begat

Lying awake in the middle of the night, I suddenly thought of the older, mostly biblical word beget. This was originally be + get, similar to be + come and be + have. It is irregular, originally beget, begat, begot and later beget, begot, begotten (cf get, got, gotten (for some people) and forget, forgot, forgotten). It is most famously used in the King James/Authorised version of the bible (1611), specifically in chapter 1 of the gospel according to Matthew, where “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas [Judah] and his brethren” and so on.

This translates the Greek word ἐγέννησεν, egénnēsen, the third-person singular aorist active indicative of γεννᾰ́ω, gennáō, 1. to beget, give birth to 2. to bring forth, produce, generate. We can hardly say that Abraham gave birth to Isaac, but we could easily say that Sarah did, except that the word is almost always used in relation to men. At the other end of Matthew’s genealogy, it does not say that Mary begat Jesus, but rather that Jesus was born of Mary, using the passive voice of the same Greek verb. (Compare 1 Chron 3, where “the sons of David, which were born unto him” are listed.)

Later versions use either begot or was the father of. The Good news bible/Today’s English version avoids the problem by using “the following ancestors are listed: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah and his brothers” and so on. Other possibilities are the very un-biblical father and sire (both of which started as nouns).

Google Ngrams shows that the heyday of beget in all its forms was the 1650s, after which there was a slow decline to modern times. Surprisingly, though, there has been a rise in usage (especially of begat) since the 1980s, which I can’t find or think of any reason for. 

While researching for this post, I found a book by David Crystal titled Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language. Note that much of the language of the KJV comes from Tyndale (1526-30) and Coverdale (1535), and even the KJV’s original phraseology is in conscious imitation of the earlier style (and English had changed a lot in that almost a century.

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durk(y)

At work I did something to the text of a document as an experiment, looked at the result and exclaimed “That looks durky”. This is not a word which I would usually use, and almost certainly not a word at all. Maybe I was thinking “dorky”, which is a word I occasionally use. But there was no doubt as the general meaning, and absolutely no doubt as to the grammar. Durky just has to be an adjective, and probably a negative one. 

A colleague and I speculated about other sentences where durk(y) might have a positive meaning: I love the way you durk, You are the durk of my life. Durk could be a noun or verb. Although I used durky, durk could also be an adjective, but the pairing would probably be durk (noun) < > durky (adjective) or durk (adjective) < > durkness (noun), depending on which came first, with durkiness hovering there uncertainly. In turn, the adverb would be durkly or durkily. In the end, we don’t have to decide, because the word is unlikely to catch on. It’s just not fetch enough.

Durk(y) is more likely to have a negative meaning. There’s something about ur/ir or or which makes them sound dark: dirty or dorky. I’ll let you guess (if you don’t know) whether JRR Tolkein’s Mirkwood was a pleasant place or not.

Later in the day, I was listening to an extended piece of classical music and Youtube interrupted the movement with an ad for a product or service by Google. I said “Durk you, Google!” (Maybe I should have blamed Youtube.)

Every cloud possesses a silver lining

Writing about David Essex yesterday reminded me that I’ve been wanting to write about another song of his, “Hold me close“.

Twice, he sings:

Every cloud’s got a silver lining

But the final time, he sings:

Every cloud has a silver lining

I was going to write at length about ‘ve/’s got v have/has (note that very few people say/write have/has got in full), but I got very confused very quickly and don’t want to confuse you. I thought more about I’ve got and I have because we talk more about I than we do about every cloud. As well as I’ve got and I have, there’s also I got and I’ve gotten, as well as have as a main verb and have as the auxiliary of the perfect. I’ve got a is slightly more associated with British English, but even there I have a is by far the most common.

But I got thinking: do people say or write Every cloud’s got a silver lining or Every cloud has a silver lining? Google Ngrams shows absolutely no results for Every cloud’s got a silver lining, which means that its dataset does not include 1970s English pop songs. A general Google search shows about 1,050,000 results for “every cloud has a silver lining” (in quotation marks, for an exact match) and about 1,040 for “every cloud’s got a silver lining”, most of which are references to this song. Worryingly, Google suggests every clouds got a silver lining, for which there are 935 results, most of which are references to this song. I’m not surprised that people who create websites of song lyrics don’t how to use apostrophes, but I’m worried that Google doesn’t. 

Many proverbs circulate in slightly different forms, but this one is remarkably stable (and also Every dog has its day, which sprang to mind).

(I thought I’d written a previous post about I’ve got and I have in pop songs, but I can’t find it.)

Coming home

There are multiple songs titled “Coming home” or “Going home”. Wikipedia lists 61 songs titled “(I’m) Comin(g) home” and 31 titled “(I’m) Goin(g) home”, as well as albums, books and movies.

I mixed up two of them. The song I remembered clearly (“I’m coming home”) was written and sung by Australian duo Beeb Birtles and Graeham Goble. The name I remembered was English singer David Essex (who sang, and probably wrote, “Coming home”). Either one (and many others with the same title) illustrate an interesting point about English grammar. Usually, we go from ‘here’ to ‘there’, or come from ‘there’ to ‘here’. In each song, the singer is somewhere other than ‘home’, so would usually sing about going ‘home’; that is, from ‘here’ to ‘there’. But each sings about coming ‘there’. The Birtles and Goble song begins:

Ma
I’m coming home
So take my picture off the wall
I’ve had enough of being alone

The Essex song includes:

There’s no question in my mind that I’m coming home tonight

leant/leaned

A small group of verbs have two past tense forms – an irregular one ending in -t and used more in British English and a regular one ending in -ed and used more in American English. The most common six are burn~burnt/burned, dream~dreamt/dreamed, lean~leant/leaned, learn~learnt/learned, smell~smelt/smelled and spill~spilt/spilled. Note that the pronunciation of the vowel changes with two of these: dream~/drɛmt/ / /dri:md/ and lean~/lɛnt/ / /li:nd/. [For some reason, I missed leap~leaped/leapt.]

In general, my Australian English usage is closer to British than America, but I have consciously decided to write -ed and say /dri:md/ and /li:nd/, probably because students are more likely to understand them.

A few days ago, I was talking to an English-as-a-second-language speaker. He asked me something which required me to use the past simple of lean. Without thinking about it, I found myself saying /lɛnt/. If he is not familiar with that pronunciation, I hope the context made it clear. I said something like “I lent over to pick up a sock and when I stood up, I knocked my head on the door handle”.

Svmer iʃ icumen in

Some people decry any change to language as the first step on a slippery slope which will end with us communicating in incoherent grunts. But language has always changed, and always will. We can easily test this in English by looking at written sources across more than a thousand years. My example for this post doesn’t date that far back, merely approximately 750 years.

One of the choirs I sing in is presenting a concert based on the theme of summer. One item is the old song Sumer is icumen in, which dates from before 1264, which is when the manuscript it is preserved in was copied. It is recognisable as English, but obviously a lot has changed since then. The original words are: 

Svmer iʃ icumen in
Lhude ʃing cuccu
Groweþ ʃed and bloweþ med
and ʃpringþ þe wde nu

Sing cuccu
Awe bleteþ after lomb
lhouþ after calue cu
Bulluc ʃterteþ bucke uerteþ
murie ʃing cuccu

Cuccu cuccu
Wel ʃingeʃ þu cuccu
ne ʃwik þu nauer nu

learn up

A colleague said something which gave me the opportunity to talk about the time one of the choirs I sing in sang part of a concert in Welsh.  I said, among other things, “We learned up several items in Welsh”. He took that at face value, but another colleague was horrified that I said “learned up”, even though she understood me perfectly.

We quite happily say brush up (on) and swot up (on), so why not learn up (on)? Google Ngrams records learn up, but it may be part of longer units such as Learn up to 16 languages with our easy and fun app, or Learn up to 10 times as fast as with any other language app. Google records companies, websites and apps named Learnup, LearnUp and Learn Up. But no-one seems to use learn up. I was hoping to be able to say to her “So there!”. You saw it here first.

There’s a lot more to be said about English phrasal verbs, but it won’t be tonight.

I seen

One of my Facebook friends mentioned the usage I seen in very unfavourable terms. Unfortunately, what might have been an interesting linguistic discussion got sidetracked, partly by my fault. 

Without a doubt, I saw is standard English and I seen is not standard English, but its usage is widespread in some varieties of English, so it can’t be dismissed out of hand. Most commenters online are immediately very unfavourable, some in most unhelpful terms. Of the few that provide an extended discussion, Anatoly Liberman of the Oxford University Press Blog starts by calling it “substandard but ubiquitous in conversational English”, and Patricia T O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman of the Grammarphobia blog note that it is heard “in much of the US, as well as in England, Scotland, and Ireland” (to which I would add Australia), and quote the Dictionary of American Regional English, which calls it “widespread” in the US, “esp freq among rural speakers and those with little formal educ.”

intends genuinely

(I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. It is a discussion of a linguistic issue arising from one piece of Australian legislation.)

Clause 500 of the Australian Migration Regulations covers student visas. One of the requirements is that “the applicant intends genuinely to stay in Australia temporarily” (that is, it is not a permanent visa). The wording intends genuinely struck me as awkward. Throughout the Regulations, intends genuinely is used four times, alongside genuinely intends 12 times and genuinely intend twice.

The linguistic questions which arise are: is intends genuinely ungrammatical, if so, why; and if is it grammatical, why does it sound so awkward?

Let’s do breakfast!

Sometimes, in order to cut a long story short, I have to tell my students something I know isn’t true. 

A textbook activity had the standard format of a box with base-form verbs at the top, then sentences with a gap in each, with the instruction to choose the right verb and change it to the right verb tense. One sentence included breakfast, and one student chose the verb do. I said “We don’t do breakfast. What do we do?” (Hmmm, there are two dos in that question … There’s another blog post there.) He said “Eat”. I said “But eat isn’t in the box. What else do we do?” He looked and said “Have”. I said “Right. Now change the verb tense.”

Other things we can do to breakfast include get, make, cook, prepare, buy, enjoy … and do. Some people “do breakfast”, or “do lunch”, or “do dinner”. Mostly “do lunch” and mostly in the form “Let’s do lunch (sometime)!”. 

This is a modern usage. Google Ngrams shows that do lunch has rocketed in usage since the mid-1980s, with do dinner and do breakfast also increasing, but less dramatically.