Category Archives: Englishlang

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones)

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I have actually read all the novels of this series to date. I must be mad! but you knew that anyway. However, it has the advantage that when other TV presenters say to Jon Snow ‘You know nothing’, I get it.

After finishing the first volume, I intended to watch the Game of Thrones DVDs only and stop reading, since the plot seemed better than the writing, but somehow I went on reading and have only seen two or three episodes of the TV version.

The reasoning behind starting these books was: masses of people read fantasy literature and science fiction, and I don’t fancy it at all, but have I given it a fair trial? Lord of the Rings (read in early sixties at school) was annoying, Harry Potter (read from late nineties because students expected it) quite good. I suppose most of the problem with these books is the way some readers totally identify with the characters and the world created. There is an instinctive desire to disagree with them. Thus it was when I was at dinner table where someone ran down Harry Potter but had not read it that I realized I’d have to try it, so I authorized myself to opine.

There were things I didn’t like in general about fantasy literature as I imagine it to be. One thing was the shallow characterization: events and atmosphere more important than character.

I was also misled when I read the review by John Lanchester, because I overlooked the fact that Lanchester actually likes fantasy literature and thus was biased. I would have liked to read a review by a non-fantasy-lit. type, but that was not going to happen.

One advantage Martin has is his use of a medieval model, so we know about knights and battles and the importance of birth. There are some more fantastic elements like the white walkers and the children of the forest, and live dragons and direwolves, but the main framework doesn’t need masses of explanation because the map is roughly Great Britain plus a bit more and the families are like medieval dynasties.

It is also quite helpful that most of his characters have names spelt unexpectedly, because that means you can look them up on the Web and find them (Margaery, Robb, Sansa, Arya, Petyr and so on).

One thing that worries me is the concern of fans that Martin might die before finishing the series. OK, he took six years over the last volume. But he is 65 and overweight!
Game of Thrones author rebuffs health fears with the finger and F-word. Where does this leave me? It’s about time I started doing something sensible.

Here are some notes I took of the style, which is often pseudo-medieval, sometimes pseudo-British and sometimes somewhat American.

much and more
little and less
three-and-ten
wroth (sic)
mine own
the babe
elsewise
pot shops (sic)
poison ivy (in a world based on the UK)
nuncle
mayhaps
I misremember, I mislike
leal service
for the nonce
that ought not pose much difficulty
good-daughter

turnips (are these rare in the USA? they are constantly being eaten)
whilst (felt to be quintessentially British)
yellow onions (surely a US expression)
oft

Occasionally odd use of shall, but I can’t trace that now.

Ms Justice

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How to address judges

This is now outdated. There is now a Ms Justice.

A high court judge, Alison Russell, QC, has become the first to be formally addressed as Ms Justice after being given permission to use the title in court.

Judges in the high court are normally referred to as Mr Justice or Mrs Justice but Russell, who joined the bench full time in January and specialises in family law, was allowed to update the traditional form.

They have been called Mrs Justice before, whether married or not, because Miss Justice sounds like misjustice.

But then there was a time when Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss was called ‘Lord Butler-Sloss’.

Dame Elizabeth, who is sister to the late Lord Chancellor, Lord Havers, and aunt to the actor Nigel Havers, became a High Court judge in 1979 at the age of 46. In 1988 she broke new ground when she was appointed to the Court of Appeal. She was called Lord Justice Butler-Sloss and “My Lord” for six years until the then Master of the Rolls, Sir Thomas Bingham, said that she could be called Lady Justice Butler-Sloss.

One question is why indicate a judge’s sex at all. I see that if a text refers to Mrs Justice or Ms Justice, you know it’s a woman judge. It may be a good thing that people realize that female judges exist, or it may be unnecessary discrimination. In a German text, it would always be ‘die Richterin’. I remember correcting students for translating that as ‘the woman judge’ (a colleague famously took a mark off for just writing ‘the judge’ and thus missing out part of the meaning).

The translation question also arises with ‘Frau Schmidt’ and so on, where the translation needs an English title. Ideally the client should know whether Mrs, Miss or Ms will be preferred. If you don’t know whether the Frau is married or not, will she be offended to be called Ms?.

It is very difficult to get called Ms here in the UK. The fact that people don’t believe it can be pronounced on the phone is one thing – I seem to spend hours hanging on the phone trying to sort things out – but there seems a tone of ill-will sometimes if I insist on it. I therefore pass as Miss a lot of the time, since Dr feels like overkill and I don’t want to pass as Mrs (airlines usually give the choice between Mr and Mrs).

My feeling is that things were different here thirty years ago. I was shocked when I first received a birthday card from a relation addressed to “Miss”. And I discover that when I ask companies to write to me as “Ms”, there is either surprise at my insistence or irritation. My surprise isn’t because in Germany every woman is “Frau”, but because things have changed in this country. Eve Kay confirms my feeling:

A quick survey around the offices where I work uncovered an interesting generational divide. Most of the women under 30 had never even heard of the title Ms and couldn’t understand why I was so worked up. Equally, most of the women over 30 were vociferously in favour of Ms and thought the title Miss preposterous. Elisabeth Murdoch, chief executive of the company I work for, noted: “You become a Ms as opposed to a Miss on your first day as a professional … I don’t think you take a Miss seriously (nor would you take Master seriously). And, as for the choice of Mrs – I am not someone who subscribes to the idea of assuming your husband’s identity rather than your own.”

A note on punctuation: BrE says Mrs, Mr, Dr, Ltd are contractions, not abbreviations, so take no full stop at the end. I suppose that Ms is the same, even if no one is sure what the long form is. AmE tends to put a full stop (period).

Buses and state courts

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Can you commit a breach of copyright by watching streaming pornography? The Cologne Landgericht (officially translated into English as the Cologne Regional Court) has apparently admitted that it may have been unjustified in requiring the names of customers to be revealed, following which letters before action were sent out, requiring recipients to pay 250 euros (text corrected – see first comment).

In the Guardian and elsewhere, the Landgericht has become the Cologne state court.

Did they get the story from an American press report? The Independent uses it too. But even there, state court is a misleading term. We’re not talking about a dual system of federal and local law here.

Some US sites intelligently write of a Cologne court. That seems enough information in this context.

I’m not sure whether the German site The Local purports to write US or British English:

Cologne lawyer Johannes von Rüden represents hundreds of what he says is at least 10,000 people who were sent the legal letters and ‘fines’ from Bavarian law firm Urmann and Colleagues (U+C). …It is thought the Cologne state court only ordered internet providers like Deutsche Telekom to hand over names and addresses of customers because it misunderstood what Redtube.com was.

Yes, Abmahnung is difficult to translate.

The Local also reports that ‘buses’ are Germany’s new favourite transport.

But it does condescend to refer to coaches later in the article.

Goeuro.de, which released the online search figures, says it expects around a million passengers to travel by coach around the festive period.

The pilcrow’s partner in crime: §

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Keith Houston, of the Shady Characters book, turns his attention to the section symbol.

I’ve always known it as the section sign, or section symbol; Robert Bringhurst (The Elements of Typographic Style)[1] and Theodore Rosendorf (The Typographic Desk Reference),[2] my go-to typographic references, agree. It seems odd, though, that this eminently shady character has no other name. Have you come across any other names for the pilcrow’s partner in crime?

It’s called the paragraph sign in German, and it symbolizes law. It’s used in US statutes too, but there called the section symbol.

The commenter Erik writes:

It’s a symbol I used heavily (as a mathematical symbol) in my PhD thesis, and many other people who use it in the same way I did referred to it as “paragraph” which always drove me nuts because to me, the “paragraph symbol” is the pilcrow. But sadly that name is out there. I always called it the “section symbol”.

Typography for Lawyers reminds us to use a non-breaking space after these symbols.

On the book:

If Eats, Shoots & Leaves whetted your appetite on the subject of punctuation, then you have a treat in store. Shady Characters is an authoritative, witty, and fascinating tour of the history and rationale behind such lesser known marks as the ampersand, manicule, the pilcrow, and the interrobang. Keith Houston also explains the octothorpe — otherwise known as the hashtag — and my final comment on his book is #awesome.
Ben Yagoda, author of How to Not Write Bad

Judgment and judgement

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It’s not a secret that UK legal usage prefers the spelling judgment (Urteil) and general usage judgement (Urteilsvermögen).

I do sometimes wonder about mixing spellings in one text, but not so Lord Neuberger:

Judgments are the means through which the judges address the litigants and the public at large, and explain their reasons for reaching their conclusions. Judges are required to exercise judgement – and it is clear that without such judgement we would not have a justice system worthy of the name – and they give their individual judgement expression through their Judgments. Without judgement there would be no justice. And without Judgments there would be no justice, because decisions without reasons are certainly not justice: indeed, they are scarcely decisions at all. It is therefore an absolute necessity that Judgments are readily accessible. Such accessibility is part and parcel of what it means for us to ensure that justice is seen to be done, to borrow from Lord Hewart CJ’s famous phrase.

I’m not sure about the capitalization of Judgments.

The source is the first annual BAILII Lecture on 20 November 2012 , No Judgment – No Justice.

Via Binary Law

LATER NOTE: for more detail, commentary and links, see Peter Harvey’s post.

Signing off on emails/Wie unterschreibe ich eine E-Mail?

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Diamond Geezer has a great post on how to start and end an email, with 44 comments at present. It starts Hi Reader and ends Many thanks dg.
I think this shows that there is no easy answer to how to address people in both formal and informal emails.
I hope this post doesn’t come across as prescriptive, because I have great doubts about all forms of address and closing.
In German, the problem is just as great.

First, in letters (British English only):
Dear Sir or Madam … Yours faithfully
Dear Mr. Smith /Dear John … Yours sincerely
In the law firm I worked in, we had this closing for clients:
Kind regards

In formal emails, you might start
Dear…
And close:
Best regards
Kind regards
Is this right? I rarely write formal emails in English and I have been known to close
Yours sincerely

which may be a no-no in email.

Now the emails to friends, acquaintances and forums.
I usually start:
Hi
Some write
Hello

To a forum, I often start without a greeting.

To close, I usually write
Regards
Some write
Kind regards
Best regards
which seem awfully formal to me.
Then there are
Cheers
and if one wants an answer
Thanks
Many thanks
TIA
MTIA
Best wishes
I particularly liked dg’s comments on Take care.

Take care. Whereas this one’s not so good. It may be only eight letters long, but there’s an unspoken hint within that something terrible is about to take place. You might as well end your email with “Watch out!” instead. It’s much too negative for me, and I’d hope for you too.

But I suspect that Take care is more common among Americans.

Now about German. First, formal.
A potential new client might write:
Sehr geehrte Frau Marks … mit freundlichen Grüßen /freundlichen Gruß
or
Hallo Frau Marks
Guten Tag Frau Marks
This is less formal and might come from the secretary of a client one already knows.
After some time, the client might want to be more friendly:
Liebe Frau Marks
Hallo Frau Marks /Guten Tag Frau Marks
Beste Grüße
Herzliche Grüße
Viele Grüße
Not everyone likes Viele Grüße, but I quite like it, and in any case I follow the client’s lead.
Non-Germans should note that the ß character has not been abolished – Gruß/Grüße and Straße are the most common pitfalls (except in Switzerland, of course).

Now in German to friends, acquaintances and forums.
I do have a difficulty here, because I have found German forums more formal than American and British ones. Maybe that’s because I was on CompuServe much earlier than on German forums and they seemed slower to relax. I have had my knuckles rapped and been thought to be intentionally rude for writing to a forum without a greeting. This was obviously an offence against German netiquette. I don’t know if that is the case any more, but I have an uncomfortable feeling when I write to a German forum.
So some write
Liebes Forum
Liebe Mitglieder
or some variation on the forum’s name.
Otherwise it’s down to
Hallo
Moin
I don’t feel northern enough to use Moin (which is not limited to the morning)
I usually close with
Gruß
but always feeling it is a bit abrupt.
I have not got used to the increasingly common
Liebe Grüße
which feels overfriendly to me but is possibly becoming standard.
I have just checked my inbox and found one
Schöne Grüße
and one
Mit kollegialen Grüßen
(this reminds me a bit of Mit sozialistischem Gruß in Goodbye Lenin).
It’s also, I remember, fairly common to mention the weather in one’s location:
Mit verregneten Grüßen aus Köln
Mit sonnigen Grüßen aus München
or if one wants a reply to a question
Neugierige Grüße
Is this done in English? I certainly avoid it.

LATER NOTE:
It’s been pointed out by a commenter that MfG is a bit of a no-no, especially in formal correspondence.
That reminds me of some abbreviations widespread in informal contexts. Thnx rather irritated me because it’s scarcely shorter than Thanks.

Lawyers among themselves use Mit kollegialen Grüßen (see comment). I sometimes have to translate this into English, and the equivalent is just Yours sincerely or Best/Kind Regards. There’s a lovely heated discussion on this on the LEO forum.

And I forgot to mention the direct address I often use on forums: just the name of the person addressed, without any ‘Dear’.