Biblical Hebrew Forum

[George F Somsel <gfsomsel AT juno.com>]

On Mon, 5 Sep 2005 08:39:06 +0100 "Read, James C"
<K0434995 AT kingston.ac.uk> writes:
> Imagine 2,000 years from now a group of 'scholars' that go about 
> studying the now dead English language.
>  
> They stuble frequently upon the phrase 'what bad education'.
> They know that the construct 'what bad' usually indicates an 
> exclamation of negativity but are not familiar with the
> term 'education'. What do they do? They look at the cognate 
> languages!
>  
> In the italian language they find the well documented phrase 'che 
> maleducazione'. Reasoning that educazione is 
> the cognate partner of education they assume that the meanings are 
> the same. 'Che maleducazione' means something like 'What bad 
> manners!' or 'How rude!' or something like that. They theorise that 
> English has the same 
> meaning and go off and check the data. They go off and find many 
> phrases like:
>  
> What bad education standards they have in Herts!
> What bad education standards they have in schools these days!
> What bad education methods they employ!
>  
> Having analysed the data they see that the meaning of 'what bad 
> manners' fits the context well and apart from one 
> or two difficult examples they conclude that this is the correct 
> meaning. Their work gets published and for generations is taught as 
> well accepted scholarly work.
>  
> A young student with little experience with English, but good 
> linguistic instincts comes along and feels that the 
> accepted view just doesn't feel right. He finds it difficult to 
> reconcile this idea with the examples where, according to
>  him, the context demands the idea of 'accademic schooling' to be 
> understood. He is abruptly laughed out of class 
> and fails his exams for agreeing with the scholarly concensus which 
> is firmly based on the majorit of extant
>  examples and a well attested cognate proof. 
> Undettered he goes home and takes it upon himself to compare every 
> extant example of the phrase and to put his 
> theory to the test. After seeing that his interpretation fits every 
> single occurence of the phrase and also seems to 
> throw a clearer light on previously misunderstood examples. Not 
> wanting to jump the gun he tries to prove his 
> theory wrong but the more he does so the more his good linguistic 
> instincts show him that his first instincts were 
> right.
> As a last shot he searches throught the archives of italian 
> literature and stumbles across an overlooked rosetta 
> stone. He finds two parrallel newspaper articles talking about the 
> increasing bad manners of youngsters with 
> each passing generation. He notices that the term used in the 
> italian version is 'maleducazione' where English 
> talks of 'bad manners'. He now feels that he has conclusively 
> gathered enough evidence to show that the 
> 'scholars' got it wrong.
>  
> He tries to publish his work but everyone ignores him. Why??? 
> Because he didn't get his degree!!! Why didn't he 
> get his degree??? Because he didn't blindly agree with the 
> 'scholarly' concensus.
>  
> He decides to publish his work on public forums hoping to get a 
> warmer welcome and bumps into a well lettered 
> scholar. The well lettered scholar digs up a paper that comments on 
> the newspaper articles and puts it down to 
> idioma in an isolated example and challenges the youngster to prove 
> that it is not just an isolated example of an 
> idiom. The youngster insists that he needn't but the 'scholar' 
> retorts immediately that as he is the one going against 
> the 'scholarly' concensus the owness of proof is on him. The 
> majority of the forum is impressed by the 'scholar's' 
> resourcefulness and familiarity with 'scholarly' works and pays no 
> heed to the enthusiastic youngster with no degree.
>  
> Sound familiar?
_____________

It sounds to me like a highly improbable story which you have concocted
to justify yourself.  I don't believe your complaint that you would have
had to compromise your beliefs.  That's . . . (ummm) HOGWASH! 

george
gfsomsel
___________