Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 March 3

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March 3

Amending the language

A building society circular includes this sentence:

Plus, you'll find a summary of the changes at the front, so you can see the main amends at a glance.

I would have thought that this was a simple confusion of "amendments" and "amends" (as in "reparations"), but having read "Advertising copywriter needing some coaching?" above I'm not so sure. Is this an error? 92.19.174.150 (talk) 10:35, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Did they mean "compensation given for something", did they mean "altering a document", or did they mean something else, like "make repairs to a building?"--Hofhof (talk) 12:09, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

The preceding sentence reads:

Your new T&Cs will automatically apply from 1 May 2018, and we've enclosed them with this letter.

The following sentence reads:

If you have any questions after you've read through your new T&Cs, please give us a call on 0800 XXX XXXX and we'll be happy to help.

The twain hath met

If you Google "the twain hath met" you find at least three examples of people using this phrase, plus at least one example of a published article with this phrase in the title. But is "the twain hath met" grammatical to begin with? To me "twain" (which is nothing but a synonym of "two") takes a plural verb and "hath" can only be a singular form. It's gotta be "the twain have met". Is there something I'm missing? Basemetal 12:58, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

No puns ("the twins have meth") please. This is a serious question. Basemetal 12:58, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Twain is an old word for "two",[1] and it does sound like someone getting a little cute, in a twist on Never the Twain Shall Meet. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:55, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

No kidding! Basemetal 14:16, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

And as EO notes, "hath" is third person singular.[2] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:41, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

You are correct, it should be "the twain have met". However, at the risk of stating the obvious, it's a humorous rebuttal of the phrase Never the Twain Shall Meet (Kipling, 1889) and I imagine that a bit of faux archaic language helps the joke along a bit. Alansplodge (talk) 17:47, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Most likely. Just a little poetic license by the writer. You don't hear "hath" much anymore except maybe in the KJV and in a few random old sayings, such as "30 days hath September..." In fact, the Old Farmer's Almanac has a "farmer's calendar" for each month, titled like "September hath 30 days" and so on. Quaint. But at least they're using it correctly. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:35, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

A bit on a tangent here, but there were (and still are) dialects of English where certain plural subjects would regularly be construed with seemingly singular verb forms (see Northern Subject Rule), so from some (northern) speakers and writers of Early Modern English you might in fact expect things like "the twain hath". But I agree with Alan that here it's much more likely to be faux archaism made up by modern speakers, who simply don't know how the -th form works. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:45, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

As far as I could tell no case of the Northern Subject Rule (at least as explained in that article) included cardinal numbers. Some languages do treat cardinal numbers as collectives and use a singular verb with them (Turkish? Hungarian? I forget). Other languages treat them as plurals. I'm not aware of any exception at any stage of the history of English where cardinal numbers were treated as collectives. Now there's even languages where it may depend on the specific cardinal number. In Sanskrit for example tens above 20 are feminine singular nouns and the verb can be made to agree accordingly. Basemetal 11:01, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Speaking of verb-subject agreement, "there's even languages" seems to be a problem. I do accept, though, that many people use "there's" for both singular and plural objects. Others, like me, prefer "there are even languages". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:33, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Or they do know, but are making a joke. Like one time when David Frye was doing a Billy Graham impression, on how he got his expensive-looking suit: "It felleth from out of the skyeth, and it fitteth me perfectly!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:54, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Verily, thou smitest the nail upon the head thusly, Sir Bugs. Alansplodge (talk) 14:33, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Check: The couple has met. 185.46.76.11 (talk) 20:35, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

That is not idiomatic in British English: we (I think I can speak for all my fellow-countrymen here) would use "have". AndrewWTaylor (talk) 20:50, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

All right, but still, Google gives more hits for "has" than for "have". 185.46.76.11 (talk) 21:10, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

I guess these talk about the couple as a unit, as in "The couple has met a doctor". --194.213.3.4 (talk) 09:39, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

"The couple has met each other" would sound odd, wouldn't it? Regarding Google I get exactly the reverse: "The couple has met" 23800 hits and "The couple have met" 43500 hits. I used a quoted search of course, otherwise the results mean nothing. In any case I wouldn't rely on Google here. Unfortunately when I tried Ngrams it gave me no results: No valid ngrams to plot! Ngrams not found: "The couple has met", "The couple have met" Go figure why. Basemetal 11:01, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

weird! My search via Google gave me 94,500 hits for "The couple has met" (whereas the hits I received for "The couple have met" were as your result). 185.27.105.144 (talk) 16:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Isn't it though? I still get the same result even when I use your links. Now you try mine: "The couple has met" and "The couple have met". I pared down the link to the the bare essentials. Try eliminating everything but the question from your links. And try with both safe=off and w/o, you never know. With safe=off: "The couple has met" (safe off) and "The couple have met" (safe off). Yeehaw! We're having fun. Basemetal 16:52, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I still get the same result as before ! What does that mean? Maybe the number of hits depends on the browser? I'm using Explorer 11, but I get the same result when I use Google Chrome (version 52.0.2743.82 m) as well... 185.27.105.144 (talk) 17:45, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I know Google taylors the results according to various factors, but I doubt the browser one uses is one of them. On the other hand it does make a difference if one is logged in to Google or not. I'm using Chrome and when I use an Incognito Window I get 95300 hits for "The couple has met" but a whopping 201000 hits for "The couple have met". Trying going incognito in Chrome then to this Wikipedia page (of course w/o logging, like you're doing now) and use the links here and see what happens. Basemetal 18:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Obvious error. It should be the wabbit hath met the twain. ---Trovatore (talk) 09:56, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

See formal agreement and notional agreement. DuncanHill (talk) 15:19, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

References

Atria longe pulcherrima...

If you'd be so kind, I'm interested in an alternate translation of the following. The one I have just doesn't do it. This would help me greatly in my studies.

Atria longe pulcherrima columnis quadrifariam per singulos angulos stantibus attolerabant statuas, palmaris deae facies, quae pinnis explicitis sine gressu pilae volubilis instabile vestigium plantis roscidis delibantes nec ut maneant inhaerent et iam volare creduntur.

2601:1C1:8100:900:8CA:15B1:ADFB:DF14 (talk) 22:16, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

I’m sure it would. Could you provide your other translation and explain what your issue is with it? We wouldn’t want to be recreating the same difficulties. 91.125.175.252 (talk) 02:13, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh, make no mistake: this isn't homework help. I'm not in school, I'm studying Latin for fun. I was struggling through The Golden Ass, and its often clunky-sounding prose and then all of a sudden in this passage it burst into a very poetic-sounding rhythm. I LOVE this passage. I've set this sentence to music and memorized it, and if I understand it better I can use it as a reference point for grammar etc. I'm learning in a kind of backward way, you see. If you read the book out loud, it's kind of revelatory how when suddenly, while describing a beautiful scene, the prose turns beautiful as well. Walsh's translation of that passage starts out this way:

"The reception area was very fine. Pillars stood at each corner, supporting statues representing the goddess Victory. In these representations, her wings were outspread but motionless..."

UGH! The old public domain translation on Wikisource is a real gas but very little help for the most part. It actually gets this bit better than it gets most:

"And while we were talking thus together, little by little wee came to her house, and behold the gates of the same were very beautifully set with pillars quadrangle wise, on the top wherof were placed carved statues and images, but principally the Goddesse of Victory was so lively and with such excellencie portrayed and set forth, that you would have verily have thought that she had flyed, and hovered with her wings hither and thither."

These are the two translations available to me and I'm sure you'll agree they could be a bit better!

This is book 2 section 4 by the way. 2601:1C1:8100:900:8CA:15B1:ADFB:DF14 (talk) 18:45, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

You will find en.wiktionary to be very helpful in your Latin studies. Not only are the noun and verb entries shown with declension/conjugation tables, if you search for a word (such as wikt:atria), you will find it regardless of the grammatical form. —Stephen (talk) 02:31, 8 March 2018 (UTC)