Translating Middle English into Modern English I have to turn the spell-checker off because otherwise it takes ages (even on a v high end laptop) underlining all the "mis-spellings" in the Middle English text.
Ha! Yes, that would be very laborious. I do remember, writing A Secret Alchemy, making the spell-checker learn some of my variant spellings in the older narrative - Elysabeth and Antony, and some others. But yes, if it's every third word, it's easier just not to bother.
I sometimes wonder how the world feels to speakers of languages where verb aspect is primary and tense is secondary. In Slavic languages imperfective vs perfective is usually signaled by entirely different verb stems, not just affixes.
It's such a good question: how much does the way one's mother tongue is structured affect how we actually see the world? I remember that difference from doing a year of Russian at school, and it did make things feel very well organised and clear! I also found myself trying to explain the idea of a double-negative making a positive, to speakers of (IIRC) Slavic languages, where to make a sentence negative you negate everything. It was REALLY hard to explain how "I didn't not go" could mean "I went"!
In my bible for these things - Swann's Practical English Usage - which is designed for people learning English, in the section for articles ("a", "the" etc.) there is there are two subsections: one for people coming from another language which has equivalents for "a" and "the" etc, even if they work very differently; and another, for those coming from a language which just doesn't have them, such as Slavic languages as well as many Asian languages.
Great post about a very tricky technical aspect of writing. I'm still wrangling a lengthy section that is past perfect, but slips into simple past because the Past Perfect is too convoluted for more than a couple of sentence.s Strictly speaking it should stay in the perfect and I'm not entirely sure I get away with bending the rules that much.
Seeing the 'sentence Yoga' in the Perm and Con makes me wonder if you've seen the biography of J.L. Austin. It describes Austin's normal language seminars in which he'd lead considerations about the differences in meaning of words through different permutations.
Ooh, I don't know that about Austin - how intriguing! I'll look it up.
I think it's completely normal and OK, once you've used past perfect to take us with you back into the past, to slip into something more comfortable like simple past. I'd put money on novelists having done it since the Ark. (ha! My first version of that sentence was "novelists doing it since the ark"!)
Glad you approve, Julian. It was fascinating trying to unpack it all, not least because I'm actually the generation which wasn't taught English grammar beyond the basics (though plenty of French and Latin), so I have to dig all this up from scratch. But it does interest me.
When you say, "Generally speaking, the ‘auxiliary’ verb which we use to give verbs a progressive aspect is have," did you mean to say perfective aspect, or have I misunderstood?
Oh, bless you! Duh! Of course I did. I'll correct it. Thank you. I was taught to proof-read back in the Pleistocene when I worked in academic publishing, but then we had a rule that you didn't proof-read your own work - and to this day I'm not brilliant at it.
Translating Middle English into Modern English I have to turn the spell-checker off because otherwise it takes ages (even on a v high end laptop) underlining all the "mis-spellings" in the Middle English text.
We redeth oft and findeth y-write,
And this clerkes wele it wite,
Layes that ben in harping
Ben y-founde of ferli thing:
Ha! Yes, that would be very laborious. I do remember, writing A Secret Alchemy, making the spell-checker learn some of my variant spellings in the older narrative - Elysabeth and Antony, and some others. But yes, if it's every third word, it's easier just not to bother.
This article came along at the exact moment I needed it, thanks.
So glad it's good timing Voula!
Exactly the same here. I'm in the throes of a slow line-edit of my WIP. Emma is psychic!
Ha! It's classic line-edit stuff, isn't it.
I sometimes wonder how the world feels to speakers of languages where verb aspect is primary and tense is secondary. In Slavic languages imperfective vs perfective is usually signaled by entirely different verb stems, not just affixes.
It's such a good question: how much does the way one's mother tongue is structured affect how we actually see the world? I remember that difference from doing a year of Russian at school, and it did make things feel very well organised and clear! I also found myself trying to explain the idea of a double-negative making a positive, to speakers of (IIRC) Slavic languages, where to make a sentence negative you negate everything. It was REALLY hard to explain how "I didn't not go" could mean "I went"!
In my bible for these things - Swann's Practical English Usage - which is designed for people learning English, in the section for articles ("a", "the" etc.) there is there are two subsections: one for people coming from another language which has equivalents for "a" and "the" etc, even if they work very differently; and another, for those coming from a language which just doesn't have them, such as Slavic languages as well as many Asian languages.
Great post about a very tricky technical aspect of writing. I'm still wrangling a lengthy section that is past perfect, but slips into simple past because the Past Perfect is too convoluted for more than a couple of sentence.s Strictly speaking it should stay in the perfect and I'm not entirely sure I get away with bending the rules that much.
Seeing the 'sentence Yoga' in the Perm and Con makes me wonder if you've seen the biography of J.L. Austin. It describes Austin's normal language seminars in which he'd lead considerations about the differences in meaning of words through different permutations.
Ooh, I don't know that about Austin - how intriguing! I'll look it up.
I think it's completely normal and OK, once you've used past perfect to take us with you back into the past, to slip into something more comfortable like simple past. I'd put money on novelists having done it since the Ark. (ha! My first version of that sentence was "novelists doing it since the ark"!)
Brilliant article, Emma. I don't think I've ever seen this better explained.
Glad you approve, Julian. It was fascinating trying to unpack it all, not least because I'm actually the generation which wasn't taught English grammar beyond the basics (though plenty of French and Latin), so I have to dig all this up from scratch. But it does interest me.
When you say, "Generally speaking, the ‘auxiliary’ verb which we use to give verbs a progressive aspect is have," did you mean to say perfective aspect, or have I misunderstood?
Oh, bless you! Duh! Of course I did. I'll correct it. Thank you. I was taught to proof-read back in the Pleistocene when I worked in academic publishing, but then we had a rule that you didn't proof-read your own work - and to this day I'm not brilliant at it.
Searching for the laugh out loud emoji and failing!
Ha!