In the Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald, the lyrics went like this: "And all that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughers". But shouldn't it be "All that remains ARE the faces and names..."?
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I'm sure he did it for effect.
I have no doubt that Gord is grammar literate. |
Incorrect english happens all the time in
song lyrics. For whatever reason, the composer needs to go against the rules of grammar in order to make things fit. You may have noticed on the lyric sheet for the Summertime Dream album, everywhere the word "been" should be, it's written as "bin". Think of Bill Whither's song "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.." Ain't may be ok, but ain't no is a double negative. One of the biggest licences taken was in Neil Diamond's 1972 hit "Play Me". There's a line that goes "sun she sang to me, song she brang to me..." there's no such word as "brang" ! |
he got it right...surely, you is kiddin'?
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quote:Originally posted by djb:
Harmony is serious, and stop calling her "Shirley"! http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif Hey David are you talking about Har-money or silverheel's home town in Surrey, England (near Croydon)! Oh yes and talking of TWOTEF (2-TEFF) anomolies I always think when I hear the song that Gord's arithmetic is somewhat suspect too "In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral,The church bell chimed til it rang twenty-nine times,For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald " I make that 3481 sonorous bell rings which must have driven the burghers of Detroit wild and/or deef And while we are at it I also note that:- "Father Richard W. Ingalls, (is the) Rector of historic Mariners' Church of Detroit," So Gord has rather embellished the title of this Church. What other kind of sailor is there anyway?? http://www.marinerschurchofdetroit.org/pix/church.jpg again poetic licence!! John Fowles A friend of mine told some jokes about religion and got put on the Sects Offenders List. |
quote:Originally posted by johnfowles:
Quote:
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Hi John,
Maybe your arithmetic is as suspect as Gord's. http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif If the church bell rang 29 times for each of the 29 sailors, then 29x29=841 (not 3841). Then again, I am using a Swedish calculator, so perhaps there's a problem in the exchange rate? http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif |
quote:Originally posted by SilverHeels:
Hey, John, why not go the whole mile and give detailed directions to my house! http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif Look on the bright side, at least he posted a pic of the church, and NOT a pic of your house! http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif |
GL bends grammar and facts for poetic/esthetic effect all the time. For example, the 'Big Fitz' was loaded and headed for Detroit not Cleveland but Detroit certainly wouldn't have soudned right in that line of the song. I am certain GL knew where the EF was headed.
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Hmm...interesting point. Do you say, "All ARE Right?" or "All IS Right?"
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I'm more of a lurker than a responder, but I read the forum most days, and I'm a big fan. I'm also a bit of an expert on grammar. Actually, Gord got it right with "All that remains is...". In standard North American English, in a situation like this (subject + verb "to be" + predicate nominative), the subject and the verb agree-- All (in this case singular as in "the only thing that remains") IS, not ARE, the wives and the...,etc., such as in "All is tragedy and heartbreak."
On the other hand, in the Romance languages (I have a Ph.D. in Spanish, and I teach advanced grammar and composition classes), the tendency is to make the verb agree with the predicate nominative, so that in Spanish we'd say "Todo lo que queda SON (plural, not ES) las esposas, y los hijos y las hijas.". Hope this clears that up. BYW, Gordon's grammar is usually just fine although, as we all do, he occasionally slips up, such as in "Cobwebs and Dust," where he sings "Whom shall it be"; the verb "to be" always takes nominative, or subject, pronouns ("Who shall it be")--not a big deal, of course. |
Sorry about the brain freeze, but the point still stands. Of course, I skipped a phrase; the predicate nominative is "the faces and the names"; "of the wives and the sons and the daughters" is a prepositional phrase serving as an adjective ("which faces and names?"). As I say, the point still stands.
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huh? we know he wasn't good with a slide rule
but one time for each man =1x29=29 times, no? never understood the new math, or old grammar |
can you write my papers for me then? i hated english in high school, and i hate it now 20 years later when im trying to get my BS degree. as soon as you mentioned subliminal predicates and the adverse adjective my eyes glazed over and i was suddenly unable to focus on the screen.
give me a mathematical problem anyday http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif like the one posed above. he states that the bells rang 29 times, once (implied as there were 29 deaths) for each man for a total of 29 chimes http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif [This message has been edited by random7 (edited October 23, 2004).] |
"The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times, For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
29 times the bell chimed. Not so bad. |
[QUOTE]Originally posted by ELizabeth:
the 'Big Fitz' was loaded and headed for Detroit not Cleveland Hi Elizabeth (and Harmony), You guys have an eye for detail!!! or is that "eyes for detail"??? http://www.corfid.com/ubb/wink.gif I read that Gordon was determined to get all the details right for The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald after reading a news article where the name was misspelled. Check out this link: http://home.europa.com/~random7/fitz.htm#line, which states that the Fitzgerald was "downbound" to unload its cargo in Detroit and then continue on to Cleveland to dock for the winter months. Gotta love him! [This message has been edited by bjb (edited October 23, 2004).] |
Hi bjb,
Thanks for the more detailed information on the destination of the EF. So I guess that makes both of us (GL and me)more or less correct! I like that! James Denny (I think that his is his last name)wrote a fascinating book about sailing a schooner through all 5 of the Great Lakes and he spends several paragraphs on The Wreck. He thinks Lightfoot wrote an epic song on the most awful wreck the Great Lakles has ever seen. |
quote:Originally posted by SilverHeels:
Hey, John, why not go the whole mile and give detailed directions to my house! http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif You're very touchy Bru all I was attempting to do was make a joke about how you once reacted when once I dared to intimate to you that you lived in the inferior borough of Croydon (I suspect that if these two boroughs were located over here they would both be classed in the local vernacular as "cities" even though the majority of US cities have churches hardly comparible to a genuine cathedral I had hitherto stuck to what I thought was the correct British definition of a city (either a large town with a cathedral or an important town granted city status by the mknarch) so I did some googling for the definition of a city http://dictionary.com says in part "c. A large incorporated town in Great Britain, usually the seat of a bishop, with its title conferred by the Crown." The US Websters hedges its bets with "1. A large town. 2. A corporate town; in the United States, a town or collective body of inhabitants, incorporated and governed by a mayor and aldermen or a city council consisting of a board of aldermen and a common council; in Great Britain, a town corporate, which is or has been the seat of a bishop, or the capital of his see. A city is a town incorporated; which is, or has been, the see of a bishop; and though the bishopric has been dissolved, as at Westminster, it yet remaineth a city. which is what I always thought since a bishop rules a diocese/see and the main church and his seat is usually a cathedral,. there is a nice thread on this very subject at:- http://www.answers.google.com/answer...view?id=411080 I'd never come across www.answers.google.com before looks good do you use it Annie?? Interestingly my relatively small (9000 population ) hometown of Sherborne Dorset England once was a city since what is now the glorious Sherborne Abbey (founded n 705 AD) http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/sherborne/sherborneair.jpg was one thousand odd years ago the seat of the bishop of the Wessex See and therefore known as Sherborne cathedral but it lost that status when the see and bishop moved to the newly built (started in 1220) cathedral at Salisbury, Wiltshire http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...d/Salscath.JPG This fine cathedral has the highest steeple (404 feet) in Britain Please note my Sherborne is not the same as the similarly spelled township of Sherborn Massachusetts http://johnfowles.org.uk/Sherborne/Sherborninn.jpg (Picture of me taken during a recent visit to Boston) Just think Bru instead of getting back up on your high horse you could have grabbed your snazzy digital camera dashed out into the street,dodged the traffic, taken a picture of your residence and come back indoors, reread my detailed destructions, put on your best thinking cap and displayed the house picture here your very self thereby saving me the aggro No I can't bear the agony of waiting any longer so here is a pic of what I visualise your mansion looks like!!! http://www1.findaproperty.com/parkan...e/p1071125.jpg Shirley Hills Road, Shirley, Surrey £875,000, 4 bedroom detached house situated in the highly sought after Shirley Hills location (as viewed at):- http://www.findaproperty.com/cgi-bin...rop&pid=071125 OK that's today's geography and history and economics lessons so please go and talk amongst yourselves John Fowles topically bad pun Buffalo, NY bacame a city in 1832. In 2032, when the city of Buffalo is 200 years old, the mayor plans to hold a Bison-tennial Festival. P. groan S. I do not know how I contrived to mishandle my calculator and exaggerate the number of peals and yes Al there is a subtle comma after "times" in the printed version but there is nary a pause in ther way Gord usually sings it so I rest my case [This message has been edited by johnfowles (edited October 24, 2004).] |
quote:Originally posted by johnfowles:
...reread my detailed DESTRUCTIONS... Hmmm, maybe this is why people have trouble posting pics to Corfid. http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif p.s. Great pic of you, John. Very dapper, indeed! |
quote:Originally posted by djb:
p.s. Great pic of you, John. Very dapper, indeed! John, I agree great picture. Now don't wear a big hat in Hamilton and we'll all be able to recognize you. Which is even better than directions to your house, LOL. Whatever happened to the corfid member picture album project you were thinking about ? Bill http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif |
I think we should all have a small ID picture next to our name in the Author section. It would enable us to place a face with the name.
Maybe Florian could help. http://www.corfid.com/ubb/smile.gif |
And have monitors breaking like mirrors every time my picture appears? NO WAY!!!
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The Mother Superior (Ruth) obviously thought we would like to reread an earlier topic for its amusimg repartee, but instead of simply replying to it she decided to start a new topic
and I Quote:
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http://www.corfid.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002695.html is now displayed above I suggest Ruth (GG) could now edit and delete the new topic Please note that the original topic's original URL (as quoted by GG) was:- http://www.corfid.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002695.html note the different URL format to that of GG's new topic:- http://www.corfid.com/ubb/ultimatebb...c;f=1;t=004306 I discovered as probably did Ruth that that URL is, as the more observant of you can see, in the pre revision format and therefore cannot be directly replied to (it curtly tells you that you are lost! Me?? No way Jose) So I worked out the current URL which is:- http://www.corfid.com/ubb/ultimatebb...c;f=1;t=002695 which is of course where you now are I have noted this phenomenon before with some of the older topics and have meant to ask Florian about it as presumably older topics are being stored twice which is most likely aggravating his recurrant server spsce problem. So as I am overdue making contact with him I on another matter I will add this to it and use this as a good example of the problem John |
Mother Superior ???
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