From: Edward Hobbs (EHOBBS@wellesley.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 03 1997 - 19:35:18 EDT
Jime wrote:
"The voices of Carl Conrad:
1. "hafta" is typical passive middle American.
2. "de rigueur" is an elegant middle French motif.
3. "sumer" is evidently a reference to Sumerian hyperactive
4. "is icumen in" is probably active passive middle Hick
5. "Aye" is middle English.
My guess is that this barely scatches the surface of the
mysterious Carl Conrad - the man of many voices!!
;-)
Jim
-----------------------------------------------------
Jim's takeoff on Carl's delightful mixture of Middle English (which were
actually numbers 3 and 4), French, and carefully studied (by linguistics
specialists) new American verbs such as gonna, wanna, and hafta (which are
NOT the same as "going to", "want to", and "have to"), is one more proof
that Carl was right in saying that finally sumer is icumen in.
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu.
I'm tempted to sing cuccu lhude, myself, but a mild stroke has made that
(and many other things) difficult for me just now. An hour in the MRI
scanner, with its roar and hammering sounds in my brain, made me realize
what that adverb "Lhude" really means!
Singing cuccu summit lhude anyway, ["summit" -- adverb from Dickens]
Edward
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:18 EDT