How about the English?

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The following is written by someone, in which I only found one (or two) mistake ("will lost" should be "will lose"; charter should be chartered?). If you find any grammatical mistakes, please point them out; and, if possible, please improve it.

　I was kidnapped into the Chinese Legation on Sunday and shall be smuggled out from England to China for death. Pray rescue me quick?
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　　Please take care of the man for me at present．He is very poor and will lost his work by doing for me．
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　　A ship is already charter by the C L for the service to take me to China and I shall be locked up all the way without communication to anybody．O! Woe to me!

And the handwriting of this:

http://www.picupload.us/images/556sun_s_handw.jpg

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Type: Question • Score: 5 • Views: 1,816 • Replies: 53

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@oristarA,

Why do you want to "improve" on the English of Sun Yat-Sen?

1 Reply

@contrex,

That's a very good question.

1 Reply

@McTag,

McTag wrote:

contrex wrote:

Why do you want to "improve" on the English of Sun Yat-Sen?

That's a very good question.

Every one's created equal in God's image and we all need to get rid of such celeb superstition. Contrex and McTag.

You've already "overreacted" too much in search of "context, context and context," Contrex, which I've hoped that you would not do in this particular case. If Sun Yet-sen's English were consummate, it would be a miracle. It would be a great example for English learners to follow. But is it a miracle? Seems not.

It is understandable to give an objective and impartial evaluation and examination on the writing in the sense of English grammar, is it not?

2 Replies

@oristarA,

oristarA wrote:

It is understandable to give an objective and impartial evaluation and examination on the writing in the sense of English grammar, is it not?

A somwhat arid project.

0 Replies

@oristarA,

oristarA wrote:

It is understandable to give an objective and impartial evaluation
and examination on the writing in the sense of English grammar, is it not?

Permit me to point out a logical problem with your last sentence
(which, arguably, might be a run-on sentence, divided by your comma).
If someone answers by saying "yes" or "no" can u rely upon his answer ??
Did he reply to the first part of your question
(" It is understandable to give an objective and impartial evaluation
and examination on the writing in the sense of English grammar, . . . " )
or did he reply to the last part of your question ?? ( " . . . is it NOT ? " )

Can u later hold him to account
for his answer to such a question ??
His answer of "yes" or "no" can be addressed by him,
in the privacy of his mind, to EITHER
the first part of your question or to the last part thereof.

It is also worth remembering that if u cast a question
in the negative ( " is it NOT true that yadda, yadda, yadda ? " )
he might be telling u whether it is NOT so. His answer might mislead u.

For example, years ago, a former criminal prosecutor told me
of a case in which someone allegedly got away with murder
because of such a malformed question. Defendant was convicted
of murder on the basis of testimony from a witness
who said "yes" when asked whether it was NOT a fact
that he saw defendant shoot decedent. The witness disappeared, became unavailable.
On appeal of the conviction, defendant argues that there was no evidence of a crime.
He points to the record where the witness (by saying "yes")
attested that it was NOT a fact that he saw defendant shoot decedent.
Conviction REVERSED, new trial ordered; no witness available.
Defendant cannot be tried, for lack of evidence. He is free.

It is safer to ask someone what IS true, instead of the opposite.

David

2 Replies

I'm unclear why you want to change it. It's the actual words of an important historical figure, Some of the word choices are not necessarily what a native speaker would use. It is, however, intelligible as it stands and those are the historical words used. Why do you want to alter them?

Contrex does not overreact about context. All too often, when you were giving us just a sentence or two and no context, it was flatly impossible to tell whether it was right or wrong and what it meant because it was impossible to get an idea even of what the subject matter was. We try to help, but you have to give us enough surrounding matter that we can tell what they're talking about.

If I were to ask you the meaning of "When I get all steamed up, I will shout, 'tip me over and pour me out' ". You'd probably have absolutely no idea what it meant, but probably 90% of English speakers (Americans anyway, I'm not sure whether Brits could or not, whether it's in their tradition too, or indeed whether or not it came from them to us) could tell you instantaneously. It all depends on the context.

2 Replies

@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

Defendant was convicted
of murder on the basis of testimony from a witness
who said "yes" when asked whether it was NOT a fact
that he saw defendant shoot decedent.

That seems silly to me. Only in America.....

"It is a fact, is it not, that......"

The expected/correct answer is "yes". The judge did not understand the English language. The defence counsel should have been shot.

3 Replies

re McT:
Particularly if he was David.

0 Replies

@McTag,

Jesus Christ, here we go with that arrogant "only in America" horseshit. I seriously doubt the proposition that barristers in England are any less likely to use obfuscatory language in examining witnesses than are trial lawyers in the United States. It is, after all, basic to the trade, wherever it is practiced.

0 Replies

So, Set, you're American, what does "Tip me over and pour me out" mean?

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

I've never heard such an expression. You know, there are more than 300,000,000 of us. Does it not occur to you that idiomatic expressions might not be ubiquitous?

0 Replies

Not idiomatic. Part of a very common kid's song, one of the most common nursery rhymes. Let me rephrase my answer, oristar, "90% of Americans excluding Setanta".

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

I stand corrected--not all idiotic expressions are ubiquitous.

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It's a kid's song, you expect formal logic? It's something most kids, but obviously not you, probably learned, somethin oristar almost certainly would never have heard, hence something that emphasized the importance of context.

1 Reply

@MontereyJack,

MontereyJack wrote:

I'm unclear why you want to change it. It's the actual words of an important historical figure, Some of the word choices are not necessarily what a native speaker would use. It is, however, intelligible as it stands and those are the historical words used. Why do you want to alter them?

Contrex does not overreact about context. All too often, when you were giving us just a sentence or two and no context, it was flatly impossible to tell whether it was right or wrong and what it meant because it was impossible to get an idea even of what the subject matter was. We try to help, but you have to give us enough surrounding matter that we can tell what they're talking about.

If I were to ask you the meaning of "When I get all steamed up, I will shout, 'tip me over and pour me out' ". You'd probably have absolutely no idea what it meant, but probably 90% of English speakers (Americans anyway, I'm not sure whether Brits could or not, whether it's in their tradition too, or indeed whether or not it came from them to us) could tell you instantaneously. It all depends on the context.

I 'm an American, but I 'm not in that putative "90%"

David

0 Replies

@MontereyJack,

There are any number of "camp songs" which i never learned because i never attended a summer camp. Given that we would go fishing when our chores were finished in the summer, that families went into the woods to gather berries and nuts in season, and that we, like most famlies, had a cabin in the forest, it would have been a waste to have spent money to send us off to a summer camp. You make a prime mistake which many people make in assuming that your personal experiences are universal or nearly universal.

0 Replies

@McTag,

DAVID wrote:

Defendant was convicted
of murder on the basis of testimony from a witness
who said "yes" when asked whether it was NOT a fact
that he saw defendant shoot decedent.

McTag wrote:

That seems silly to me. Only in America.....

"It is a fact, is it not, that......"

The expected/correct answer is "yes". The judge did not understand the English language.
The defence counsel should have been shot.

The account, as it was related to me,
was that defendant was indeed convicted of homicide.

That was overturned on appeal
when the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York
found that the witness, had testified on the record
that he did not see the event,
because of the question that had been addressed to him.

Incidentally, I 'm reliably informed that many trial court judges
r now establishing in their rules of court that attorneys
are ordered to avoid casting questions in the negative
(e.g., " is it NOT a fact that . . . " ) because thay give rise
to unnecessary confusion.

David

0 Replies

kid's song, not camp song. Wiki it, "enormously popular". I never went to camp either (god, I take that back, Boy Scout Camp, where we didn't sing, and Church Camp when I was older and we sang hymns. both of them sucked, I sort of repress the memories). So you probably never learned, "Nobody loves me, Everybody hates me, I'm gonna eat some worms, Fat ones, Thin ones, Ishy gishy gooey ones, Ones that wriggle and squirm" either. I'm so sorry that you missed some of the simple joys of childhood, Set.

1 Reply

That one is a camp song. I learned it from my sister, who learned it at Girl Scout Camp, who took great delight in teaching it to me. They had better songs than we did, and were less fascistic.

0 Replies

How about the English?

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