A Scandal in Bohemia: The Accusative Case

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Canon Story: A Scandal in Bohemia
Title: The Accusative Case
Author: scfrankles
Rating: G
Author's Notes: ‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs.


The Bohemian lifestyle had seemed so attractive. They were going to be employed by a king! But it had only led to their formal separation.

“I thought everything would be Perfect,” said Have, tensely. “It’s your fault—we were always so close before.”

Received sighed. And thought longingly of the Simple Past, when it had been all on its own.

Comments

[debriswoman]

Neatly parsed:-)
Hands over daffodil bulbs, labelled " daffodil bulbs...not onions"

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Thank you ^^

*label mysteriously falls half off, so it now reads "onions"...*

*luckily thesmallhobbit has already thrown the bulbs at my head* (What is wrong with that girl..?)

[debriswoman]

Noticed...

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Throws daffodil bulbs at head.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

What?

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Sorry, should have read "the bulb of the daffodil has been manually projected at the uppermost part of the person".

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

No, should have read: "the bulb of the daffodil has been manually stuffed up thesmallhobbit's nasal passage".

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

A threat not to be sneezed at!

[debriswoman]

Hey!
They were a gift:-(

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Should I have used the onions then?

[debriswoman]

*sighs heavily and stalks off*

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

:-D

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

*beams*

[vaysh]

*grins* very clever. I do feel for the Have and the Received.

However, ACD's German is a tad rusty. This sentence in German would be: Eine solche Beschreibung von Ihnen erhalten wir von überall. Meaning, the verb - erhalten - would not be uncourteously banished to the end of the sentence. ACD makes the mistake to re-translate the English Present Perfect (which connotes an action still on-going) with a German past tense form, when in fact it should be translated as present tense. :)

I just checked the German translation of A Scandal in Bohemia, Ein Skandal in Böhmen (translated by Michael Langwaldt), which renders the line as:
Dies haben wir von allen Seiten gehört über Sie.
It's phrased intentionally awkward, putting the verb - gehört - in a position where you would not usually put it, to be able to make sense of Holmes's ruminations of word order for the German reader, as well. :)

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

This is all most interesting...

I suppose it could be argued that the King isn't directly translating a German sentence into English - he's constructing the sentence in English, and so gets the verb tense correct. But then his native language interferes with the final word order.

However, another explanation could be that the note was written by someone pretending to be German. The man who turns up to hire Holmes isn't the King...

[laurose8.livejournal.com]

What a very neat and enjoyable 60.

Have does get around, doesn't it?

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I don't wish to be judgmental, but Have certainly seems to be involved with a great many verbs...

[mundungus42.livejournal.com]

If only they were in a more subjunctive mood!

Seriously, this is marvelous- thank you for this!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

They really ought to be thinking of the Future...

Thank you so much ^^ I was very pleased with this one ^_^

[capt-facepalm.livejournal.com]

This is very clever!
(Too clever for me. I am uncourteous in all quarters to grammar.)

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Thank you ^_^

And I do feel everyone should be discourteous to grammar. It works best when you ignore it and just let things happen naturally ^^