The Beauty of English

[MillieDynamite]

I've listened to some recordings made of Johnathan Frid, Barnabus in Dark Shadows, where he did original material, some of Poe, other writers of the Macbra, and even Shakespeare. He was quite good, and I would have loved to have gone to one of his performances. He had a website, Fridaricuos something, and there were audio files you could listen to or down.

There's a beautiful graphic novel of that and some of Poe's other works. Punchdrunk did a wonderful immersive theatre experience of them - Masque of the Red Death - which was incredibly unnerving. Five hundred viewers all wearing witch-doctor masks, wandering past the pieces of action in near-silence, is unnerving enough to start with, but this made their Faust look positively cute and fluffy.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Pet peeve: how the classic British word 'poo' is losing ground to the American 'poop'. The only Brit allowed to yell about poop is Toad of Toad Hall.

Poop: a polite word for shit.
Poo: diminutive poop.
Pooh: a type of small bear that likes honey.

 

[MrPixel]

"Poo" is also what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used to describe the shit the Jan 6 visitors left on the walls.

(Not a political statement in any way, folks. Just something funny I saw on the news.)

 

[XerXesXu]

I just heard those in a rap song: "I'm walken proud and talken trash."

It's not a matter of pronunciation, but conjugation. 'Written' and 'eaten' live on in all English speaking countries, 'gotten' mostly in the USA, but 'walken', 'talken' 'speaken' even 'wroughten' seem to have dropped from hearing as the conjugation of a perfect tense.

PS: Ironically, I've just heard myself say 'sleepen' when talking to my son.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

Is it still defenestration if you're getting thrown out of an airplane window?

Prigozhin plane crash

 

[Rustyoznail]

Is it still defenestration if you're getting thrown out of an airplane window?

Prigozhin plane crash

After being hit by an AA missile doesn't count.

Back on track, Cliff Richard sang about a Walken talken living doll.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

After being hit by an AA missile doesn't count.

Back on track, Cliff Richard sang about a Walken talken living doll.

Nah, it's a walkin', talkin' living doll. The verb being used as an adjective.

Previous commenters were talking about 'walken' as a past participle, which would be "I have walken many miles". It's not a usage I'm familiar with. Old forms of adjectives with -en, yes (boughten, graven), but I don't know a UK dialect which uses -en on verbs.

 

[Bamagan]

Nah, it's a walkin', talkin' living doll. The verb being used as an adjective.

Previous commenters were talking about 'walken' as a past participle, which would be "I have walken many miles". It's not a usage I'm familiar with. Old forms of adjectives with -en, yes (boughten, graven), but I don't know a UK dialect which uses -en on verbs.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0y5ee2XEAASNZe.jpg

 

[SimonDoom]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C0y5ee2XEAASNZe.jpg

AKA Colonel Angus.

"Once a woman is introduced to Colonel Angus, she'll settle for nothing less."

 

[XerXesXu]

Nah, it's a walkin', talkin' living doll. The verb being used as an adjective.

Previous commenters were talking about 'walken' as a past participle, which would be "I have walken many miles". It's not a usage I'm familiar with. Old forms of adjectives with -en, yes (boughten, graven), but I don't know a UK dialect which uses -en on verbs.

written, eaten, taken, broken, forgotten, awaken, beaten, bitten, chosen, fallen, frozen, given, hidden, mistaken, proven, ridden, risen, shaken. Sound familiar?

Now being primed, I came across this in a story today: 'First-light ... would waken him if he ...' Tense? Voice? Mood?

At what point, in the chaotic evolution of language, does the absence of an irregular grammatical construction become a regularisation error?

 

[EmilyMiller]

The Beauty of English​

A perfect example:

https://assets.vogue.com/photos/64c3c73b135790a539ac205f/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/MicrosoftTeams-image.png

And another:

View attachment 2264448

Just one more (you can never have too many Emily’s in a thread IMO):

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/emily-blunt-cover-1543399109.jpg?crop=1.00xw:1.00xh;0,0&resize=768:*

I lied, one more (and Scottish but who’s keeping score):

https://live.staticflickr.com/5612/15112782334_1643c09447.jpg

That’s what you meant, right?

Em

 

[R. Richard]

I love English.

I especially love that there are no fussy "academie Francaise" type people gatekeeping the language. We can gleefully add in anything we want.

Plus many thngs we don't want.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

written, eaten, taken, broken, forgotten, awaken, beaten, bitten, chosen, fallen, frozen, given, hidden, mistaken, proven, ridden, risen, shaken. Sound familiar?

At what point, in the chaotic evolution of language, does the absence of an irregular grammatical construction become a regularisation error?

Around the switch from Middle to Early Modern English, it seems - -en was the regular ending for Germanic verbs (and still is, in modern German - walken means kneading, fulling, tossing about - and in middle English meant to toss and turn). I can't find any internet citations for walken in English since the loss of thorn as a character, ditto talken and sleepen as past participles - all Middle English, from Germanic. I'd love to know what dialect still uses them (or has in the last couple 100 years).

Why other verbs kept their 'strong' habits of vowel changes in the simple past and past participle (speak-spake/spoke-spoken) rather than adopting the weak 'just add ed/t' solution, I don't know, though the most common verbs and nouns were most likely to maintain Middle English conjugations. Maybe 'talk' and 'walk' were rarer than 'speak' or 'amble'? Shakespeare used talk'd but later adopted the modern talked, along with wider use of -s for plurals...

 

[XerXesXu]

. I'd love to know what dialect still uses them (or has in the last couple 100 years).

Where I come from - London.

And I remember 'boughten' only as an adjective to describe things one hadn't maken or baken oneself.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Where I come from - London.

And I remember 'boughten' only as an adjective to describe things one hadn't maken or baken oneself.

Which part? I'm surprised I've never noticeably encountered it, nor met the usage in writing - though that sentence does sound plausibly elderly Kent/Sussex...

 

[XerXesXu]

Which part? I'm surprised I've never noticeably encountered it, nor met the usage in writing - though that sentence does sound plausibly elderly Kent/Sussex...

Central.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's not a matter of pronunciation, but conjugation. 'Written' and 'eaten' live on in all English speaking countries, 'gotten' mostly in the USA, but 'walken', 'talken' 'speaken' even 'wroughten' seem to have dropped from hearing as the conjugation of a perfect tense.

PS: Ironically, I've just heard myself say 'sleepen' when talking to my son.

Christopher Walken, walkin'

 

[XerXesXu]

Christopher Walken, walkin'

Flyin'

 

[SimonDoom]

Now being primed, I came across this in a story today: 'First-light ... would waken him if he ...' Tense? Voice? Mood?

I'll give this a go:

1. Tense. We need more surrounding words and context to know the tense. It could be present or past.
2. Voice. Voice is active.
3. Mood. Mood is second conditional/subjunctive, a conditional that is less strong than first conditional. First conditional would be "First light will waken him if he cannot bear the sun." Second conditional would be "First light would waken him if he could not bear the sun." Both sentences could be inserted into a passage in present tense depending on the meaning desired.

What's your opinion?

 

[SimonDoom]

Poop: a polite word for shit.
Poo: diminutive poop.
Pooh: a type of small bear that likes honey.

One pot, two Poohs.

 

[XerXesXu]

I'll give this a go:

1. Tense. We need more surrounding words and context to know the tense. It could be present or past.
2. Voice. Voice is active.
3. Mood. Mood is second conditional/subjunctive, a conditional that is less strong than first conditional. First conditional would be "First light will waken him if he cannot bear the sun." Second conditional would be "First light would waken him if he could not bear the sun." Both sentences could be inserted into a passage in present tense depending on the meaning desired.

What's your opinion?

1. The aspect is continuing, so it's present tense.
2. He is being done unto, not doing, so passive voice.
3. Then it gets complicated. The 'if' makes it conditional, but

First light would waken him

can stand alone without any condition attached. 'Will' is a modal auxiliary verb of the future tense, by definition that excludes the subjunctive mood, which only operates, though not necessarily inflected, on counterfactuals in the present or past. Everything in the future is uncertain. 'Would' is modal, and the tense is present, so I would say it's in the subjunctive mood. It's something that may happen in the continuing aspect, the 'if' confirms that is so in the context as a whole.

 

[SimonDoom]

2. He is being done unto, not doing, so passive voice.

This isn't correct. Active voice is determined simply by subject + active verb + object. It doesn't matter whether the subject/object is a person or not.

E.g.

"The man felt fear" is active voice and "Fear was felt by the man" is passive voice, and

"Fear took the man" is active voice and "The man was taken by fear" is passive voice.

It doesn't matter whether the subject is a person or not.

E.g., in this example:

"First light would awaken him" is active voice, and

"He would be awakened by first light" is passive voice.

The tell-tale sign is the presence of the linking verb "be" in the second example. It's missing in the first example. The first example is a simple case of subject ("First light") + active verb phrase ("would awaken") + direct object ("him").

 

[XerXesXu]

This isn't correct. Active voice is determined simply by subject + active verb + object. It doesn't matter whether the subject/object is a person or not.

E.g.

"The man felt fear" is active voice and "Fear was felt by the man" is passive voice, and

"Fear took the man" is active voice and "The man was taken by fear" is passive voice.

It doesn't matter whether the subject is a person or not.

E.g., in this example:

"First light would awaken him" is active voice, and

"He would be awakened by first light" is passive voice.

The tell-tale sign is the presence of the linking verb "be" in the second example. It's missing in the first example. The first example is a simple case of subject ("First light") + active verb phrase ("would awaken") + direct object ("him").

'He would waken at first light' is active voice - it's he who wakens. 'First light would waken him': he's still the person who wakens, the agent, but he’s the object of the sentence, not the subject. Passive voice.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

'He would waken at first light' is active voice - it's he who wakens. 'First light would waken him': he's still the person who wakens, the agent, but he’s the object of the sentence, not the subject. Passive voice.

I think Simon's right - the light is the subject, active voice.

Compare 'I would waken him' vs 'he would waken at me' - different subjects, both active voice. To make it passive, you'd need to say 'he would be awakened at/by first light/me'.

 

[XerXesXu]

I think Simon's right - the light is the subject, active voice.

Compare 'I would waken him' vs 'he would waken at me' - different subjects, both active voice. To make it passive, you'd need to say 'he would be awakened at/by first light/me'.

The light doesn't 'waken', he does. Passive voice, since he's the grammatical agent but the object of the sentence.