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  • Byron died (19-4-1824)

    From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 20 12:46:27 2024
    Yes, the famous poet.

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

    A linguistic observation by Byron:

    "...few are slow
    In thinking that their enemy is beat
    (Or beaten, if you insist on grammar, though
    I never think about it in a heat)..."

    (Don Juan, canto 7, stanza 42 -- describing a battle between the
    Russians and the Turks)

    I actually cited this passage (among others from OED) in an a.u.e.
    discussion about the passive participle "beat". It is used by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dryden, John Wesley, Lord Nelson and many others, but
    Byron's is an interesting indication that by his time prescriptive
    grammarians considered it "incorrect".

    The other Byron quote (too long to copy) is about meeting the celebrated "hyperpolyglot", Cardinal Mezzofanti.

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

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  • From Aidan Kehoe@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 20 08:47:32 2024
    Ar an fichiú lá de mí Aibreán, scríobh Ross Clark:

    [...] The other Byron quote (too long to copy) is about meeting the celebrated "hyperpolyglot", Cardinal Mezzofanti.

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

    Now that’s a Wikipedia article full of suspicion!

    --
    ‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
    How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
    (C. Moore)

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  • From Ross Clark@21:1/5 to Aidan Kehoe on Sat Apr 20 23:21:54 2024
    On 20/04/2024 7:47 p.m., Aidan Kehoe wrote:

    Ar an fichiú lá de mí Aibreán, scríobh Ross Clark:

    > [...] The other Byron quote (too long to copy) is about meeting the
    > celebrated "hyperpolyglot", Cardinal Mezzofanti.
    >
    > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Caspar_Mezzofanti

    Now that’s a Wikipedia article full of suspicion!


    I thought it was quite an interesting account of the continuing
    skepticism about exactly how many languages he knew, and about the
    essential difficulty of putting numbers to such things.

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  • From Aidan Kehoe@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 20 13:43:27 2024
    Ar an fichiú lá de mí Aibreán, scríobh Ross Clark:

    On 20/04/2024 7:47 p.m., Aidan Kehoe wrote:

    Ar an fichiú lá de mí Aibreán, scríobh Ross Clark:

    > [...] The other Byron quote (too long to copy) is about meeting the
    > celebrated "hyperpolyglot", Cardinal Mezzofanti.
    >
    > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Caspar_Mezzofanti

    Now that’s a Wikipedia article full of suspicion!

    I thought it was quite an interesting account of the continuing skepticism about exactly how many languages he knew, and about the essential difficulty of putting numbers to such things.

    There is one hyperpolyglot of my acquaintance who could manage a conversation of some sort in about thirty languages. Of course, this is post-internet, where it’s easier to get practice in, but also he’s not a cardinal of the Catholic
    church of that time period, with the opportunity and resources of that context.

    The man is long dead, it’s going to be impossible to be certain of his command
    of the more obscure languages, for me the appropriate approach of the Wikipedia article would be to describe his contemporaneous reputation and reknown and what evidence there is for that.

    --
    ‘As I sat looking up at the Guinness ad, I could never figure out /
    How your man stayed up on the surfboard after fourteen pints of stout’
    (C. Moore)

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