The Private Secretary Of The Most Honorable Sir

[Ken Brown]

drevil at sidereal.kz wrote:
> 
> > > I think it might have something to do with your Bible-crypto theory.
> > > Even this low-grade cipher is certain to befuddle the cryptoanalytic
> > > attacks of law enforcement agencies which have long-ignored the value
> > > of a liberal arts education. To their great woe, they have cultivated
> > > an exploitable weakness.
> >
> >
> > Certain to befuddle, that seems overly-strong. Why should no one in
> > law enforcement agencies have studied old English literature? A
> > quick search could tell anyone what to read if they had a reason
> > to. Thats assuming there is a deeper message than the one written in
> > Ye Olde Englishe.
> 
> Or, more accurately, "A quick search could tell anyone what to read if
> HE had a reason to."  In New and Old English.

Nope. Old English had a large number of pronouns we don't. "anyone ... 
they" might actually be nearer to the Old English than "anyone ... he"
which is a modern English construction. I don't know enough Old English
to know what the normal word in this context would have been. I suspect
it would have been either "hwaet" or "man" but I know it was at least
sometimes "the" or "thu" which could (arguably) have survived into
modern  colloquial English orally as "they" whilst being suppressed from
the formal written language by the early modern fashion for prescriptive
Latinity. Either way, "tell anyone what to read if they had a reason to"
is perfectly good English, it is a construction that was used by Malory,
and Chaucer, and Shakespeare and objecting to it in this way is false
pedantry. 

 
Also "anyone ... he" is (in England at any rate) rather formal. "anyone
... they" would have been more common in my childhood, but the most
common way of saying it would have been "tell you what to read if you
had" with no implication that it really meant you yourself.  The "he"
form is something we were supposed to learn at school, along with not
saying "ain't" (which we didn't much anyway) and "innit" (which we did,
and I do, all the time). If you went to a posh school you were taught to
say "one" instead of "you" or "they". ("If one went to a posh school one
was taught..."). That might have got you beaten up at my primary school,
certainly laughed at.  "

But then I'm from the south of England, in'I? And I'm fed up with people
telling me that something that has been a part of my language for over a
thousand years should now be abandoned because it is supposedly an
innovation. 

Or is it just that when you said "Old English" you really meant "Early
Modern English"? :-)

Ken Brown 

"Hige sceal ~e heardra, heorte ~e cenre, mod sceal ~e mare, ~e ure mfgen
lytlap."