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

In English a few hundred years ago, it seems to have been acceptable to switch around the word order:

Yesterday was I there.
Give it me.
A lady fair stood at the castle gate.

None of these would be good English now. English has become more rigid when it comes to word order, presumably as a side effect of it losing the between cases in the way the words are formed.

'Give it me'?

My dad says that! Althought given that he's a Irish Scouse Cockney (with an accent to match) I've no idea where he got it from.

"Give it me"...


My Dad used to say that as well! (He was a Manx Scouse, born 1919, in case that's relevant..)

>>Give it me.

Yes, I can confirm that it's Scouse. Also Scots and (?) American (but American is basically Scots-Irish anyway).

A Scouse Manx, you say? So he never had a tail, like us other natives of the Peoples' Republic of Merseyside, la?

Oops! I'm forgetting how to talk proper Scouse, la. '....never had no tail...'

English cases:

Only pronouns have an accusitive, don't they? Unless you count word order: The dog bites the man vs the man bites the dog.

Also - pronouns have a dative (to him, etc). Or is it also an ablative? Anyway, it's a case taken with prepositions: by him, over him, into him...etc.

Plus there is a vestigial dative that is staring to die out.

To whom did you give the book? vs Who did you give the book to.

Pedant's say only the first is 'correct'. However, you never, never hear:
'I gave the book to Edward.' 'Whom?'

German does a funny, arbitrary thing with word order: Time Manner Place

'Yesterday I ate well in the restaurant' not 'I ate well in the restaurant yesterday'. (the verb participle 'gegessen' would come at the end in German: Gestern habe ich gut im Restaurant gegessen.

What's Scouse?

'Scouse' means 'from Liverpool'.

Any information on the etymology?

The etymology is debatable. The most likely one is that it comes from 'lobskows' - a kind of Swedish stew which became a generic name for the stew served on board ships. To this day in Liverpool, a version of Irish Stew (potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions, lamb) is known as 'lobscouse' or simply 'scouse'.

But don't get me started on 'wet nellies' or 'conny-onny butties'

The Scouse accent has been described as one third Irish, one third Lancastrian and one third adenoids. I think that Scouse is a relatively recent term. At one time, Liverpudlians were known as 'Wackers' - because they would address everyone as 'Wack' (pronounced Wach).

For more info on Scouse:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/liverpool/content/articles/2005/01/11/voices_liverpoolaccent_feature.shtml

And you can here an example of Scouse (and other regional accents) here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/
Don't know why it doesn't have Glaswegian, though. They could have used a clip of Billy Connolly or Rab C. Nesbitt.

The only international body to recognise the independence of the Peoples' Republic of Merseyside is FIFA.

I am trawling through the backlog. I have got to post 507 and must protest. Gnomon who should God knows know better perpetrates a horrible mistranslation from Irish: "May the road rise to meet you"

This is not a literal translation but a wilful idiocy. The phrase "Go n-éirí an bóthar leat" means literally "May your road be successful" and is understood as "My your journey be successful". The idiocy is taking the verb éirí out of context, where it does indeed mean rise; but as part of the phrase "éirí leat" it simply means "succeed for you". To take it back to the sense of "rise" is as sensible as to translate "invent" as meaning "enter" (as in a sense hyper-literally it could).

Sorry G, you have found my pet grouse. You knew that already, didn't you? Did it on purpose, I'll wager.

Grouse hunting is in season! It is true that eirí means to succeed, but it also means to rise. The image of the road rising up to make each step easier than it should be has always been how I understood the phrase "Go n-eirí and bóthar leat". In fact, the normal translation is "may the road rise with you", which is a Godawful mangling of the language. I came up with "may the road rise to meet you" myself after much thought, and not a single one of those thoughts was Recumbentman-baiting.

Aha! The battling Irish.
And I'm inclined to side with both.
Their arguments are valid. And one can no more argue with scholarship than with folk tradition. Except perhaps to remind ourselves that usage is really the only authority, and no matter what the academics have to say, folk wisdom will prevail.


Also on the subject of roads and lost meanings I wonder about any potential snobbery and perhaps 'racist' or ethnic implications of that old Scots song:

"O, I'll take the high road and you take the low road and I'll be in Scotland afore ye..'
(I may have the high and low bits backasswards but my reference copy of ancient Celtic war songs seems to have wandered off to the tune of a differnet drum.)

Yes I am aware of the social barriers and the long history of conflict between highland and lowland Scots but surely if these be the subject of the song then it is one of those rare culturally mneaningful treasures that has (thus far) survived a good scrubbing from the Political Correctness Police.

Perhaps someone can enlighten us on the real history of the tune and its original meaning as opposed to any current academic interpretation or the popular understanding of its meaning.

Long may your big jib haul!

~jwf~

Welcome back to the Lying Down Man. Sorely missed.

Bonnie banks...

Unfortunately you *do* have it backsasswards. It was the songwriter who was taking the low road. It was (allegedly) written by a highland prisoner awaiting execution in Carlisle gaol. 'Highland' is a relative term. Loch Lomond is but a few miles north of Glasgow. The West Highland fault runs through it. This, and the fact that the adjacent Ben Lomond is the most southerly Monroe puts it at the start of the geological, if not cultural, Highlands. The song's popularity was increased by the vogue for 'The Highland Tour' in the mid 1800s - essentially a steamer trip over Loch Lonond, then by carriage towards the Trossachs. No great distance. You can drive it in about 30 minutes on a slow road.

No no no a thousand times no. It will not do to say that we each have a valid point. Gnomon's translation of "Go n-éirí an bóthar leat", to wit "May the road rise to meet you" is the version published in many musical settings of "An Irish Blessing" and on many tea towels; I humbly suggest it was lurking in his memory and is not his own brain child. See for instance http://www.donnasholidaysentiments.com/irishblessing2.html and http://cgi.tripod.com/music_irish/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?board=blarney;action=display;num=1079541851

Nor will it do to say that "go n-éirí leat" has something to do with rising, any more than "invent" has to do with coming in (in-venire). The opposite of "d'éirigh liom " (I succeeded) is "do theip orm" (I failed) and no mention of downward movement will serve to convey this meaning. ("Níor éirigh liom", "I did not succeed", casts no light on this question.)

I apologise to the BBC for persisting in arguments about a foreign language, but I'm not going to give up until Gnomon reconsiders his translation and one way or another eats his words.

Besides, I have had the experience of the road rising to meet me once or twice and it is not pleasant.

Thank you Edward.

The High Road has nothing to do with highlands. It is the major road.

"It's not the hopping over hedges that hurts the horses' hooves
But the hammer hammer hammer on the hard high road."

Choral exercise for the audible aspiration of aitches.

My case in detail Your Honours:

My learned colleague in the pointy hat says "It is true that eirí means to succeed, but it also means to rise."

I protest that this is not so. Éirí on its own does not mean succeed; only the whole phrase "éirí le+" means succeed.

Further he states "The image of the road rising up to make each step easier than it should be has always been how I understood the phrase"

I protest that this is perverse. To make it easier the road should fall away, so that the blessee would always go downhill.

Finally he says "In fact, the normal translation is "may the road rise with you", which is a Godawful mangling of the language."

It is not the normal translation; the normal translation is "May your journey be successful". The normal mistranslation is his own version (see URLs posted above), and "may the road rise with you", is if anything very slightly less of a Godawful mangling of the language than that. It is at least word-for-word.

No wonder they call you argumentative

I had always thought "I'll take the low road" to mean I shall be dead.
(pronounced deeed, no doubt).