h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just bought his 'Tractatus Logico-philosophicus ' the other day with a christmas book voucher.

Might take a bit of reading but so far it makes a darn site more sense and has far less 'attitude' about it than my book of some of Kant's ramblings.

Warning: it gets perfectly opaque about the middle . . . but it gets wonderfully clear and transparent again at the end. To attack the maths/symbolic logic I recommend 'A Wittgenstein Dictionary' by Hans-Johann Glock (Blackwell paperback).

Alternatively you can float past and take it for granted. When scholars came to Austria in the thirties to ask W what he meant by certain passages, his response (so the story goes) was "Did I write *that*??"

>> I doubt that "sewn" is the right word for seeds, even in Oxford...<<

I'da probably said 'sowed'.
But then, if I was really trying to stitch it up and leave you all in stitches, I'd probably say 'sewed'.

"Sew what?" I hear you say.
And I have no answer.


~jwf~

>>"Sew what?" I hear you say.
>>And I have no answer.

Sew it seams.

Style guide question that came up today: when should you use "I shall" vs. "I will"?

Style guide question that came up today: when should you use "I shall" vs. "I will"?


In Scotland, nobody uses 'shall'. Well, except my mate Paul, and he's just messing about with the language. So I wouldn't use it at all.

In Ireland we don't use shall either, nor do the USers.

But I was given this example by a Yorkshireman who knows his Onions:

"I shall drown! No one will save me!" cried the accident victim.

"I will drown! No one shall save me!" said the suicide.

It has to do with simple expectation -- I shall, others will -- as against wilful determination on the speaker's part -- I will, others shall (I decree it).

we USers use shall sometimes, but more (as i believe you imply) to show more determination. it merely seems slightly quaker or shakespearean to us, so when we use it, we feel like we are dragging it out of the past. (i.e. "i SHALL be the next president")

What's the etymology of 'shall'? I'd guess that 'will' comes from 'to will' something into being, but whence 'shall'?

Pretty good 'shall' explication: http://www.tfd.com/shall

I hate it when I see a word with a definition and the way I use it is described as archaic, innit?

I vaguely remember some old rhyme about could, should, and would, which I think implied the meanings had shifted (rotated?) somewhat over the years.

The old phrase "No better than she should be" *seems* to mean what one would nowadays be "No better than you would expect (given her background)"

'Should' doesn't appear to have meant there was some (moral?) obligation, neither does 'could' appear to have meant that something was simply possibly.

I suspect the emphasis is more on "no better than" to mean (euphemistically) "worse than".

>>he is mainly translated into Oxford English, whose particular quirk is the spelling "shewn" for shown.

Oxford? Pish! It was a variant that was on the cusp in the early C20th - like spellt vs spelled nowadays. My dad used to write 'shew' as an affectation. He was the only person I knew who did so (did sew?)...until I came across it in St. Joan and Pygmalion. Doesn't that make it an Irish quirk? Or could it have been a deliberate Shavian ghoti-ism?

>>In Scotland, nobody uses 'shall'.

I beg to differ, Pedro. I'd have said that it was used slightly *more* in Scotland than in England. I associate it with a (to my ears) charmingly archaic manner of speech used by educated Scots. Come to think of it, it's a mannerism (affectation?) I've acquired myself since I immigrated.

But I've always been puzzled by the illustration given in school of the man who died because he shouted "I'm drowning and nobody shall save me" instead "I'm drowning and nobody will save me". Or was it versa vice?

btw - I seem to recall that Fowler describes alternating 'shall' and 'will' within a sentence as "elegant variation."

I shall drown (=am going to) and nobody will save me (=is going to)

I will (bloody well) drown and nobody shall (bloody well) save me.


Reminds me of an old explanation

"What's this, One Man One Vote? What does that mean?"

"It means one bloody man, one bloody vote!"

"Ah, thanks, got it now."

>> ...Fowler describes alternating 'shall' and 'will' within a sentence as "elegant variation." <<

Shows ya what Fowler knows. About elegance anyway.

With the exception of certain subtle nuances that occur in the interrogative, the 'shall we dance'/'will we dance' issue is covered quite completely and concisely by Recumbentman's posting:

>> "It has to do with simple expectation -- I shall, others will -- as against wilful determination on the speaker's part -- I will, others shall (I decree it)." <<

Obviously when used in a question the power of decree is transferred to the person being asked to dance.

peace
~jwf~

- I would guess that in English English, "Shall" is more often used in the interrogative "Shall I wash the dishes?". The equivalent Scottish and Irish form, which sounds odd to my English ears, is "Will I wash the dishes?". This has in English English (and apparently in US English) more a meaning of "What will the future bring? - Will I be pretty, will I be rich?".

- The word "Shall"'s origin (which we have so far managed to step round) is probably analogous to the German modal verb "sollen" - which has almost the same meaning "Soll ich das Geschirr spülen?"

According to our etymological (German) dictionary, the German modal verb "sollen" has evolved via the older forms "soln" "suln" "solen" which, in turn, evolved from the old German/gothic skulan/sculan, ... you can see where this is leading -> it has the same root as Schulden (to owe, to be guilty).

To this day, the only use of "Soll" in this sense is found on your bank statement (if, like mine chronically does, it has a negative value). The verb "sollen" has retained solely the modal function, and can no longer be used to mean "to owe".

- I remember being told at school that "shew" was an acceptable alternative spelling to "show". (Possibly to emphasise the fact that it was not the past form, cf know-knew.) We were probably told this by an ancient Irish nun, who was our English teacher for many years, so it might have been true when she was at school.

>>We were probably told this by an ancient Irish nun

You make it sound as if you don't actually remember there being an ancient Irish nun, but it was the sort of thing that might have happened in that crazy school of yours.

Don't knock the ancient Irish nun. It was the Irish religious of 1200-1400 years ago who taught the English to read and write.

I'm not knocking her! She was lovely. I was lucky to have had very good English teachers all through my schooldays.

One or two of the little rules that the nuns taught us have stuck to this day, although some were archaic or possibly prejudiced, and, although I remember them, I don't stick to them.

We had one very ugly geography teacher - Sr Jean-Marie - who planted the idea of a United Europe in our little 10-year-old minds - but the Irish Headmistress, Sr Edith, was loved by all.