39

You have very peculiar views about language. I think it is vital to understand that language is completely fluid, and that it is not reducable into discreet units.

I’m very interested in knowing your answers to the following questions: what is the difference between a language and a dialect? What is the “most English” dialect, and why is that the case? Also, at what point is the English language born (i.e., when do other German languages become English, where is the point of separation)? If I speak a dialect of English that for some reason uses p’s instead of f’s, or t’s instead of th’s, am I still speaking English? What if I’m speaking a dialect of English that you can hardly understand (or is this a different language?), or what if you understand me perfectly, but I use a number of “unenglish” phonemes? What if you’re speaking what you consider to be pure English and the average educated American/Englishman etc. can’t understand you? Or is communication incidental to language?

Sententiae tuae de linguis mirae inassuetaeque mihi visae sunt. Ut cogito ego, necesse est intellegas linguam ipsam fluidam esse et ne discretas in partis dividi posse.

Valde me interest scire quomodo te has quaestiones resoluturum: quid inter linguam dialectumque interest? Quae dialectus “Anglicissima” tibi videtur? Quando nata est lingua Anglica (i.e., quando variae linguae Germanicae in Anglicam se mutaverunt? Ubi est discrimen?) Si dialecto Anglici quadam loquor quae litteram P in loco litterae F (vel T pro TH) adhibet, estne haec dialectus Anglica? Quod si aliqua Anglici dialecto loquor quam tu vix intellegis (estne haec Anglica vel alia lingua)? Quod si facile me intellegis, sed sonos quosdam haud “Anglicos” loquente eicio? Quod si castissime rectissimeque (sic tu arbitras) Anglice loqueris, aliqui autem homo mediocris et e togatorum numero te non intellegit? Estne communicatio ipsa linguis nihilo?

40

Damoetus

But WHY is it important to keep the words distinct? Why is it important to distinguish one language from another?
[…]
And what does it mean for a language to be “strong”? Can you give some examples of strong and weak languages?

The importance and the strength are the truth. The truth is that they are not one and the same language’s words and therefore shouldn’t be treated as if they are. A further importance is that words of a particular language have many correspondances and connections with each other that they don’t have with those of other languages. The more intimate we are with one language and keep it distinct from another the more we are able to keep in touch and understand the language’s words and in doing so use the language better and stronglier. For example, the average English speaker clearly understands what the word careful means for he has familiarity with care and full. But in a latinish word such as accurate he has no or little clue or interpretation whatsoever of the ad and cura that go into the word. For many even the equi- and nox in equinox don’t mean anything. They may only mechanically memorize such words as wholes, for they have no intimacy with the parts that make them up. They don’t have knowledge of “canis” being a dog, but mechanically memorize canine as being a dog-oriented adjective. This just confirms how foreign and distant such words shall always be. The reason they don’t have intimacy with the parts that make up these words is because the words belong to a different language, a language that that has those parts and a language that most English speakers don’t know and never will know.

What do you mean “we don’t get to use the language any way we want to” – who is going to stop us? How do the ancient Anglo-Saxons have “authority” over us?

A language is a collaborative monument of many ages. When people long began a great artwork it is only due that you should respect how it stands before you and preserve it and even restore ut where possible, and also contribute to it. When you approach the work of many ages before you, it is a disgrace if you will put only your own one self and your own one age over the authorship and art established by many people and many ages of the past, without which you wouldn’t have the age-cultivated language you speak let alone to try to give over only into the authority of only your own self and your own age and pretend the past doesn’t count anymore. The past has more authority because it established the language much before and much more than the present .