Now I Am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds — J. Robert Oppenheimer
Oppenheimer famously quoted this from The Bhagavad Geeta in the context of the nuclear bomb. The way this sentence is structured feels weird to me. “Now I am Death” or “Now I have become Death” sound much more natural in English to me.
Was he trying to simulate some formulation in Sanskrit that is not available in the English language?
It’s from English, not Sanskrit. More specifically, an archaic English feature, where you’d use “be” instead of “have” for the present tense, if the main verb denotes a change of state (such as “become”). Note how “I have become Death” sounds perfectly fine for modern readers.
Odds are that Oppenheimer was quoting either an archaic translation Bhagavad Gita, or one using archaic language (this is typical for religious texts).
Also give this a check. English used to follow similar rules for be/have as German does for sein/haben.
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I think he translated it himself. It’s an archaic text though, so translating it in modern english would also be weird probably.
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But in that example isn’t the “am” replacing the “have”?
Yes. The conjugates for “to be” are: I am, You are, He/she is, etc.
If you think about it the fact that modern English uses “Have” in this context (primarily describing something you own) is actually weirder than “Am” (something you are)
It’s almost like a different word, a hononym. To have and to have done something in the past. Neither being nor possessing really works for the “have done”. Being works for become because become has being as a part of its meaning as well as a transition from some previous thing that was before.
Though both are used similarly. I have ran. I am running. I will run. I guess have is still the odd one out since will is future tense for am. Though was also works. I was running. But was is more specific than have, it feels like “I was running” is a part of a narrative that includes a specific time, while “I have ran” doesn’t require anything else. It’s like you possess the previous action of running, so maybe it is apt. Language is funny.
Doesn’t this get into something like past vs past perfect, future vs future perfect?
I can’t remember this shit from grade school.
I’m awful with what they are called. Had to look up homonym, was about to use synonym instead.
to beis an irregular verb that takes the formsam,are, andisin the present tense.to becomeis a different verb which has the formsbecome, andbecomes.Historically the language replaced “be” with “have”. Then Oppenheimer (or whoever translated his Gita) re-replaced it back with “be”, to sound ancient.
Can you make “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” correct with some linguistics magic?
Linguistics is mostly descriptive, mind you; it doesn’t “make” things correct, it explains what happens.
That said, “are belong” wouldn’t work. “Belong” indicates possession, not a change of state, so even under older grammatical rules you’d still need to use “have” with it. And you’d need to use it in the past participle (belonged), not the base form (belong). Note that Oppenheimer’s quote doesn’t have this problem because the past participle of “become” is still “become”.
And the present perfect wouldn’t even make sense here. CATS is not saying “those bases used to belong to us, and they still do”; it’s more like “those bases used to be yours, but now they’re ours”. You’d need to use the simple present here, “belong” - “now all your bases belong to us”, without an auxiliary, with the “now” highlighting that this wasn’t true in the past but it is in the current time.
Ah maybe I can learn german understand half the memes on lenny