Style and simplicity
I am no linguist; but one of the things that stick to you after decades of historical reading is a certain amount of linguistic lore. And my long three-year wrestle with Dark Age British history has given me a particular amount of competence in the historical aspects of languages in a very obscure time indeed. So, when a fanfic writer appealed to the linguaphiles community for help with Rowena Ravenclaw's motto "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure", I was pretty much in my element. (Although if I had wanted to be severe, I'd have pointed out that Rowena's name, like that of Salazar Slytherin, is impossible for a dozen different reasons. Let's face it: JKR was and reains an utter duffer at history.) So were a dozen other people (http://community.livejournal.com/linguaphiles/5415815.html), and the discussion went in every direction - solutions were proposed in Northumbrian Old English, in Middle Irish, in Latin, each being mercilessly trashed as soon as proposed by experts who disagreed. All good fun, and really more scholarly than the subject had a right to be.
One thing that bothered me slightly, however, is that nobody else of the dozen or so experts who intervened seemed to understand a point I made: that the couplet Wit beyond measure is Man's greatest treasure is so deficient in form that it sounds like a bad attempt to rhyme a translation from a previous form. Everyone insisted on keeping the reluctant and bombastic "beyond measure" in their proposed originals. Whatever happened to any ear for style? As my brilliant friend superversive has pointed out (http://superversive.livejournal.com/25477.html), epigrammatic wisdom has a specific form, as well as a specific kind of content, that makes it memorable - memorable in the original meaning, that is easy to remember. Why is it that so many brilliantly educated persons seemed unable to see that "beyond measure" is bad, unnecessary, and only there to rhyme?
One thing that bothered me slightly, however, is that nobody else of the dozen or so experts who intervened seemed to understand a point I made: that the couplet Wit beyond measure is Man's greatest treasure is so deficient in form that it sounds like a bad attempt to rhyme a translation from a previous form. Everyone insisted on keeping the reluctant and bombastic "beyond measure" in their proposed originals. Whatever happened to any ear for style? As my brilliant friend superversive has pointed out (http://superversive.livejournal.com/25477.html), epigrammatic wisdom has a specific form, as well as a specific kind of content, that makes it memorable - memorable in the original meaning, that is easy to remember. Why is it that so many brilliantly educated persons seemed unable to see that "beyond measure" is bad, unnecessary, and only there to rhyme?