Here's another twig in our brushpile of discussion about the influence of social norms on the development of language, or the influence of linguistic norms on the development of society.
In Harry Turtledove's alternative history, Striking the Balance, he writes:
Dolger looked up when Bagnall came in. "Guten Tag," he said. "For a moment, I thought you might be one of the partisan brigadiers, but I know that was foolish of me. As well expect the sun to set in the east as a Russian to show up when he is scheduled."
"I think being late -- or at least not worrying about being on time -- is built into the Russian language," Bagnall answered in German. He'd done German in school, but had learned what Russian he had since coming to Pskov. He found it fascinating and frustrating in almost equal measure. "It has a verb form for doing something continuously and a verb form for doing something once, but pinning down the moment right now is anything but easy."
"This is true," Dolger said. "It makes matters more difficult. Even if Russian had the full complement of tenses of a civilized language, however, I am of the opinion that our comrades the partisan brigadiers would be late anyhow, simply because that is in their nature."
So, assuming that Turtledove's fiction is accurate in its portrayal of Russian and Russians, which caused what? Does Russian not have a verb form to reflect right now because Russian culture does not value the concept, or does Russian culture not focus on the concept because the language does not make it easy to express?
Dear Vika: where are you when we need you?
The answer, I say, is elementary.
Culture dictates the creation and the usage of words which are, after all, only instruments of the perpetuation of the culture which is ,after all, only an instrument of the perpetuation of life.
Does not "Russian" have a present tense?
What is the "English" verb form of "right now"?
Well, "right now" is an adverbial phrase. We've verbed a lot of nouns and nouned a lot of verbs, but I don;t rightly recall ever verbing an adverb (or adverbing a verb for that matter.)
I studied a bit of Russian back in the dark ages (Kennedy years) and I don't remember ever having a problem with expressing time in the present or past tenses.
Spart:
I remember that passage when I read the book, and at the time I took it as hyperbole.
English has no verb form that pins down the time. I attack, I do attack, I am attacking. I attacked, I have attacked.
If I want you to attack now, I say, "Attack now." I don't say, "Oh, whenever you get around to it, and when you thing all the omens are right, move forward and shoot a few of the enemy over there on the right flank." Actually, strategic orders generally do not supply specifics such as "attack now" though they do at the tactical level.
I took both Russian and German, many years ago, and I don't remember any verb forms along the lines Turtledove was implying. I think most languages would use adverbial formations to get across the point of timeliness. Latin definitely uses adverbs (nunc (now) comes immediately to mind.) And notice how "immediately" works in the last sentence.
In looking back at your quote I'm coming to the conclusion that Turtledove was just prattling on to get a few more words on paper. He's really good at that. (though i still enjoy his stories!)
Ted
I need to think about it carefully but when I did my thinking I will write immediately
As far as I can judge there are several questions:
1. Does Russian have a verb form that points to “this is being done”.?
No. There is nothing like Continuos Tenses and to discern between “I do it regularly” and “I am doing it right now” one adds “right now” to a verb, that is the same for the Present Simple and Present Continuos.
In fact, if I estimate difficulties of studying English for a Russian speaker tenses are the second the first are articles but this was discussed elsewhere . You can notice that in my previous message. I've been told (thank you, Dr.Bill) that I should have used “when I have done” instead of “when I did”.
2. Does Russian culture value the concept of being on time for an appointment?
It does. In fact, I find that trains are more reliable in Russia than in UK - most of them stick to their schedule. So I think that Mr. Turtledove is wrong, there are Russians and Russians, some come earlier and some are always late.
Am I correct thinking that the story itself is not something like memoirs but rather something completely fictious where the author invents whatever he likes ?
the author invents whatever he likes ?
To a certain extent, yes. The stories (it's one of a series) are about WWII (The Great Patriotic War) proceeding merrily along its way when the aliens land thinking they're going to walk all over us in a couple of months based on observations they made 500 years ago. The author was perfectly free to make the aliens think and act any way he wanted, but he should be limited to known reality with respect to the humans.
That's why it's called alternative history [helpful look]
why it's called alternative history
Not to pick a nit or anything but alternative histories don't necessarily involve totally unknown actors. The author in question wrote a series based on the notion that Lee's list of troops didn't get lost into Union hands and the Confederacy won the War of Southron Independence. Everyone in that series had to act as we would expect people to act.
I think that what is behind this discussion is the difference between the imperfect tense of verbs and the perfect or some other preterite tense.
Most of the Indo-European languages I am familiar with have subtle differences in the various tenses which are used for an action which took place in some past time, whether a thousand years ago or five minutes ago. This is not well understood by English speakers who know no foreign languages, since English does not have, or use, as many past tenses.
The imperfect tense indicates a repeated or habitual action. Andava ogni settimana al ginnasio. He went [used to go] to the gym every week.
The perfect tense indicates an action which is completed, over and done with. Ich habe es ganz gegessen. I ate [have eaten] the whole thing.
There is also the pluperfect, which expresses a time prior to a past tense. I had not foreseen that result.
Different Indo-European languages have various tenses for use as a narrative past tense, or a distant past tense. These are not generally used in the spoken language.
The champion is classical Greek, which has not only the usual complement of past tenses, but also a special set called the aorist tenses, all past tenses, the subtle significance of which escapes me.
I don't think we should use its lack of separate verb forms to dismiss English's ability to handle subtleties in tense. We do wonders with auxiliary verbs. I used to go to Paris, I had gone to Paris, I have gone to Paris, I was going to Paris and I had been going to Paris all mean quite different things.
Can you tell me when and why Americans, especially, began using "do you have" and "have you got" instead of "have you"? (I assume "do" is related to the German word "tun".)
Heavens, Faldage, far be it from me to denigrate the ability of English to handle verb tenses without the array of verb forms which other languages have and which, for that matter, Old English had. Modern English is probably just as good as Classical Greek for its ability to express ideas with precision, subtlety and color. It just uses different methods. These methods, however, do not lend themselves to being arranged in a nice neat table which can, with a lot of trouble, be memorized, the way we classical scholars had to memorize all those tables for Latin and Greek nouns and verbs. It is because of this that English is an easy language to learn up to a point but one of the world's most difficult languages to master. (Many native speakers never master it.) I'm sure it's the fact that it's relatively easy to learn up to a point which has made English the most popular second language on Earth and the nearest thing we have to a universal language.
As far as that goes, the little classical Greek kids didn't learn their language from carefully crafted tables any more than modern English speaking kids learn theirs from text books. We all just do what, as the perennially MIA Xara would put it, tastes right.
Well, you're right, of course, Faldage. Certainly little Greek and Roman children didn't learn the basics of the language out of books, although there certainly must have been a lot of little rules children would be admonished with while learning the language. After all, we have to correct children to let them know that it's 'feet', not 'foots' and that kind of thing, and later on get in the i before e except after c rule. I would imagine that parents, or tutors, spent lots of time correcting little Iphegenia or Marcus when they had the gender of something wrong, or some such. It would seem that they learned all the inflections somehow, but how to use the various tenses, moods, etc. was a more serious matter.
The trivium or first 3 of the 7 ancient liberal arts and sciences, consisted of Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic. Basic grammar was learned as a child, but rhetoric and logic were learned from tutors. St. Augustine was a professional rhetor and tutor before he got religion. From him you would learn matters such as progression of tenses, when the subjunctive is needed and what tense; in Greek, the use of the middle voice (non-existent in Latin) and the Aorist tenses, etc. Logic came last, as you had to know how to express yourself before you took up how to make sense. Sure wish some of our leaders had had such an education.
Bob is right, of course, about the way that well-to-do or patrician children learned their language. But the mass of Roman children (well, let's say Latin-speaking children anyway) probably never went near a school. And they probably mangled the Latin language about as badly as ill-educated people do the English language today.
It's actually getting worse than it was twenty years ago. I understand they don't actually teach grammar in most schools these day because it's seen as prescriptivist and therefore totally unPC. But you can imagine what it does to the quality of the English language, can't you?
you can imagine what it does to the quality of the English language
Really. Next thing you know folks won't be using all the proper case endings on nouns, adjectives won't match their nouns in case and gender. Lawsy knows how we'll be able to understand anything anyone says.
Lawsy knows how we'll be able to understand anything anyone says.
What makes you think we do now?
What makes you think we do now?
Ic nat Þe Þu secgest
What is this character and how did you make it appear? Þ (I used copy & paste but I mean on a keyboard)
back to computer techniques 101... i think its a thorn, (its used in german, if i am not mistaken.. but no matter someone will know..)
as for how you make one..
what type computer do you have?
Window 95 or 98, go to Start-->Run--> (and type in )charmap it will open a window with your font set. (a menu window at top will allow you to chose an font.) the complete font will be displayed, in some cases, there will even be as scroll bar.
select any character (click on it) on the lower right hand corner of the window, there will be a key code.
hold the Alt key (usually) and use the numeric keypad on the right side of the key board (not the numbers above the letters) type in the key code.
voila
Alt + 0182 (and yes, the zero is needed)in Arial gives you ¶
Alt + 0198in Arial gives you Æ as in Ætna, or Æsop, Þ is Alt + 0222 in many fonts...
if you have a Windows 2000 machine, the char(acter)Map can be found on Start-->Programs-->accessories-->
if you have a Mac, ask AnnaStrophic or Jazzo...
these directions should be copywrited!©
if you have a Mac, ask AnnaStrophic or Jazzo...
If you have a Mac and want a thorn you're up the creek. Well, maybe, if you've got the right font up you can get it but if it ain't in KeyCaps fuhgeddaboudit.
there's a wonderful mac freeware app called
Font Explorer which is the best I've found(and I've looked
). you can find it here:
http://pages.infinit.net/trottier/fexpl.htmlunfortunately, I don't find the thorn in any of the standard fonts...
This site looks to be chock-full of places to retrieve Mac thorns. Odd that my Mac fonts include the eth (which doesn't reproduce here) but not the thorn. You gotta be careful to choose one that'll reproduce both in word-processing and on websites. I'm still digging through it all. The best bet seems to be to download Icelandic character code.
http://www.georgetown.edu/cball/oe/oe-fonts.html
Thorn, pronounced like 'th' in the word 'thorn', and eth (crossed 'd') pronounced like 'th' in 'there' were used in Old English, or Anglo-Saxon. This is the standard pronunciation in the West Midland dialect of OE, which is more or less the standard, since that's the one that got written down most often. In other dialects thorn and eth might have been pronounced the opposite way, or both the same. I believe they are also used in Icelandic.
There is no 'th' sound in German. Some words used to be spelled with 'th', like the verb thun which is the spelling in the Luther Bible, but the 'th' was pronounced like 't' and since the beginning of the 19th century, the 'th' has been replaced by 't', so the verb is now spelled 'tun'.