Hmm. I take your points to some extent, though I’d suggest that “figure” in your last example, meaning shape, is a slightly different (though related) word than “figure” in the sense of calculation.
Beyond that, “IV” is certainly not the same thing as “quattuor.”
As for the wiki, see Arabic numerals.
I think it’s the sense of calculation that is the outlier here. Figure (shape) and figure (character used to represent numbers in writing) seem to be the same word to me.
I don’t know what you mean by that, but my point is that “IV,” whether representing a number or a word is made up of two letters and their meaning is apparent only in context. The same is true in the Greek numeral system. There are no figures in either system.
But the point is not whether the text can be successfully analysed. Authors write to be read, not analysed.
The distinction is meaningless. All use of language must be analysed. Authors choose their words and their spellings consciously in order to create the impression that they want to create.
Furthermore, every reader is constantly analysing every bit of linguistic communication. No linguistic communication is apparent on its face.
As readers, we are constantly learning about words, the use of words, the shades of meaning, the particular linguistic habits and intentions of any one writer. Unfamiliar spellings and vocabulary are exactly within the framework of a reader. To try to avoid them is an insult to the reading mind.
I was scrolling through hoping nobody else would’ve thought of that. Maybe it was a French dictionary, and he had to look up “anguille, voit: mon aéroglisseur est plein d’…”
Reminds me of the Glenn Beck where he makes a stupid acronym to spell “OLIGARH” (sic). Then he says that yes, it’s missing a letter for some reason, and it should be “OLIGARHY” (sic, again). :smack:
I really don’t understand your point here. I don’t read for analysis. So much so that despite being an avid reader, I hated English Literature at school because for me trying to pick apart books takes all the pleasure of reading away. But to only read books that take no effort on my part to understand would be extremely dull and very limiting. Part of the magic of books is that they transport me to another world and much of that comes across in the language and dialects used.
Surely if you want to make all books as easy as possible for the reader to understand you would translate them all into modern idiom? There is certainly an argument for modern language versions of classics (cf any number of Shakespeare adaptations among many others) and I do enjoy them, but I also enjoy reading the author’s own, orginal text.
{sigh}
Perhaps you should re-read what I’ve actually written across the course of several posts in this thread. Since others here have understood me (without necessarily agreeing with me), I shall leave it at that.
I reject your {sigh}
This is exactly the argument I’m addressing –
Ha, that reminds me of my Ancient Civilizations teacher in high school who taught us about King Nebuchadnezzar (or as he pronounced it, “Neh-boo-SHAD-na-zar”).
I have never once said that books should be extensively rewritten.
Let’s try a different tack:
Suppose you run a newspaper in (say) Kentucky. If you receive copy from a British news agency, would you never make alterations to the text you’d received, in order for its meaning to be best conveyed to your readership?
If a British article refers to a politician wanting to get feedback from his “constituency”, that has a subtly different meaning on the two sides of the Atlantic. Surely it would be better for this putative newspaper to alter the text slightly so that the exact meaning of the original was preserved? As I understand it, the US meaning for “constituency” has a narrower meaning than the British one; the American reader would (incorrectly) assume that the writer meant that the politician concerned was only interested in that portion of his electoral district’s population that supported him or his party.
Newspaper articles and general journalism are a completely different issue from literary works and fiction.
This is a hijack/nitpick, but this isn’t quite correct. In the U.S., “constituency” means all the people that a legislator is elected to represent, not just the ones who supported him. “Constituencies” in the plural also refers to individual interest groups (industries, ideologies, etc.) whose support a politician might try to attract. In the U.K., “constituency” also refers to the geographical region that in the U.S. would be referred to by other terms – district, ward, etc.*
…and it translated into English as “My hovercraft is going across Channel, bouncy-bouncy”
Exactly - which even I, as a dumb Brit and not a qualified teacher, know: the South was aiming to secede from the USA, not to conquer it. But I did not think that interrupting would have gone well.
Typical modern history teaching too - a lot of babbling on about how it felt to be an abolitionist and a whole lesson on “Amazing Grace”, but damn little about who did what, when, where and why. Gah.
My Grade 11 Social Studies (read: History) teacher put a question on one of our tests about who led the French assault to take back Quebec following Wolfe’s success on the Plains of Abraham. Montcalm was one of the answers, which I chuckled at - until she announced that it was the “right” answer. Zombie French generals would be tough to beat.
This is the same woman who insisted that Sable Island off the coast of Nova Scotia had to be inhabited - it’s a famous wild horse preserve (and shipwreck ghost yard).
My cousin and her family lived there at the Environment Canada station.
I suppose I should be clear - she insisted that there would be a thriving recreational cabin population.
My daughter teaches 5th grade science and as part of her annual professional training requirements, she attended a seminar for science teachers that featured presentations by an assortment of college instructors and senior science teachers. One of these, I think she said he taught in college, informed the assembly that Einstein proved that gravity did not exist. The force was, in fact, inertia. At that point, my daughter’s head exploded and she quit listening to him.
This isn’t a case of wrong information as much as a teacher letting her emotions totally prevent her from understanding a pretty simple concept: Citing an example of bigotry is not the same as endorsing that belief.
My sixth grade teacher asked for an example of a stereotype. I raised my hand and said “That Polish people are stupid.” (This was back in the '70s when most kids were familiar with and told stupid jokes based on the subject of the joke being dumb because they were Polish, kind of like blond jokes.)
Well, her eyes lit with fire and she lit into me along the lines of “How dare you! What are you?” I said that I was part Polish. “Well, why do you insult your own people that way?” She was furious with me. (She went by her married name “Smith,” but apparently she was of Polish extraction.) This was a Catholic school, and so we didn’t usually talk back to our teachers or entertain the concept that they might be wrong or anything like that. I stammered “But…You asked for… I was only…” but she just glared at me.
Meanwhile, the girl who sat behind me and had a last name along the lines of Wojochieowski, leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t worry, I know what you meant,” which made me feel a little better, but I was sure that teacher hated me after that.
Most newspaper articles are intended to convey factual information relatively briefly. Even a long colourful feature would rarely be intended to take more than half an hour to read. A novel (which is what I think we’re talking about here) is a different kettle of fish. The reader has much longer to build up a feeling and the amosphere the author is trying to convey is more important.
YMMV. I watch a boatload of American TV and read a lot written by Americans on the internet so I almost never have any difficulty with US English usage. I would be irritated and jarred to read something set in the US in British English (unless it was intentionally told from a British perspective). Personally I think it would be better to have explanatory footnotes - that way a reader who needs a pointer gets it, without changing the original text. The reader also gains a better understanding of the variety of English usage, hopefully preventing them from the sort of idiocy posters were criticising at the start of this derail (telling off pupils for using their native version of English correctly).
Sure.
But then there’s plenty of different types of works of fiction, some much more “literary” than others, some much more bound up in a particular milieu than others. However, and especially given the amount of fairly bog-standard fiction that’s produced, I can’t see why there should be a problem in some circumstances/contexts for selective changes to be considered, in consultation with the original author (the latter obviously excepting such things as my example of agency text).
That’s all I’ve been saying here!