Zemblan Grammar

7 Responses to “this is actual!”

1. 1 Brandon
   August 30, 2007 at 7:57 am

   Not that I’m trying to encourage you to bash your head in with a rock or anything but here, for no apparent reason, is a mangled reproduction of the first few lines of the Canterbury Tales in Old English, as I remember them, several years removed from a class on Chaucer I took one winter term in Zembla.

   Whan the Aprile, with the soorest sota,
   The draught of Marte, perced to the routa,
   and brote evere veine with its sweet licour,
   which vertua, enjondured, is the flore

   This is what $45,000+ bought me. Thanks, Zembla!

2. 2 Alfina the Vague
   August 30, 2007 at 8:25 am

   Oh, glaven! I had a Chaucer class as an undergrad, too, and we also had to memorize and recite a huge chunk of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales…those first 4 lines are all I remember, too. If you catch me in person, we should, like compare middle English accents. Er, or not. No, lets not. That might be lame.

   Also, I am glad you noted it was winter term — that makes the prospect of Chaucer class even more depressing, with Zemblan winter as the background. Yech!

3. 3 clarabella
   August 30, 2007 at 2:44 pm

   well, i don’t know if it’s a regional thing, but just wait until you get “supposebly” and “probly” and “all the sudden.” I see these ALL the bloody time. SUPPOSEBLY? Really? Does anyone past the age of five actually think this is a word? Obviously, if you ask the students down here. Almost as bad as “libary,” which I have also seen in my crooked letter students’ papers. Gah!

4. 4 TimT
   August 30, 2007 at 8:32 pm

   The other Chaucer line I remember - because it was quoted in the introduction - is ‘The smilere, with the knif undere his clok’. Which is quite good, really. (Eccentric spellings are mine, the genius is Chaucer’s).

   Perusing a copy of Viz yesterday, I spotted the headline: WHAT IF DIANA HAD OF LIVED.

   Appalling! Granted, most people read it for the puns and poo jokes, but that’s no excuse for bad grammar.

5. 5 Brandon
   August 31, 2007 at 9:04 am

   My middle English accent is much like my signing voice. Both should be locked in an enchanted chest and buried a thousand feet below the ocean. If ever combined, the results would be cataclysmic- much like the opening of the Ark or Pandora’s Box. Real Book of Revelations-type stuff, cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria.

6. 6 Timothy
   September 5, 2007 at 12:05 pm

   Is it wrong to admit that I’ve never read Chaucer?

   TimT: DUDE! What’s even more awesome is that that “WHAT IF DIANA HAD HAVE LIVED” is just as bad.

7. 7 Alfina the Vague
   September 5, 2007 at 3:58 pm

   C- Libary is the best! All of the sudden, I wanna go to that there libary and rent us up some mooooovies!

   T - Damned Viz magazine, infecting the youth of today with bad verb constructions!

   B - Middle English and Karaoke it is, then!

   T - Some of it is really entertaining, actually, but on the whole you are probably not missing a lot.