Power of Babel
Why is saying "you was serious?" more correct than saying "you were serious"?
The "original" English had a regular past conjugation, where saying I was, you was, and he was were singular, while saying we were, y'all were, and they were were for plural.
The confusion over you arose from the fact that the original singular for you was thou.
Analogous to Spanish adoption of "Ustedes" as a formal way of addressing a group of people instead of "Vosotros" and French adoption of "vous", so English abolished "thou" forever from the language.
Thereafter, "you were" was codified into written English, but "you was" is still heard between some people.
Reading Power of Babel (p. 230)
I have to say I like the book. It was good, if a bit technical in time, but it had humor. I could understand when he referred to Ross saying "We were on a break!", which is among the many cultural references than the "average Americans" would understand. There's a reference to the Simpsons' character Moe, who always pronounce "Shaddap" and "What?" (sounds like rat).
It's so beautiful to say that French could not exist without Latin, but French didn't exist at the time that Latin did. I read about "de de intus" transforming itself into French "Dans" (sounds like DONG, with NG the usual French nasal sound) for "in."
From why French use c'est instead of simply est to why English puts "not" after the verb and not before (as in "we do not want" instead of "we not want", which leads us to using "we don't want" to put "not" back into preceding the verb). The explanation is that English originally had "ne", while "not" came from "nothing", which existed as "nought". We used to say "We ne want naught a bread" as in "We don't want nothing a bread" (double negative used to be widely accepted). Now, nought is not used, except in some British dialects and in "for naught".
What amazes me is—I think I mentioned this before—how ASL uses nothing. When we want to say that I didn't hit the boy, we would sign, "BOY I HIT? NOTHING". Trying to put an English structure into ASL would be signing, "I NOT HIT FINISH BOY. "FINISH" is intended as a past particple, but falls flat in direct translation, and is ambiguous: The speaker could be implying that he wasn't finished hitting the boy. You can say "I NOT HIT BOY", but nothing is more fun.
The "original" English had a regular past conjugation, where saying I was, you was, and he was were singular, while saying we were, y'all were, and they were were for plural.
The confusion over you arose from the fact that the original singular for you was thou.
Analogous to Spanish adoption of "Ustedes" as a formal way of addressing a group of people instead of "Vosotros" and French adoption of "vous", so English abolished "thou" forever from the language.
Thereafter, "you were" was codified into written English, but "you was" is still heard between some people.
Reading Power of Babel (p. 230)
I have to say I like the book. It was good, if a bit technical in time, but it had humor. I could understand when he referred to Ross saying "We were on a break!", which is among the many cultural references than the "average Americans" would understand. There's a reference to the Simpsons' character Moe, who always pronounce "Shaddap" and "What?" (sounds like rat).
It's so beautiful to say that French could not exist without Latin, but French didn't exist at the time that Latin did. I read about "de de intus" transforming itself into French "Dans" (sounds like DONG, with NG the usual French nasal sound) for "in."
From why French use c'est instead of simply est to why English puts "not" after the verb and not before (as in "we do not want" instead of "we not want", which leads us to using "we don't want" to put "not" back into preceding the verb). The explanation is that English originally had "ne", while "not" came from "nothing", which existed as "nought". We used to say "We ne want naught a bread" as in "We don't want nothing a bread" (double negative used to be widely accepted). Now, nought is not used, except in some British dialects and in "for naught".
What amazes me is—I think I mentioned this before—how ASL uses nothing. When we want to say that I didn't hit the boy, we would sign, "BOY I HIT? NOTHING". Trying to put an English structure into ASL would be signing, "I NOT HIT FINISH BOY. "FINISH" is intended as a past particple, but falls flat in direct translation, and is ambiguous: The speaker could be implying that he wasn't finished hitting the boy. You can say "I NOT HIT BOY", but nothing is more fun.
posted by Alan at January 09, 2006
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