Heave /Hove to -what are the limits?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

BTW Germans were occupied, Normans were the occupants. Normans were not French?

Someone was, as clearly English is just simplified French.

HM has no leisure time, she is busy applying another coat of varnish on her Britannia ;-)

b.

Umm, English is not actually simplified French, even if it has a lot of French in it, and is simple. It's, as I said, a kind of pidgin between low German (Anglo-Saxon) dialects and French. For what is a "pidgin" language, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin. The base is Germanic and English is classified as a Germanic language. But after the Normans took over, educated people and the overlords spoke French (yes, Normans were French), leaving the peasants with their own Germanic language, which degraded over the centuries, and got mixed with a lot of French words. Et voila, modern English.

Now that English is officially the world's common language (or lingua franca, if you prefer ), a lot of furriners must be awfully perplexed, how the world ended up with such a beast, instead of Latin or French or Ancient Greek or Russian.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

But after the Normans took over, educated people and the overlords spoke French (yes, Normans were French), leaving the peasants with their own Germanic language, which degraded over the centuries, and got mixed with a lot of French words. Et voila, modern English.

Good Lord man! I am crying I am laughing so hard! Not only is it a peasant language, but it has degraded too! And is mixed with French?! Sacre bleu!

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Don C L

Good Lord man! I am crying I am laughing so hard! Not only is it a peasant language, but it has degraded too! And is mixed with French?! Sacre bleu!

Ha, ha.

As a native speaker of English, it is painful for me to say it, but it's all true!

[Juho]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Ha, ha.

As a native speaker of English, it is painful for me to say it, but it's all true!

Nothing wrong with being a language of peasants (a language of some special small grouping would be no better). Also nothing wrong with exchanging words with neighbouring languages.

My uneducated understanding is that it is typical to the English language that it can and does easily borrow all kind of words from various directions (the grammar is easy enough to allow quick adoption).

English is a good lingua franca. One reason is its simple structure that does not require years of studies of grammatical structures. Just put one word after another and you are good to go. When compared to some other Indo-European languages I also enjoy the fact that I need not learn the gender of each word (weird, why should a horse be masculine or feminine, except of course when it is a stallion or a mare).

I have some complaints though (reasons why English is not a good lingua franca). One is the very strange mapping between what you write and what you pronounce. Another one is its large vocabulary of words. This may be related to the ease of adopting of all kind of words from all directions. You can learn basic English in few months, but it takes decades to learn all the funny words that some native speakers sometimes use (like heave, heave to and hove).

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Juho

Nothing wrong with being a language of peasants (a language of some special small grouping would be no better). Also nothing wrong with exchanging words with neighbouring languages.

My uneducated understanding is that it is typical to the English language that it can and does easily borrow all kind of words from various directions (the grammar is easy enough to allow quick adoption).

English is a good lingua franca. One reason is its simple structure that does not require years of studies of grammatical structures. Just put one word after another and you are good to go. When compared to some other Indo-European languages I also enjoy the fact that I need not learn the gender of each word (weird, why should a horse be masculine or feminine, except of course when it is a stallion or a mare).

I have some complaints though (reasons why English is not a good lingua franca). One is the very strange mapping between what you write and what you pronounce. Another one is its large vocabulary of words. This may be related to the ease of adopting of all kind of words from all directions. You can learn basic English in few months, but it takes decades to learn all the funny words that some native speakers sometimes use (like heave, heave to and hove).

You should try Portuguese where one word can have several meanings..

[Don C L]

Well, you know what Steve Martin said about France...
They have a different word for everything!

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Juho

Nothing wrong with being a language of peasants (a language of some special small grouping would be no better). Also nothing wrong with exchanging words with neighbouring languages.

My uneducated understanding is that it is typical to the English language that it can and does easily borrow all kind of words from various directions (the grammar is easy enough to allow quick adoption).

English is a good lingua franca. One reason is its simple structure that does not require years of studies of grammatical structures. Just put one word after another and you are good to go. When compared to some other Indo-European languages I also enjoy the fact that I need not learn the gender of each word (weird, why should a horse be masculine or feminine, except of course when it is a stallion or a mare).

I have some complaints though (reasons why English is not a good lingua franca). One is the very strange mapping between what you write and what you pronounce. Another one is its large vocabulary of words. This may be related to the ease of adopting of all kind of words from all directions. You can learn basic English in few months, but it takes decades to learn all the funny words that some native speakers sometimes use (like heave, heave to and hove).

I agree with you, probably, about borrowings from other languages -- it enriches a language. But this happens not only with "peasant" languages, but also with highly structured languages like Russian and Finnish, which are both full of foreign words.

But it's a double edged sword -- that's the source of English's enormous vocabulary, which is a hurdle for non-native speakers.

At the other extreme you have a language like German, where all the foreign words were deported and a Trumpian wall built around it (Hitler did it, and the changes were never repealed). So you have a tiny vocabulary which anyone can learn in a month, and on top of that you have the perfect, machine-language like orthography invented by Martin Luther, which makes German supremely easy to learn and clear in expression.

For sheer expressiveness, you might consider a language like Russian, which is structurally like Latin or ancient Greek. The problem with that is that Russian is so complex and so hard to learn that if Russian were chosen as a universal language, it would end up being like Sanskrit -- accessible only to the Brahmin priesthood and not to ordinary people. Even native speakers can't speak it -- educated Russians spend their whole lives learning their own language. They even go to classes.

English has a big advantage as a universal language in the sheer volume of popular culture produced in it. I think half the population of Finland speaks good English not from school classes in it, but because they've been watching dubbed American and British TV their whole lives. Probably true for a lot of other people around the world as well.

But you are right about the dreadful English orthography, if you can even call it that. How do foreigners tolerate it? It's a nightmare.

There wasn't even any such thing which even pretended to be orthography in English, until fairly recently. It used to be that you could just make up any spelling you liked, for any given word -- typical of a peasant language. Our President Andrew Jackson said "It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word." And now people all over the world, struggling to learn English as a foreign language, are saddled with the results. A far cry from your august Académie Française, which has existed since 1635 (!!).

[StuM]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

This runs contrary to what Stu said.

b.

Au contraire, that's exactly what I said.

You are using the verb "to hove" in your examples

The correct verb in this case is "to heave (to)"

Hence:
It's time to heave to.
I was hove to.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

tee hee.


But as the occupants are actually Germans, I'm not sure they will disagree . . .

Don't forget the Greek.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by StuM

Au contraire, that's exactly what I said.

You are using the verb "to hove" in your examples

The correct verb in this case is "to heave (to)"

Hence:
It's time to heave to.
I was hove to.

But it is the verb hove that has the correct meaning, not verb heave. (At least that's the way I read it from the examples).

And if we opt for heave to be the word then the phrase 'heaved to' is (also) correct, for heaved can be flexed as either heaved or hove.

Right / wrong?

b.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

(...)

Now that English is officially the world's common language (...)

ROFL

Participating in an English speaking forum can lead to misleading finds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ative_speakers

English is third, long way behind Mandarin and some distance behind Spanish.

b.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

But it is the verb hove that has the correct meaning, not verb heave. (At least that's the way I read it from the examples).

And if we opt for heave to be the word then the phrase 'heaved to' is (also) correct, for heaved can be flexed as either heaved or hove.

Right / wrong?

b.

Right!

The SOED ( made from reconstituted tree bones ) gives 6 uses of the verb 'Heave'... just to lift, haul up, cause to swell or rise up, etc

Not one of them is 'to stop'... you have to go to Hove for that..... (ME, origin unknown). 3 meanings given, #2 being ' to wait, linger, stay, remain' which is what you are doing when hove to.

And lets stop quoting revisionist internet dictionaries which any man and his dog can edit.

[Saleen411]

So, um, all this fascinating language discussions aside,...

Do condo cats heave/hove to work a darn?....

I apologize if this has already been addressed.

Viking-Norman-British-Yank Jer

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

ROFL

Participating in an English speaking forum can lead to misleading finds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ative_speakers

English is third, long way behind Mandarin and some distance behind Spanish.

b.

World's COMMON language doesn't mean the community of native speakers. It means language of communication among different communities of native speakers -- the lingua franca.


English is not only the dominant world language today, it is the most dominant and globally prevalent world language which has ever existed. It wasn't that way even 30 years ago, and it is amazing how it is spread like wildfire since then.


"By far the most widely spoken and fastest spreading world language today is English, which has over 840 million primary and secondary users worldwide."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_language


If you see two people from different countries speaking with each other, anywhere in the world, chances are they will be speaking English. I've even seen two native speakers of Swedish speaking English with each other, because they didn't understand each other's dialects.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Sea Dreaming

Oh barnikel...there is all kinds of wrong with this! Norse -North. Northmen.
While it's true English borrows from French / Latin , the basic root is germanic. Thus stems from the Viking influx into the British Isles . Many English words are actually recognizable in Dutch.
Norse is an old germanic, viking dialect and the origin of the French norse.

C'mon. I never mentioned Norse. I said Normans. I always imagined Normans were descendants of the Norse but linguistically part of the Roman culture by the time they visited Hastings.

Thanks for clarification. I clearly must read up some. Last time I studied the history of the English language was XX years ago. (Age of the poster not disclosed, but note the double digits). ;-)

As for the 'basic root' I am not sure it is. Much depends on how you elect the root. Most words came from either French or Latin, only some 25% are Germanic words. And the Latin words came via French (Norman), not via German (Anglo-Saxon). So to say the vocab root is basically French.

So, what you call 'the basic root' is English grammar?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...eChart.svg.png

Alas, this tells me little about being heaved to in a sailing vessel.

I started with the correct forms, then some natives intervened and now I have it all upside down. NEVER ask a native, always consult Collins Cobuild! ;-)

Very nice drift. Much more interesting than the limits ;-)

Love,
b.