I find the notion that from whence to be defendable just because of the King James Version rather silly. The KJV is full of flowery phraseology that would be totally obsolete today were it not the Bible that many grew up on.
From whence is more defendable because a wide range of older writers have used it, and because redundancy is indeed rife throughout the language.
But we - prescriptionists and descriptionists alike - all draw lines somewhere. For me “from whence” is just plain wrong. Perhaps if everyone also used from thence and from hence it would feel more idiomatic to me, but alone it feels like a solecism.
That’s why the American Heritage Dictionary runs usage polls and why those polls never unanimously agree on any individual usage - not to mention change with the years. A good writer will not be hurt when using “from whence” because it will be buried in a surrounding sea of good prose. Bad writing will be obvious even if whence is used without the from. Better to be a good writer than to learn instances of good usage.
I think that we all have to draw the line someplace, and what sounds good or acceptable to one of us clearly doesn’t sound good to the rest. That’s how the lines get drawn between the prescriptivists and the descriptivists - as we get used to the sounds of things and no longer cringe at the way they strike us as the language changes. The redundancies that seem to drive some of us nuts - such as the ones that anchor this thread - must be some of the most potent of items in the shifts over time. I, for one, cannot get over the traffic reporters - particularly the ones on public radio, who should know better - who report on traffic “going northbound.” Argh! Don’t tell me that’s just stylistic. It’s redundant. Ok. I feel better now. Henceforth, I’ll be calm.
What the hell are you talking about? This thread is about English, not Latin. Perhaps you are under the misapprehension that English grammar is somehow descended from Latin? If so, then you might study up on your English, as it comes from an entirely different branch of the Indo-European family tree. While it’s relevant to discuss Latin grammar in the context of words borrowed from the language (for instance, while rightfully castigating the illiterates who pluralize “index” as “indexes”), it’s certainly not relevant when discussing “whence”, which you can tell at a glance is not a Latin borrowing.
I have never in my life heard that. I don’t doubt that people have said it - people make mistakes in speaking - but going around and railing about slips of the tongue is, well, nutso.
No, it’s not. There is no “-ence” suffix at all in English.
Well, then don’t read the Bible or Shakespeare.
I’m sure you’re much smarter than the authors of the King James Bible, so your pronouncements are certainly correct. However, if the rest of us slip and follow a common usage that has existed for centuries and has been used by the great writers of our language, I hope you’ll excuse us.
I think the old saying is apropos: Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will follow it.
Actually, I think it’s more accurate to say: the actual change when people start using ‘from whence’ instead of ‘whence’ or ‘from where’, or ‘going northbound’ instead of ‘northbound’ or ‘going north’ is the change in the definition of the words ‘whence’ and ‘northbound’ rather than an outright embrace of redundancy. ‘Whence’ and ‘northbound’ are simply understood nowdays to be synonyms for ‘where’ and ‘north’. As objectionable as some of you may find that, people now simply don’t want to put up with the unusual practice of declining pronouns. It’s too much of an ass-kissing toward French and Latin.
Now I’ll be pissed off as anyone when someone uses ‘whom’ instead of ‘who’, so just count it as a blessing that we’ve come to attach ‘from’ to ‘whence.’
those are some fighting words out of someone who doesn’t know what the hell he is talking about. For the most part, English uses sentece structure (word ordering) to indicate the role a noun is playing in a sentence. Latin, however, changes the words themselves. This is why English is different from Latin, but obviously not in this case. ‘Whom’ is the equivalent of the accusative case that a noun goes into if it is an object. ‘Whence’ is the equivalent of the ablative, which has several miscalenous purposes, including its use with the pronoun ‘from’. This, actually, brings up a rather suprising point: In Latin you would still use a preposition along with the special case. So it is possible that ‘from whence’ was actually the original usage. Seems it might not be the first time the definition of ‘whence’ changed with the times.
You’ve never heard this abomination? I hear it frequently and I don’t think it’s a slip of the tongue - I hear this in commercials along with “save up to 25% or more” as well as from people who otherwise appear to be fully evolved homo sapiens. I can forgive “ATM machines” and I work in a “SIL lab” (System Integration Lab lab), but “7 AM in the morning” is just WRONG.
Ahem, as I’ve only heard “whence” used in classical contexts I’m comfortable with whatever they want to do. If I decide to attempt “whence” in casual conversation I’ll forgo the “from”, but I’m obliged to exactly quote otherwise.
Yes, dear. Latin had a fully-functional case system, while modern English retains only three cases, and those only within the pronoun system (the subjective, objective, and genitive cases, though terminology for them varies somewhat from source to source.) Very good! You get a gold star!
Actually, English is different from Latin because English is descended from Proto-Germanic, a different branch of the Indo-European languages than Latin, which is descended from the Italic branch. If you mean to say that one of the differences between modern English and Latin is Latin’s case system, then you would be correct. There are many other differences as well.
Another gold star for you!
This is not surprising at all. Latin’s case system is far less robust than that of, say, the Finno-Ugric or Turkic languages, which have such a glut of cases that adpositions are not necessary for describing things like “motion from” or “motion towards”. Latin, like all the Indo-European languages, has a much less sophisticated case system, and thus in this case adpositions are necessary, as the ablative case is used (as you mentioned) for many different circumstances. Actually, in Latin, the adposition is the key, not the case, as the choice of case depends on the adposition; different adpositions “govern” different cases in Latin. A number of adpositions don’t govern the ablative case at all.
Sorry, no credit on this section. My point, which seems to have eluded you completely, is that arguments by analogy to Latin are nonsensical, as we are not discussing Latin, but rather English. The intricacies of the Latin case system are irrelevant, as the particulars of the case system of Latin are not the same as those of the (very limited) case system of English. Looking at Latin to make guesses about the history of English is a very poor bet, as Latin and English are not terribly close relatives. Latin is not the only language with cases, you know - so it’s not obvious why you think Latin’s case system can explain anything in particular about English grammar at all.
Alright, fine, analagies are tenuous. But how about you demonstrate that proto-german had an quivalent of whence, and that it was not ultimately borrowed from the Roman occupiers. More so, how about you demonstrate that the usage of whence, which apparently came into prominence in the late middle ages, actually derived from this proto-German and wasn’t just a re-borrowing from Latin, which was a popular language at the time (especially among the breed of people who’d say ‘whence’). No matter the origin, I’ll bet you anything that Shakespeare and the King James Bible said “from whence” because in Latin you’d say “from whence.”
English has a dependence on the ‘-ence’ suffix. Its emergence to the eminence it now holds is a story of great consequence.
From henceforth I’ll stop highjacking, and return to whither I was going, for therefore will this thread return to the question from heretofore it addressed.
No. If you’re going to argue it, how about you argue it? Making an assertion and then saying “Prove me wrong!” is not a meaningful argument technique.
I will say that in the Proto-Germanic period, the Romans didn’t rule over the Germanic urheimat; it’s quite obviously not a later borrowing from Latin, since it doesn’t look remotely like a Latin word. Look, I get that you don’t know anything about the history of your own language, but that doesn’t mean no one else does. You might not understand how ridiculous your arguments sound, because you don’t have the context to evaluate them. Nevertheless, they are ridiculous, and English inherited very little grammatical equipment from Latin (the exceptions being some morphology inherited from the French a thousand years ago or so.)
On principle, I’m not going to do that. My American Heritage Dictionary here proves you wrong, but I’m not going to play your little game. If you make an assertion, it’s up to you to prove it. That’s how argument works. You make a claim, you defend it. It’s not up to everyone else to prove you wrong.
Also, find me a cite for your suggestion that “whence” was used in particular by the well-educated. I understand that now “whence” is a highly formal word, but it certainly hasn’t always been.
Then how about you prove it? Find a Latin word that even resembles “whence”. Then learn some about language contact, and find comparable cases of grammatical borrowing like this. Because one thing you would understand, if you knew what you were talking about, is that languages rarely borrow adpositions at all, nor any other members of closed lexical categories. It certainly happens, but it happens in the context of far more thorough language restructuring, as for instance with the influence of Chinese upon Vietnamese. Borrowing of basic grammatical material like this simply doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens in the context of one language being altered beyond recognition by the influence of another language.
You haven’t proven your point. You won’t, because your point is ridiculous. You may not understand that, but that’s because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Nevertheless, we will only continue this discussion if you start bringing in evidence to prove your assertions. That’s how argument works: you prove your own point. You don’t get to make any random assertion you like and demand that everyone else try to disprove it.
Hearing that in incedental speach is like hitting a mute button on the speaker.