this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
384 points (95.9% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35831 readers
1161 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds — J. Robert Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer famously quoted this from The Bhagavad Geeta in the context of the nuclear bomb. The way this sentence is structured feels weird to me. “Now I am Death” or “Now I have become Death” sound much more natural in English to me.

Was he trying to simulate some formulation in Sanskrit that is not available in the English language?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 120 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

It's from English, not Sanskrit. More specifically, an archaic English feature, where you'd use "be" instead of "have" for the present tense, if the main verb denotes a change of state (such as "become"). Note how "I have become Death" sounds perfectly fine for modern readers.

Odds are that Oppenheimer was quoting either an archaic translation Bhagavad Gita, or one using archaic language (this is typical for religious texts).

Also give this a check. English used to follow similar rules for be/have as German does for sein/haben.

[Shameless community promotion: check !linguistics@lemmy.ml ! This sort of question would fit like a glove there.]

[–] oohgodyeah@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Thank you for sharing the Linguistics community. Subscribed!

[–] Masterkraft0r@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago

I think he translated it himself. It's an archaic text though, so translating it in modern english would also be weird probably.

[–] masterspace@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

where you'd use "be" instead of "have" for the present tense, if the main verb denotes a change of state (such as "become").

But in that example isn't the "am" replacing the "have"?

I have become death

I am become death

[–] mick@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes. The conjugates for “to be” are: I am, You are, He/she is, etc.

[–] pianoplant@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you think about it the fact that modern English uses "Have" in this context (primarily describing something you own) is actually weirder than "Am" (something you are)

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's almost like a different word, a hononym. To have and to have done something in the past. Neither being nor possessing really works for the "have done". Being works for become because become has being as a part of its meaning as well as a transition from some previous thing that was before.

Though both are used similarly. I have ran. I am running. I will run. I guess have is still the odd one out since will is future tense for am. Though was also works. I was running. But was is more specific than have, it feels like "I was running" is a part of a narrative that includes a specific time, while "I have ran" doesn't require anything else. It's like you possess the previous action of running, so maybe it is apt. Language is funny.

[–] Butters@lemmywinks.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn’t this get into something like past vs past perfect, future vs future perfect?

I can’t remember this shit from grade school.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'm awful with what they are called. Had to look up homonym, was about to use synonym instead.

[–] lightsecond@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

to be is an irregular verb that takes the forms am, are, and is in the present tense. to become is a different verb which has the forms become, and becomes.

[–] elxeno@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you make "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" correct with some linguistics magic?

[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Linguistics is mostly descriptive, mind you; it doesn't "make" things correct, it explains what happens.

That said, "are belong" wouldn't work. "Belong" indicates possession, not a change of state, so even under older grammatical rules you'd still need to use "have" with it. And you'd need to use it in the past participle (belonged), not the base form (belong). Note that Oppenheimer's quote doesn't have this problem because the past participle of "become" is still "become".

And the present perfect wouldn't even make sense here. CATS is not saying "those bases used to belong to us, and they still do"; it's more like "those bases used to be yours, but now they're ours". You'd need to use the simple present here, "belong" - "now all your bases belong to us", without an auxiliary, with the "now" highlighting that this wasn't true in the past but it is in the current time.

[–] Kowowow@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Ah maybe I can learn german understand half the memes on lenny