An argument about the english language
- Thread starter Torrseph
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If you put a "with" between finished and their it would be grammatically correct. It makes sense as it is though, despite grammatical incorrectness.
Its not right but i don't know the technical reason why. The "been finished" doesn't fit it should either be:Torrseph said:
'Some people have finished their exams since Thursday.'
or something like
'Some people have been finishing their exams since Thursday.'
'Some people have been to finish their exams since Thursday.'
'Some people have been finished by an assassin'
I guess "finished" is the wrong tense for the context... or something.
Like others have said, it's just how the languages evolved. German remained relatively "separated" from other languages in that it didn't fuse with them. English, however, formed with multiple different languages from various different language branches within the vast Indo-European language division.MissPixxie said:
Plus, you have to look at how it has changed since. Modern English is nothing like the original Old English in both technical words (while "Thine" and "Thou" are not technically used, they're still recognized), as well as in subtle rules of its own.
English, comparatively, has a much more varied base from German, (which also no doubt changed from its original incarnation).
Sorry 'bout the length.
That sentence is perfectly correct and logical. What seems to be the problem with it?
I think if you are going to split hairs you have to understand that Queen's English isn't the only form of English out there, Irish sentence structure isn't the exact same as others because we have two languages and our original language heavily influenced the way we spoke English. I find nothing wrong with that sentence at all. It's colloquial, the same way people from America call boots trunks, crisps chips, etc.
I think if you are going to split hairs you have to understand that Queen's English isn't the only form of English out there, Irish sentence structure isn't the exact same as others because we have two languages and our original language heavily influenced the way we spoke English. I find nothing wrong with that sentence at all. It's colloquial, the same way people from America call boots trunks, crisps chips, etc.
Interesting phrasing. Kind of reminds me of a certain "incorrect" form here in America, that was common about 100 years ago, and can still be heard in some of the more isolated areas of the south. The equivalent version of your sentence would go something like "Some people done finished their tests on Thursday." Not technically correct, but it makes sense to people raised in the area. Now, a lot of people in the South are of some form of Celtic descent -- mostly Scottish and Irish -- so that makes me wonder if there's some kind of link between the wording you mentioned and the wording I just mentioned.Torrseph said:
OT: It's technically incorrect, but it may make sense in the Irish dialect, just like the one I mentioned makes sense in the American South.
The way I learned it, there's a very strong French influence as well as German. I came to understand that, as a general rule, many of our shorter, less syllabic words are very Germanic, and much of the more complex language can be traced to an early French origin. Dunno if that's 100% accurate, but that's what I had learned from here and there.MikailCaboose said:
But anyway, the general evolution of language is an ongoing thing. Someone would be hard-pressed to say that the English language behaves the same now as it did even a century ago. It's an ongoing evolution. Sentence structure that's perfectly acceptable today would have classified you as an illiterate with no respect for the word even a 100 years ago...
ed- like, our local paper has a habit of posting "flashback" stories that date sometimes clear to the early 1900s. It's amazing how pretentiously everything was written then as compared to today.
To add to this, the English we usually think of as "Old", where people actually used "thine" and "thou," was actually an early period of Modern English. Shakespeare's English was modern, Chaucer's was middle, and the author of Beowulf was writing in Old English. I don't know if any of you have ever seen an untranslated copy of Beowulf, but it was so different from modern English that it didn't even use the same alphabet; it used the Roman alphabet for the most part, but there were sounds that there were no Latin letters for, so there were still a few runes in place. This misconception is a minor pet peeve of mine, and clearing it up is actually relevant to the discussion at hand, as it explains a bit about why modern English is so different from modern German -- Old English and Old German split off from the same root language, and they've each had an Old, Middle, and Modern period.unoleian said:
have been finished? well that's wrong
'some exams have been finished' sort of makes sense as does 'some people have finished their exams' but not what your mate says.
'some exams have been finished' sort of makes sense as does 'some people have finished their exams' but not what your mate says.
Which is funny, because this instantly reminds me of a quote from the original draft of Beowulf I've remembered since high school. I'm sure the characters and syntax are wrong, but it's incredible to think this was once considered 'English'-Owyn_Merrilin said:
"Wyrd oft nerethe unfeagne eorl, thone his ellen deah."
(Fate often saves an undoomed warrior when his courage endures.)
Amazing, really, how far a language can evolve.
Let's see:
"have been finished" is incorrect."Have been finishing" is the present perfect continuous tense of "to finish." Present perfect continuous requires have/has been and the present participle. 'Finished,' should not be used, because it is a non-continuous verb in a continuous tense.
To convey the same meaning though, it is necessary to edit the sentence completely. It needs to be put into the simple past tense, i.e. "Some people finished their exams on Thursday." 'Since Thursday' cannot be used here because continuous time expressions are not permitted in the simple past tense, as the simple past tense refers to something that happened at a definite time in the past.
"have been finished" is incorrect."Have been finishing" is the present perfect continuous tense of "to finish." Present perfect continuous requires have/has been and the present participle. 'Finished,' should not be used, because it is a non-continuous verb in a continuous tense.
To convey the same meaning though, it is necessary to edit the sentence completely. It needs to be put into the simple past tense, i.e. "Some people finished their exams on Thursday." 'Since Thursday' cannot be used here because continuous time expressions are not permitted in the simple past tense, as the simple past tense refers to something that happened at a definite time in the past.
I'm running off what I can remember from Human Geography class almost two years ago. I'm not certain that I've got it one-hundred percent correct either, but there are certainly aspects of the Romantic languages in English.unoleian said:
And with the inclusion of slang terms, ugh. It's hard to say what the language will be like a decade later, much less centuries later.