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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2015 1:27:24 GMT -5
All active members are I am sure familiar with the conjugations of the irregular verbs in English. Mr. H, even, who makes so many superficial errors, does so from a curious excess of haste and not I presume from any grammatical ignorance. (He claims to have a pronoun problem but as we all know it is only feigned; were it not his bee would block his appreciation of the greatest literature.) Yet those who put together our dictionaries are less deserving of our praise. Yesterday I received a copy of the Collins German Unabridged Dictionary Eighth Edition, 2101 pages. The first word I looked up was the adjective "welk" which I noticed in the subtitles to a version of Parsifal. And there, as expected, it was: "wilted, faded, dead, fading, wilting, tired-looking, flaccid, withered" and so on. Exactly the same words, in fact, that appear in the Collins-Klett German-English Dictionary of 1983. (I could not compare the - possibly - larger Oxford-Harrap Standard German-English Dictionary because between 1963 and 1977 the publishers put only three volumes of the anticipated five out and got only as far as R! Perhaps its editor Mr. Jones expired or something of the kind.) So we passed the first test, although not very excitingly. The next word I looked up was "Wende", on the same page. Only the second word; and there we find a little blue box - such blue boxes constitute a much vaunted feature of this new edition - containing the following:
There will be no need to point out the real howler therein to our above-mentioned active members!
But how often, upon seeing an error of orthography or grammar like that do we not at once exclaim to ourselves: "there they are, the lower classes of England!" In this case I intend to write to all five editors and editresses. I dread what I may discover upon looking up a third or fourth word!
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Post by ahinton on Sept 22, 2015 2:59:34 GMT -5
All active members are I am sure familiar with the conjugations of the irregular verbs in English. "All active members"? How many people is that, pray?(!) Mr. H, even, who makes so many superficial errors, does so from a curious excess of haste and not I presume from any grammatical ignorance. Errors in what? I do not, of course, claim that my posts are free of errors and I openly admit that on too many occasions I have committed typographical ones (which I endeavour to correct as soon as I notice them or when my attention is drawn to them), but "so many superficial" ones? About how many such? Why does the question "what?" appear at the end of the thread title? What is the question being asked? "Why does the term "German-Pleb" appear in the thread title? I would have thought that the syllable following the hyphen here had got Andrew Mitchell into more than enough trouble to warrant its regurgitation here! (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebgate). Your reference to matters erroneous prompts me to ask what "ledding" might be?... He claims to have a pronoun problem "Having" - or "claiming to have" - a problem and identifying and drawing attention to the occurrence of one are by no means synonymous! For the record and for the avoidance of doubt, I make no such claim and have merely asked questions about one particular one; this, likewise, is not synonymous with having a problem therewith. In other words, the "problem" - insofar as it is one - is neither mine nor of my making. but as we all know it is only feigned Again, who are "we" and on what and whose authority and what grounds do you claim that a "problem" that I do not even have in the first place is "feigned"? - and for what reason do these other people (i.e. those covered by this "we") allegedly believe it to be so "feigned"? were it not his bee would block his appreciation of the greatest literature. I have never kept bees, being wisely content to leave bee-keeping to bee-keepers, just as I "keep" my unblocked appreciation of the greatest literature largely to myself; I do, however, very occasionally write for wood block in an orchestral score - something, incidentally, that Brahms never did. But how often, upon seeing an error of orthography or grammar like that do we not at once exclaim to ourselves: "there they are, the lower classes of England!" Do you mean how often does this once again unidentified "we" do this or how often does said "we" not do it (as you wrote)? As if it matters! Either way, I cannot imagine more than a very tiny handful of people - if indeed any at all - exclaiming thus in such circumstances! For one thing, there is no logical reason why anyone would declare "there they are" upon seeing orthographical or grammatical errors and mean anything by it other than "there they are, orthographical and/or grammatical errors". For another, why "England" in particular? For another again, the "classes" to which you ostensibly refer comprise people, not matters of orthography or grammar and, in any case, inventing such class strata and structures purely in a vain attempt to justify so absurd an exclamation was already so last century last century! I will refrain from commenting on the dictionary itself, not least because I have not seen it, but there is so much questionable material in your post that does not require prior sight of said lexicon in order to draw attention to it that I felt it incumbent upon me to do just that! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2015 2:44:53 GMT -5
The archbishop of Canterbury would be quick to stamp upon Mr. H's confusion of knowledge and belief would not he . . . "Check that unrestrained fellow!" he would cry; "put him on the course!"
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Post by ahinton on Sept 24, 2015 4:28:14 GMT -5
The archbishop of Canterbury would be quick to stamp upon Mr. H's confusion of knowledge and belief would not he . . . "Check that unrestrained fellow!" he would cry; "put him on the course!" I have no idea to what confusion or indeed what knowledge you refer here, nor what it might be that you contend is unrestrained or what course you think that Justin Welby might recommend me to go on or why (still less what degree I might obtain at the end of it); what my belief (of which you know nothing in any case) has to do with any of this is even more puzzling. Not uncharacteristically, you offer no clue as to your intent in raising any of this. I have even less idea why you choose to invoke Dr Welby in any case, especially as I do not know him and he almost certainly knows nothing of me. All that said, you hve also omitted to explain "ledding" and "German-Pleb", despite my questions about these. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2015 7:05:55 GMT -5
as we all know it is only feigned these other people believe it to be so "feigned"? Hold on tight Mr. H! |
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Post by ahinton on Sept 24, 2015 8:50:30 GMT -5
these other people believe it to be so "feigned"? Hold on tight Mr. H! To what and why? For the record and for the avoidance of doubt once again, I used the word "believe" in place of your "know" since, as I have no idea who the other people are who make up your "we" and it is most unlikely that any of them know me, there is not a shred of evidence of which I am aware in support of your "know", not least because I cannot in any case "feign" a problem that I do not have in the first place! There are times when your observations and the logic (or what purports to pass for it) that supposedly underlies them escapes me entirely and, on the assumption that your "we" is indicative of no more than "the other 11 (maximum) members of this forum" (of whom most do not even pass comment on what you write in any case), it might well likewise escape most if not all of theirs, too... |
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Post by ahinton on Sept 24, 2015 8:51:35 GMT -5
"Ledding"...
A Japanese wedding, perhaps?...
Seriously, explanations and answers to legitimate questions posed earlier in this thread are required here - but will they materialise? Somehow I doubt it...
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2015 5:41:47 GMT -5
... Seriously, explanations and answers to legitimate questions posed earlier in this thread are required here - but will they materialise? Somehow I doubt it... Stop doubting Mr. H - just reflect a little more, and you should certainly then understand everything of your own accord without the assistance for which your now so hopeless cries ring out. As things are we find it difficult to believe in the legitimacy of your so-called "legitimate questions". Is there in fact a difference between feigning and an abstinence from reflection? Here is one "clue": start with the first post of this thread and the error in the blue box. Do you in fact see the error? You have not yet said that you do, nor commented upon it and the ill-educated class who may have written it. It is the key to this thread. Tell us when you have found it and we shall then (and only then) be in a position to carry on. By the way there are two unintelligible words in your latest contribution to the art-music forum, namely "jut" and "cery". |
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Post by ahinton on Sept 27, 2015 12:12:50 GMT -5
... Seriously, explanations and answers to legitimate questions posed earlier in this thread are required here - but will they materialise? Somehow I doubt it... Stop doubting Mr. H - just reflect a little more, and you should certainly then understand everything of your own accord without the assistance for which your now so hopeless cries ring out. As things are we find it difficult to believe in the legitimacy of your so-called "legitimate questions". Is there in fact a difference between feigning and an abstinence from reflection? For one thing I do not cry out and, for another, my request for explanation would be hopeless only if the due answers thereto are not provided, which is not in any case my problem as it's not up to me to provide them. I cannot comment on your second sentence as I have no idea to what reflection on what issues you're talking about. Here is one "clue": start with the first post of this thread and the error in the blue box. Do you in fact see the error? You have not yet said that you do, nor commented upon it and the ill-educated class who may have written it. It is the key to this thread. Tell us when you have found it and we shall then (and only then) be in a position to carry on. By the way there are two unintelligible words in your latest contribution to the art-music forum, namely "jut" and "cery". "We" again! You seem once again to be attempting to bolster what passes for your arguments and assertions by invoking a kind of supportive plurality for the existence of which no evidence has been provided and this seems to typify the apparent motivation behind your use of that mythical and constantly unidentified (and doubtless unidentifiable) first person plural. I have commented on what I chose to comment on - no more, no less - as I believe I have a perfect right to do here as a forum member, even if to no avail (which in itself speaks for itself). I have checked the other forum and corrected the typos to which you kindly drew my attention and to my all too frequent accidental commissions of which I have already admitted; that said, I doubt that your imagination is so threadbare as to have left you incapable of guessing what would have been their correct presentation/s before the making of such corrections! |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2015 4:35:56 GMT -5
Stop doubting Mr. H - just reflect a little more . . . Is there in fact a difference between feigning and an abstinence from reflection? . . . I cannot comment . . . as I have no idea to what reflection on what issues you're talking about. Ho! Your own reflection upon the subject matter of this thread - namely the lamentable lower-class attempt at English in the blue box of the Collins German Dictionary! Come along, stop prevaricating - the membership is we are sure eager to hear what you (and indeed all our readers) really think. |
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Post by ahinton on Sept 28, 2015 7:55:58 GMT -5
. . . I cannot comment . . . as I have no idea to what reflection on what issues you're talking about. Ho! Your own reflection upon the subject matter of this thread - namely the lamentable lower-class attempt at English in the blue box of the Collins German Dictionary! Come along, stop prevaricating - the membership is we are sure eager to hear what you (and indeed all our readers) really think. Ah, so now you imply that the unidentified "we" is not, after all, the remainder of this forum's membership in writing "the membership is[,] we are sure[,] eager..." as though the membership and "we" are two different entities. Somehow I do not imagine that many people read this forum besides its tiny number of members. As mentioned previously, the questions that I have asked are not about the principal subject matter, namely errors in a lexicon but, since none has yet been answered in any case, I did not feel especially confident that any comments upon that subject matter that I might otherwise have made would have generated responses either. However, what I would say is that, whilst by no means defending orthographical or grammatical errors in a dictionary (of all places) or the editorial carelessness that allows them to slip through into its publication, I take issue (as indeed I have already done) with your question (or at least what I presume to be one despite the absence of a question mark) "But how often, upon seeing an error of orthography or grammar like that do we not at once exclaim to ourselves: "there they are, the lower classes of England!" Firstly, your habitual omission of any clue as to who "we" may be undermines the very purpose of asking the question in the first place (for if readers don't know who is/are being referred to, the nature and frequency of such exclamation (if any) can assume no conceivable relevance); secondly, your references to a "lamentable lower-class attempt" and to "the lower classes of England" are entirely inappropriate, irrelevant and indeed meaningless, esepecially coming as they do from someone who elsewhere appears to favour some kind of equality amoung humans and would accordingly not be expected to espouse such divisive notions of "class". I have admitted more than once to having committed typos which arguably originate from a carelessness not unakin to the one to which you draw attention in that dictionary; would you therefore regard my typos as likewise related to such "class"? |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2015 6:14:09 GMT -5
With what tædium do we read your repeated demands for "explanation" Mr. H! How far off the topic they are are they not! The plural of modesty was fully explained to you at least five years ago with this citation from Sweet, one of our most eminent and authoritative grammarians, but you feign now to have forgotten him completely and give us further streams of prevarication. And now consider this, about your familiarity with and comprehension of which doubts have by now frankly arisen in your readers minds: 1) The correct spelling of "nowadays" according to the O.E.D. is "now-a-days". 2) "In Germany". What about Austria, Switzerland and so on? Why are we not told? [ propaganda] 3) "The collapse lead to the dissolution" should read "The collapse led to the dissolution". (This is the worst error, the lower-class attempt at writing English.) 4) "East Germany". No such nation or entity ever existed. Perhaps the ill-educated writer is thinking of the German Democratic Republic. [ propaganda] 5) "dissolution" - we do not think so, and don't ask fatty Kohl. [ propaganda] |
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Post by ahinton on Sept 29, 2015 8:00:44 GMT -5
With what tædium do we read your repeated demands for "explanation" Mr. H! Still having no idea who "we" are, I cannot answer you un-question-marked question, for I have no idea what to tedium you refer (and, incidentally, my OED, whilst not current - it's the 1978 reprint - gives "tedium). How far off the topic they are are they not! What kind of sentence is that?! Anyway, since you ask (albeit once again without a question mark), they are not; they are, on the contrary, perfectly reasonable. The plural of modesty was fully explained to you at least five years ago with this citation from Sweet, one of our most eminent and authoritative grammarians, but you feign now to have forgotten him completely and give us further streams of prevarication. I "feign" nothing of the kind. I have indeed not recalled your reference to his from all those years ago but, now that you remind us of it (and by "us" I mean anyone reading this!) with the illustration above, I remind you that, as you must be referring to the English grammarian and philologist Henry Sweet, he died more than a century ago! I do not seek to undermine the value of his work at the time of its accomplishment but to point out that, as British English has changed in so very many ways since before WWI, your apparent reliance on an authority from so very long ago is puzzling indeed; OED (on which you also rely) must have added many thousands of words and no doubt also removed quite a few since the death of Sweet. Anyway, to deal with the Sweet extract that you post here, paragraph 2095 deals specifically with monarchs (Presumably British ones) and their authority; not only is this authority not precisely what it was in Sweet's day but also, more importantly, you are not and never have been - at least as far as I am aware - a British monarch and therefore your use of "we" cannot accord to the usage described by Sweet in this paragraph. His paragraph 2096 deals with the notion of the usage of the first person plural as a substitute for the first person singular, but even he writes that this particular usage is less frequent than formerly; I do not know the precise date of the work from which you quote - or even its title - but it must have been published at least 100 years ago and if such usage was deemed infrequent even then, the fact that it's long since disappeared from the linguistic map altogether (apart from jokes about "the royal we"!) surely speaks for itself. Sweet refers in this paragrpah to "myself and other authorities on the subject" as a likely origin of this usage; the problem with this is that it threatens to undermine the very principle of that "plural of modesty" by implying that the user of "we" actually knows and can prove - or is otherwise trying in any case to persaude his/her readers - that certain others whom he/she nevertheless declines to name are "authorities" on the subject of which he/she speaks/writes and that he/she is himself/herself an authority thereon - which sounds to me far more like arrogance than modesty! Anyway, I think that it has now been established beyond all reasonable doubt that your usage of "we" is reliant upon antediluvian traditions that have long since disappeared from common usage and usefulness. That said, at least you have finally clarified where you're coming from on this, so the the rest of us who read this undersand that your usage stems from pure archaism. And now consider this, about your familiarity with and comprehension of which doubts have by now frankly arisen in your readers minds: 1) The correct spelling of "nowadays" according to the O.E.D. is "now-a-days". According to my OED, the entry for it begins "Now freq. written without hyphens as one word" (I don't know what the current edition has). 2) "In Germany". What about Austria, Switzerland and so on? Why are we not told? [ propaganda] I have no idea why readers are not told. 3) "The collapse lead to the dissolution" should read "The collapse led to the dissolution". (This is the worst error, the lower-class attempt at writing English.) Of course it should read "led" (though not "ledding" as above!), but it's a typographical or other error which, whilst especially inappropriate in a dictionary, has, as I have stated, nothing to do with any such "class", to which your reference thereofe has no place in the discussion. 4) "East Germany". No such nation or entity ever existed. Perhaps the ill-educated writer is thinking of the German Democratic Republic. [ propaganda] I'm quite sure that GDR - or rather DDR (as in German) - was indeed being referred to here, but the terms "West Germany" and "East Germany" were in very common currency throughout the world for much of the time during which Germany was divided into two - see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany in which reference to "Wende" will incidentally be found. 5) "dissolution" - we do not think so, and don't ask fatty Kohl. [ propaganda] Again, I have no idea who "we" are but I have still less as what what any of them think did happen to GDR/DDR other than its dissolution, given that Germany reunified and GDR/DDR henceforward no longer existed; of course this was no simple matter (how indeed could it have been so after all the had happened to Germany as a whole as a direct consequence of its split?) but in any case asking Germany's former Chancellor Helmut Kohl (to whom I take you rudely to refer here) would not only be entirely unnecessary but also both presumptuous and intrusive given his current parlous state of health. |
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