{ lost in translation. }

[delga]

Woke up at the usual time which I near to a miracle because I didn't fall asleep until 1.30am. The Mother told me yesterday that she's going to call this morning which means I'll hear from her after 10am. Later today we should be getting our washer/dryer to replace the 'temp' washer we've got; also, the landlord called to tell us that some people will be here to see the house so, you know, joy.

Will basically be spending the day reading because I have four texts to read from ths week, not three. I also need to do the extra reading for On Reading today because of the 'presentation' N and I are doing.

Aaaand I just realised that the money I took out of the bank this week was unnecessary because The Dad gave me some when I left London a week ago. Wtf.

--

Hee, for the person that asked:

Words like children and people already denote a plural form. So when you're making them genitive (possessive), you just add 's. We called it the rule of thumb. Cover up the apostrophe and everything that comes after it and whatever word is left tells you whether it's singular or plural. Examples:

The boy's socks.
The people's sheep.
The girls' tennis shoes.

Apply the rule of thumb and you get: boy, people, girls; singular, plural, plural. My problem with everyones/everyone's is that in the case of the genitive, does it need an apostrophe, or is it like its? I don't think it is, but recently it's been a cause for consternation.

And for the two of you that care, the reason we use possessive apostrophes is for he same reason we use apotrophes in words like don't - there's a letter missing. The (regular) genetive form used to be denoted by -es. Also, irregular plurals such as oxen and children (using -en) are actually using a pluralisation used by a northern English dialect. A long, long, long, long time ago, people further north used to call eggs iren. It's just the way the northern dialects made plurals.

Thus endeth the class.

--

And now some more poetry by Zbigniew Herbert.

Daedalus & Icarus.
Translated by Marek Lugowski

Daedalus says:

Go on sonny but remember that you are walking and not flying
the wings are just an ornament and you are stepping on a meadow
that warm gust is just the humid earth of summer
and that cold one is a brook
the sky is full of leaves and small animals


Icarus says:

The eyes like two stones return straight to earth
and see a farmer who knocks asunder oily till
a grub which wiggles in a furrow
bad grub which cuts the bond of a plant with the earth


Daedalus says:

Sonny this is not true The Cosmos is merely light
and earth is a bowl of shadows Look as here colors play
dust rises from above the sea smoke rises to the sky
of noblest atoms a rainbow sets itself now


Icarus says:

Arms hurt father from this beating at vacuum
legs are getting numb and miss thorns and sharp stones
I cannot keep looking at the sun as you do father
I sunken whole in the dark rays of the earth


Description of the catastrophe:

Now Icarus falls down head first
the last frame of him is a glimpse of a heal childlike small
being swallowed by the devouring sea
Up above the father cries out the name
which no longer belongs to a neck or a head
but only to a remembrance


Commentary:

He was so young did not understand that wings are just a metaphor
a bit of wax and feathers and a contempt for the laws of gravitation
I cannot hold a body at an elevation of a great many feet
The essence of the matter is in having our hearts
which are coursed by heavy blood
fill with air
and this very thing Icarus did not want to accept

let us pray

by Zbigniew Herbert.

Comments

[wliberation.livejournal.com]

I love your random grammar attacks. Also, geeky!information makes me smile. And feel all wise and... wise because now I can go around explaining stuff to... people. ...'stuff to people'? what a noble and poetic sentence. I must be in the zone today! Booyah!

(Love poem, that.)

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Hi, my name is Meisha, and I suck at commenting. I keep meaning to, and then I suck. So.

Haha, I strike when people least expect it. Element of surprise and all that jazz. (I an't stop using 'stuff' either! It's an epidemic! A counter attack ohnoes!) And you is always in da zone. We is livin in da zone. Booyah!

(Too, me! Or Yoda, you know.

...I'm trying to find a Polish person on campus so that they can read it out to me? But then I realised I'd just come across really Meishtastic. "Um, hi, you don't know me but I can tell by your use of fricatves that you must be Polish and so I was wondering if you could read me some poetry?")

[twincy.livejournal.com]

The spooky thing is that I was literally *jsut* telling rain_dances my theory that if Sheppard were in BSG, his call sign would be Icarus.

Anyway, since I have time now where I didn't this morning: reading both this and the previous.

[twincy.livejournal.com]

Also: I get that, what you're saying, but what confuses me is when to add an s when there already is one. Lame example: Bridget Jones's Diary. Always add an s when genitive? Because my instinct would be to simply write Jones'. (Which is odd, now I think about it.)

Also: the Dutch word for eggs is eieren, which is pronounced exactly the same as an English person would say iren. It's also a non-standard pluralisation. (Singular = ei; normally, plural forms in Dutch are singular + en or s.) From this you can deduct something interesting re: Saxon influence on Northern English dialect.

(Also: I hope my Uni of choice makes English language geekery half as much fun as you do.)

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Haha, I know there's at least one person on my flist who may see this and think, "Oh wow, she's going to talk about apostrophes again."

OK. Here we go. Let's tackle the easy stuff first. Verrily we were all German once so the eieren thing is of no surprise to me at all. Especially when you consider migration of Saxon tribes &c. &c. I feel like I'm in Old/Middle English all over again.

Next: the genitive. I was taught English grammar by an old school grammarian so I use it in a very dictatorial manner. However, because English usage is so high all over the world and because the Americans have this habit of simplifying and standardising practices, there are some rules now that you can safely ignore, but are useful to know. One of these is the 's rule with regards to the possessive.

The rule of thumb works whichever method you use but this is what I was taught. If you have a singular noun, add apostrophe s to make a possessive. Thus, the socks belong to the boy, they are the boy's socks. If you have a plural noun, there should already be a 's' there, so you just add an apostrophe: the socks belong to the boys, therefore they are the boys' socks. This is the rule that I use, this is the rule I will always use. (If you have an irregular pluralisation, you add 's.)

BUT.

To standardise the rule, what they seem to teach nowadays is to add 's to everything. The boys' socks has become the boys's socks (which is ugly and unnecessary). I've heard another theory where this is only used where you hear the extra 's' sound. See the following:

The boy's socks. (One boy.)
The boys' socks. (Many boys.)
Alice's socks. James' socks. (The way *I* was taught.)
James's socks. (Because you hear the extra 's').

Also: Bridget Jones's Diary. This is what is being taught. It's one of my pet peeves. I hate this usage. But it's correct.

(I also have a thing about using commas with conjunctions but I'm being worked around to the demon side on that one because of clausal clarification.)

(I hope that my grammar geekery is fun! And I hope that you don't have to do grammar at uni, although I had to, actually. Hmm.)

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

I totally concur re: Sheppard/Icarus!

[fallapartagain.livejournal.com]

*nods and smiles* (Clearly, logical thought is not mine today. I do, however, have new music - so logical thought doesn't matter. Also have fic! If you're interested, I can email it later. *angelic*)

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Hee, I hope that cleared that up. *g*

SEND IT TO ME. Ahem. Please?