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Post by Verbivore on Jun 13, 2019 10:15:25 GMT
Situation:
Royal Personage Poobah said / did something in Year Dot while bearing the title Prince. Later that person became King.
A century after the prince’s promotion to kingship History Prof. Musty reports on that above-mentioned event of Year Dot.
Which honorific / title ought to be used for the royal actor of that Year Dot event: Prince Poobah or King Poobah?
Similarly:
Why is James Cook (he of Endeavour fame in Australia’s pre-colonial history) always referred to as Captain in narratives preceding the end of his second voyage (1775 – when he was first made Captain)?
Cook held the rank of Lieutenant when he commanded the Endeavour on his 1768–71 voyage, so ought not he be correctly referred to, during reports of that journey, as Lieutenant Cook?
In almost every Cook mention (from school textbooks and newspapers to documentaries and popular culture, from formal to informal) I find him referred to as Captain regardless of his rank's being Lieutenant at the time of the reported events.
Is there a convention on such matters?
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jun 13, 2019 13:23:58 GMT
I agree about “Captain” Cook and, in fact, many other such notables, but careful writers use formulae like:
Major Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) [did something or other] OR The Duke of Wellington (then Major Wellesley) [did something or other] OR King George VI, when Duke of York, [did something or other]
So one should prefer: under the command of the then Lieutenant James Cook (later Captain Cook) ...
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Post by Dave Miller on Jun 13, 2019 17:01:18 GMT
I'm with ljh on this: the something was said or done by "the then Prince Poobah". If the reader won't work out who that is, then it can be "the then Prince (later King) Poobah".
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 14, 2019 10:43:27 GMT
LJH and Dave M: Thank you, and yes, those are the approaches a careful writer would take (one would hope), but that's unlikely to happen in the less formal everyday mentions: that ship's master will still be Captain Cook, even before he was. Is this a dumbing down or do I worry too much over First World Fringe problems. (No! Please don't answer that! LOL)
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 14, 2019 10:47:11 GMT
On a lighter note … I found the following "grammar note" two days ago within four hours of having my 5-yearly colonoscopy. Just had to share it.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jun 14, 2019 12:04:47 GMT
😁
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 14, 2019 13:51:35 GMT
For variety … I stumbled across this stream-of-conciousness rant in YouTube comments on a nuke reactor video (it was the pretty blue light that drew me in, Sir ). It’s almost devoid of punctuation – 2 periods; 1 (misused) apostrophe; 3 caps – yet I found it easy to read (far more so than I would run-ons with myriad misplaced commas), albeit in a breathless “free verse” anti-rhythm. Rather minimalist? Dystopian fantasy? Dadaist? LSD or psilocybin? Whatever drugs inspired that poster (nom de screen Chernobyl reactor4) response on YouTube, I also liked the author’s flipping the bird to some of the other posters who were doing their best to sound knowledgeable while talking through the wrong orifice (a lot of that on YT, increasingly since that medium's "monetisation" * push by owner Alphabet). At least that irreverence is what I took to be his aim. * Oh. How. I. Dis. Like. That. Term!You’ll love it or loathe it. But at least it’s something different, fresh, to play with for a moment … a change from Received Style. (I’ve made NO emendments.)
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 16, 2019 21:32:13 GMT
A large banner ad near the bottom of Translate.com:
If that's the standard to judge the service by I think I'll give it a miss (or a ms).
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 17, 2019 4:58:28 GMT
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Post by Trevor on Jun 17, 2019 11:24:41 GMT
On a lighter note … I found the following "grammar note" two days ago within four hours of having my 5-yearly colonoscopy. Just had to share it. View AttachmentMade me laugh out loud in a quiet coffee shop.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jun 17, 2019 12:45:54 GMT
An interesting post on Miriwoong. Thank you, Vv. It raises the question as to when a language can be called ‘dead’. Latin, is or was, described as a dead language when I was a boy but it is spoken, I think, fluently by some scholars and Roman Catholics. On the other hand, Cornish is spoken by no-one as a first language or, I think, fluently by anyone, although there have been efforts to resurrect it and to teach it locally. Is it dead or just moribund? Either way, why save it? I think we should — but why?
It’s part of our heritage, of course, but so what? We are happy to eradicate the smallpox and rinderpest viruses, thus destroying entities that have taken millennia to evolve. Subjectively: Great. Objectively: Why?
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 19, 2019 8:25:03 GMT
Do others share my gripe with today's over-use of quantum? It's more and more a daily bitch of mine!
Other than its uses in physics, computing, and neuroscience, quantum has only the following accepted / reported uses – condensed from (a) the Oxford English Dictionary; (b) the Oxford American English Dictionary; (c) Merriam-Webster's Dictionary (online); (d) Wikipedia. It is now much abused in the dark art of bureaucratic obfuscation,* as in the following example clipped from today's news (my newspaper! – albeit a direct quotation from a government apologist):
when a council bureaucrat was referring to the unspecified cost of a proposal, hinting very obliquely at a property-rates increase.
quantum: • Sum, amount; = quantity 2; spec. in Law, an amount, a sum (of money payable in damages, etc.). • One's share or portion. • A (specified) amount.
Granted, the exampled usage might be (just) within definitional boundaries, but it's nothing more than a way of sounding pompous, important, and superior to one's lessers. (It seems to afflict bureaucrats in inverse proportion to their seniority, and is more often abused at local-government level than state or federal.)
* bureaucratic obfuscation = If you can't stun them with science, baffle them with bullshit.
PS – Twod: Perhaps you have a tale of, or an opinion on, bureaucratic obfuscation, given your years-long affliction with employment in government agencies. Shovels being called manual excavation implements, or hammers referred to as percussive fastener-drivers, for example.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 19, 2019 8:34:22 GMT
At the base of the Translate.com webpage is a large banner promoting the superiority of a human translator: Verify your content is translated at the highest-possible level of quality Ask for human translation service and get your text is adapt relatively in response to the comments presented ORDER NOWHmmm … I think not.
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Post by Twoddle on Jun 19, 2019 9:37:19 GMT
PS – Twod: Perhaps you have a tale of, or an opinion on, bureaucratic obfuscation, given your years-long affliction with employment in government agencies. Shovels being called manual excavation implements, or hammers referred to as percussive fastener-drivers, for example. The Civil Service and Local Government are experts at this sort of thing. I first became aware of it in my youth when dustmen became "refuse collectors" or even "refuse operatives", and their dustcarts changed to "refuse collection vehicles". I still bridle at personnel departments being called "human resources" departments and secretaries becoming "personal assistants". My final boss, before I seized retirement with both hands and a grip of iron, drove me bonkers by insisting that we should refer to problems and difficulties only as "challenges", and that solving such problems invariably provided "robust solutions". I knew it was high time I left gainful employment when I attended a meeting at which someone declared that "We must drill down to the gold standard". I hadn't the vaguest idea what she was talking about and had to ask a nearby trendy young whizz-kid for a translation. Apparently it meant that we should provide an excellent service, so why not bloody well say so?
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 19, 2019 12:37:39 GMT
PS – Twod: Perhaps you have a tale of, or an opinion on, bureaucratic obfuscation, given your years-long affliction with employment in government agencies. Shovels being called manual excavation implements, or hammers referred to as percussive fastener-drivers, for example. The Civil Service and Local Government are experts at this sort of thing. [...] I knew it was high time I left gainful employment when I attended a meeting at which someone declared that "We must drill down to the gold standard". I hadn't the vaguest idea what she was talking about and had to ask a nearby trendy young whizz-kid for a translation. Apparently it meant that we should provide an excellent service, so why not bloody well say so? Sounds like the Baker St Lloyds Bank robbery of '71. Or perhaps a dentist drilling for more money from some hopelessly decayed teeth. Thanks for your contributions on bureaucratic obfuscation, Twod. Where I live / work we have a mayor who – despite or because of being a Steiner school teacher (I'll plump for the conjunctive rather than the prepositional) – can't string words together into a cohesive sentence, so instead he bluffs his way through with "on-trend" (ugh!) verbiage and much bluster. When the mayor "communicates" that way of course his underlings will mimic, perhaps to curry favour or maybe just to impress themselves. They fail to impress those outside their tight little local-government "club". So much humbug – and they still can't fix a pothole (we are Pothole Capital!) without their legal counsel, court cases, and countless convenings of councillors, committees, consultants, and construction crews. They talk about talking about talking about … without saying or achieving anything much – but they do it with an overwhelming lexicon of weasel words. That's local councils for you. (Tried being a councillor once but quit once I realised the futility of trying to reform a boys' club of businessmen pushing their own barrows.) Harrumph!
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