Magna Carta, Still Posing a Challenge at 800
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
From Wikipdia:
> Magna Carta was given its name in Latin, a language which has no direct, consistent correlate of the English definite article "the". As a result, the usual academic convention is to refer to the document in English without the article as "Magna Carta" rather than "the Magna Carta".
Of course, in proper English it's "the Magna Carta." The rules of Latin have no bearing on proper English.
Also: We don't call Paris "Par-ee" like in French. Words in different languages are different words. "Magna Carta" just happens to be spelled the same in English and Latin.
Leave it to the NYT to do the wrong but "fashionable" "academic" thing. At least we can count on that.
Language is prescriptive, but I don't want to have that debate.
I've been down to Mexico and I'm quite sure people don't try to pronounce 'Nueva York' as 'New York'.
On the other hand, these same reporters mangle Chinese city names with abandon, so it's not as if they're just trying to say the names in a native fashion --which I guess at least would make some consistent sense.
When I’m speaking a foreign language, I may decide to pronounce an English word with (the so-called) General American accent.
Transcription of foreign languages into Latin script is difficult in its own right since the "obvious" phonetic value of letters presumes certain phonosyntactic rules that don't always hold (e.g., Mandarin Chinese uses an aspirated/unaspirated distinction and not a voiced/voiceless distinction). It furthermore doesn't help that the main sources of transcription (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese) don't agree on the phonetic values of letters, nor that people tend to retain the traditional spellings of place names even when proper phonetic readings of that spelling (or even the verbal pronunciation of the name itself) changes.
In my opinion, trying to enforce "native" pronunciation of foreign place names is misguided: those who argue for it don't argue for Österreich, Deutschland, or Hrvatska, so why should we elevate foreign place names that merely happen to be spelled the same in English as their native tongue to getting special treatment?
I don't see many Italians who speak some English saying 'I come from Roma. They say Rome. On they other hand you have people who will say OOrooguay instead of the English Yourugwye. Maybe it's more a Latin American thing, not sure. At least it seems pretty prevalent. Maybe psychologically it has to do with the slightly anti-american disposition of many of the politicians down there. Lot's of them trot out the old "imperialists" trope when it's convenient. so maybe it's a kind of psychologically subversive thing.
I remember someone saying, well that's the name of my country in spanish, so that's why I say it that way --something along those lines. As if saying it with the english pronunciation took something away from their country being whole. Or maybe that was just a one off weird person.
Beijing? Peking? Pei-ching? Peiping? What is the correct spelling and what isn't for foreign names changes over time.
(It's quite amusing how Germans go to great lengths to use the new, Polish names for cities in former Prussia, while for Belgian cities that haven't been under German control for much longer, they insist on German names.)
Nope. You don't say, "the Paris" now do you? There's no particular rule of when you use "the" before a name.
As that notable academic, Tony Hancock, once asked, "Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?"
In fact there are rules about when proper nouns require articles. While there are a few exceptions, and the rules are sort of tedious, they do exist, as proved by the fact that you usually (90+% of the time) know whether to use the article on a novel proper noun.
Native speakers don't even know that they know the rules. I only learned through ESL education.
You can get started on the list of rules in a few places, this being one: http://usefulenglish.ru/grammar/part-8-articles-with-miscell...
This is probably just a species of a more general rule dealing with articles and things that have given names.
Or New York. Or London.
> There's no particular rule of when you use "the" before a name.
Well I don't know if the rules cover all cases, but one rule is you don't use "the" before place names. Or given names "the Barack Obama". Titles are OK "the President of the USA".
Clearly the names of "things" like books require the use of "the". Like "the Bible". It's important to distinguish between the "name" of a book and it's title. We clearly don't say "I read the To Kill a Mockingbird".
Names of things: "He appeared on television", "He started in radio", "He went to hospital", "He went to school".
It's unclear whether Magna Carta is used as the title of the document or not: it seems to depend.
The UK's best blogger on law, "Jack of Kent", puts it well:
[...]
“To be sure, the reach of the charter was limited. Nevertheless, as Eric Kasper observes in a scholarly review, “What began as a relatively small check on the arbitrary power of King John eventually led to succeeding generations finding ever more rights in Magna Carta and Article 39. In this sense, Magna Carta is a key point in a long development of the protection of rights against arbitrary executive power.”
— Noam Chomsky http://www.thenation.com/article/198513/killing-commons
http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/act/consol_act/mc129725e...
"No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised of his freehold, liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled or in any other wise destroyed; nor will We pass upon him nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."
With today's speech by the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, to the ACT's Supreme Court [1].
"Examples of [Federal] government overreach, she said, included powers to indefinitely detain - without rights to judicial review - refugees, asylum seekers, the mentally ill, and those suffering from infectious diseases."
The actions of the Australian Federal and ACT governments are diametrically opposite. The ACT government is the local government that looks after Australia's capital city, where the Australian Federal government sits and makes national laws.
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/austra...
If you don't like the laws passed by Parliament, vote in different representatives!
http://www.amazon.com/1215-Magna-Carta-Danny-Danziger/dp/074...
Here's a podcast with the author regarding the topic: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/05/nicholas_vincen.htm...