Various nonsense...NIK: etc.

[Jon Jarrett]

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Henderson Keith wrote:

        <snip>

> Since there are so many language experts here, I was wondering if someone
> could confirm my suspicion about the (lack of) the English dative.  I mean,
> it occurred to me that the English 'whom' (which is itself now dying a slow
> death) might be a vestigal linguistic organ of the German (dative case)
> 'wem.'  Is that true?  And is that the only such example?  Anyway, what
> other oddities of English are there (e.g., in terms of the various 'cases'
> that we have to learn in such languages as German) that might be interesting
> to know, and can put my own language study into some perspective.  (Of
> course, the more German I learn, the more I learn about (how weird is)
> English.  For example, why in the hell do we answer 'Me!' - i.e., a
> reflexive pronoun - instead of 'I' when answering anything that starts with
> 'Who wants to...'?  The Germans use the obvious personal, nominative case,
> pronoun in this situation, which made me think.)

        Modern English, in so far as it still has any cases at all, has
only one object case, which serves for direct (`accusative') and indirect
(`dative') object. I think there *are* still one or two words which
preserve it other than `whom' but I can't call them to mind any more. As
to `whom', it is almost certainly (Carl will know better than
I--ahem) cognate with German `wem' but how they've wound up different
cases with the same ending is anyobody's guess. Has the German developed
onwards long after English inflection died out? Has the English been
`corrected' to a more Latinate ending in the way that happened to a lot of
previously Germanic forms that `looked' Latin when English was first being
standardised by dictionary-writers? Is it just parallel evolution in
different directions from whatever the Germanic root was? Someone
probably does have some idea but I don't know who (ahem again--of course
there's a verb implied here hence the subject case, as before).

        It won't be here for long, anyway, as actually using `whom' is
pretty much a preserve of academics and pedants these days and even to me
it sounds affected. Doesn't stop me of course ;-)

> Oh, by the way, more than a few English words are slipping back into German
> (or Swiss dialect) the opposite way, you know.  'Ausflippen' is my favorite
> of these, being that it's half-translated (from 'flip out' obviously).
> Einäwäg (Anyway) is used in Swiss German commonly, whereas most 'foreign'
> words come from French (Märssi vilmal being a wonderful half-French (Merci),
> half-German (vielmals) expression).  And of course, the German word for
> female flight attendant is still 'die Stewardess' which is humorously
> politically incorrect and outdated.  'Flirten' is the verb 'to flirt,'
> complete with improper German 'i' pronunciation, unbeknownst to me at first.
> It goes on.

        `Einäwäg' is *horrible*. If German had some kind of regulating
body like the Academie Française (though I'm not saying it should because
that's a fairly hopeless attempt) that'd have to be on their hitlist. But
the same probably goes for most Schwyzerdeutsch anyway.

> NB: Gorilla was forced to cancel due to their own separate touring plans -
> Hypnos69 is the replacement

        I spoke to Gorilla's drummer on Saturday and found out about this,
I should have realised someone would get the news here first :-)

        Interesting to see Electric Orange apparently in a gigging state
in the Kosmos line-up too. I'm well behind with their albums, I wonder if
that means they have even more new stuff out. Last one I got was
_Abgelaufen!_ which struck me as being a good but unoriginal pastiche of
several of their previous styles. In particular it has one `Can' and one
`Neu' track which are very very carefully mimicked (and thus quite
good). I think I prefer their Technokrautrock outings to their more
faithful Kraut sound, but I guess if they're gig-ready they'll be doing
the latter rather than the former, which would still be kind of cool. Or
perhaps halfway house like Anubian Lights at Strange
Daze... Anyway. Yours,
                        Jon


--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)