Pedants' Paradise

[ahinton]

At school were told never (ne'er?) to use contractions in written English. They would be underlined in red. In good pedantic schoolmasterly tradition I carried this on when marking students' essays. I suspect I might be out of step with current practice. Fashions change. Shakespeare uses 'tis, e'er, e'en and many other contractions both in plays and sonnets. Rather than seeming sub-standard, over-informal or lazy it tends to sound poetic and quaint. Also the famous:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

Ah, yes, but that was what might be terms a contraction of convenience in order to ensure that the line concerned contained the correct number of syllabubs!

[french frank]

I don't think anyone can look tiresome, even to the Mail! Tiresomeness surely has to be a function of behaviour.

If you google the phrase, you are taken to an article containing 'Obama was captured looking tiresome and in heavy contemplation as ...'

But when you click on to the actual article, you find it's been changed to 'Obama was captured looking tired and in heavy contemplation as...'

So, a mistake, I think.

I wasn't suggesting it would be correct! Just the way the Mail's collective mind might work when on automatic pilot.

[french frank]

At school were told never (ne'er?) to use contractions in written English. They would be underlined in red.

I remember the rule, vaguely, along with not splitting infinitives or ending a sentence with a preposition.

But I don't think we would have been expected to avoid contractions as budding playwrights, say, or novelists using dialogue. Poets have always been a law unto themselves:

Aye, back at Leady-Day, you know,
I come vrom Gullybrook to Stowe ;
At Leady-Day I took my pack
O' rottletraps, an' turn'd my back
Upon the weather-beaten door,
That had a-screen'd, so long avore,
The mwost that thease zide o' the greave,
I'd live to have, or die to seave !

[ahinton]

I wasn't suggesting it would be correct! Just the way the Mail's collective mind might work when on automatic pilot.

The Mail has a "collective mind"? Wow! I'd not realised that. I've never even been especially convinced that it knows what an automatic pilot is...

[french frank]

The Mail has a "collective mind"? Wow! I'd not realised that. I've never even been especially convinced that it knows what an automatic pilot is...

Oh, I think there's a mind behind it that knows exactly what it's doing

[ahinton]

Oh, I think there's a mind behind it that knows exactly what it's doing

OK; well - especially since this is the Pedants' Paradise thread - I'll just have to take your word for that; it might know what it's doing, but to suggest that anything approaching what one might call a mind behind it strikes me as something of a gross exaggeration...

Ah, a "collective" mind; I see - something that one might think to equate to the garbage or recycling that one puts out every alternate week in the faint hope of "collection", then. OK; understood (I think).

[Alain Maréchal]

Article here.

Conclusion seems to be that (whatever was Miss Austen's practice, and that of her characters) contractions had been common long before her time.

Thank you ff, although that article was difficult to unpick. The references to American idioms were mostly lost on me, I find modern American cinema almost impenetrable owing (due?) to either mumbling or poor recording. I did learn that I used elision when I should have written contraction. I think.

rider: I have just written "I did learn". Why is this a common usage (why not useage?) when "I learned (or learnt?)" would be sufficient.

further rider: why did not you all choose to speak French all those hundreds of years ago? Please do not reply, I know why, it was a rhetorical question. How I long for the clarity of Proust. (That was a joke. I think.)

[jean]

rider: I have just written "I did learn". Why is this a common usage...when "I learned (or learnt?)" would be sufficient.

You said the article was 'difficult to unpick', so you want to emphasise that you did learn something from it, as we might well have concluded that you didn't.

further rider: why did not you all choose to speak French all those hundreds of years ago?

We'd use the contracted form didn't you, but uncontracted, we'd say did you not (though the all complicateds matters).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

further rider: why did not you all choose to speak French all those hundreds of years ago? Please do not reply, I know why, it was a rhetorical question. How I long for the clarity of Proust. (That was a joke. I think.)

Well - there was a considerable period when French was spoken by a powerful class of people in this country; but after a few hundred years, everybody had come to realize that (with a few bits of vocabulary kept on for sentimental reasons - and resulting in some confusing vagaries of spelling) the language of the previous sets of invaders was far more expressive and eloquent. 'Twas around about that time that we decided we'd had enough of being invaded, and decided to start invading others to see how they liked it, instead!

(I hope that I don't need to add a "heavy irony" emoticon?!)

[Alain Maréchal]

You said the article was 'difficult to unpick', so you want to emphasise that you did learn something from it, as we might well have concluded that you didn't.

We'd use the contracted form didn't you, but uncontracted, we'd say did you not (though the all complicateds matters).

Thank you jean. I hear "I/we do apologize" often and wondered about the added emphasis.

The point you highlight was caused by carelessness; I ought not (should not) post late in the evening.

[Alain Maréchal]

the language of the previous sets of invaders was far more expressive and eloquent.

The previous royal house were cousins of the second set, who had settled in Normandie. ("Nor" is a clue). One set of foreign rulers replaced a previous set of foreign rulers, so why bother resisting if you were a landless peasant?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The previous royal house were cousins of the second set, who had settled in Normandie. ("Nor" is a clue). One set of foreign rulers replaced a previous set of foreign rulers, so why bother resisting if you were a landless peasant?

I think the "'Nor' is a clue" is significant: the Normans were basically a very successful offshoot of the Vikings - one that spread widely around Europe, reaching parts of Russia and the Mediterranean. They had a habit of vicious conquering followed by assimilation of local customs and habits - hence William the Bastard's family had been French-speakers for generations when he defeated the Saxon Harold Godwinson. The Normans then took (and gave) great pains to conquer England - devoting much brutality to the North in particular (the old Danegeld regions, so former Viking vs former Viking) - taking land for themselves and subsequently marrying into the old Saxon families. It was easier for the new masters (whose wives - and, of course, mothers: they would have heard lullabies in English - were English-speakers) to learn to address their new subjects in their own language, keeping French for communicating amongst each other.

Then, when the Angevin Plantagenets started having quarrels with their neighbours in France, and there was that century-long firm and frank sharing of views, the aristocracy decided that they may as well just make the official language the one that most of them had been speaking for much/most of the time anyway!

The landless peasants' contact with their new masters was sporadic, in comparison with their everyday conversations and communications; and the

[ahinton]

I think the "'Nor' is a clue" is significant: the Normans were basically a very successful offshoot of the Vikings - one that spread widely around Europe, reaching parts of Russia and the Mediterranean. They had a habit of vicious conquering followed by assimilation of local customs and habits - hence William the Bastard's family had been French-speakers for generations when he defeated the Saxon Harold Godwinson. The Normans then took (and gave) great pains to conquer England - devoting much brutality to the North in particular (the old Danegeld regions, so former Viking vs former Viking) - taking land for themselves and subsequently marrying into the old Saxon families. It was easier for the new masters (whose wives - and, of course, mothers: they would have heard lullabies in English - were English-speakers) to learn to address their new subjects in their own language, keeping French for communicating amongst each other.

Then, when the Angevin Plantagenets started having quarrels with their neighbours in France, and there was that century-long firm and frank sharing of views, the aristocracy decided that they may as well just make the official language the one that most of them had been speaking for much/most of the time anyway!

The landless peasants' contact with their new masters was sporadic, in comparison with their everyday conversations and communications; and the

...you were saying?...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

...you were saying?...

- I don't know what happened there! (It looks like I had a moment of Existential Crisis!) I had typed (and must somehow have deleted) something along the lines of ...

" ... and the new masters found it quicker/easier to issue orders in the (at first) fragments of English vocabulary they knew in those contacts."

[ahinton]

- I don't know what happened there! (It looks like I had a moment of Existential Crisis!) I had typed (and must somehow have deleted) something along the lines of ...

" ... and the new masters found it quicker/easier to issue orders in the (at first) fragments of English vocabulary they knew in those contacts."

Many thanks!