Re: "I didn't know that..."

Jim Henry skrev:
> On 3/12/06, Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:
>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "R A Brown" <ray@...>
>
>
>>>Exactly. Although way back in PIE times the 'proto-subjunctiv' did have an
>>>irrealis usage
>
>
>>Okay, Ray, perfect!  If you keep this up, people like Mark and myself will
>>eventually copy you, and write "subjunctiv."  What other more visible
>>listservs are you on?  How many other fellow writers write it this way?  In
>
>
> In Charles Sprague's _Handbook of Volapük_ (1887; online:
> http://personal.southern.edu/~caviness/Volapuk/HBoV/hbv.htm)
> he uses the same forms for grammatical terms in -iv and
> and also "masculin" and "feminin".
>
> "Upon the recommendation of the American Philological Association and of
> the London Philological Society, I have dropped the final e, misleading
> and unhistorical, from such words as "infinitiv," "feminin," etc."
These are of course the normal spellings in languages like
Swedish and German, so I don't see them as ridiculous at all.
Lest I propagate a new spelling reform thread I should probably
*not* say that dropping a silent letter here and there, *and*
introducing doubled letters in some other places actually would
make English spelling less ambiguous.

OTOH Sprague writes:

_The exclamation-point is used after a simple address, as well as
after an ejaculation._

I had no idea that _ejaculation_ could mean "A sudden short exclamation,
especially a brief pious utterance or prayer."

Now that *is* ridiculous.  Probably a good thing that I and my Latin
classmates didn't know that when producing things like "Canes veniunt
penibus erectis".  We were very surprised that these pranks didn't
enrage our teacher.  Little did we consider that he had taught Latin
to teenagers for twenty years.

--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

Reply