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Can "he who" be simplified to "who"? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 14 08 August 2015 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tricky comparative grammar question, or so I like to think:
I was watching "The Golden Horde" and came across the memorable line "He who comes to destroy Samarkand shall himself be destroyed". I just love this kind of stuff :-) However, lovely as old fashioned wordings are, the subject of the sentence "He who comes to destroy Samarkand" struck me as a bit of an odd construction. No real reason for that other than the fact in my native Spanish such structures (breaks down to Subject "He" + relative defining clause "who comes...") are often reduced to just the subordinate clause, i.e. the relative linking word plus its clause becomes the subject for the whole sentence, so we say "Quien viene/venga a..." instead of a full "Aquel que venga...". In English we could of course say "Whoever comes to destroy Samarkand...", but I was wondering if the same simplification that is often made in Spanish would still work in English. So, could we say "Who comes to destroy..." and call it a day or would you say that's not proper English? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5237 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 2 of 14 08 August 2015 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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"Who comes to destroy Samarkand shall himself be destroyed." is valid English.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 14 08 August 2015 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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This implies that women are not powerful enough to destroy Samarkand ;) Though your wording is nice.
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5227 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 4 of 14 09 August 2015 at 3:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say that she who is nimble-minded enough to defend Samarkand ought to be powerful enough to destroy it as well, but maybe engraving stuff in stone was laborious enough to try and keep it short :)
Joking aside, thank you, rdearman. The important thing about the question is the door it would open or close, I was thinking, to other more mundane yet analogous constructions. My own one sounded well enough, but I wondered whether it did so only because I had just thought of it, hence my asking. In the interim I realized an everyday, perfectly parallel construction could be f.e. Nietszche's quote "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger", so it wasn't such a tricky question at all. Sometimes you need to distance yourself from your own thoughts before opening your mouth :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tbreit Newbie United States Joined 5216 days ago 17 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 5 of 14 09 August 2015 at 5:02am | IP Logged | ||
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"They who comes to destroy Samarkand shall himself be destroyed"
Neutral, no? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 6 of 14 10 August 2015 at 12:51am | IP Logged | ||
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To me there is a small difference in meaning.
"He who comes to destroy Samarkand shall himself be destroyed." Suggests to me that the speaker knows this will happen or he is giving some sort of warning to the "he". The "he" at the beginning adds emphasis that must have some sort of meaning and is not simply surplusage. "Who comes to destroy Samarkand shall himself be destroyed." Seems more like a general statement like "whoever comes..." or "maybe someday someone might destroy..." 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4689 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 7 of 14 10 August 2015 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||
Agreed. It sounds even more stilted and/or archaic than the original, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 8 of 14 10 August 2015 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||
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The "he who" construction has a certain antiquity about it. There is a certain foreboding and warning implied.
There may be a tone meant to scare certain individials from doing something without ever making an attempt. It reminds me a a bit of Willow or a piece that would have occured back then, like, say Lord of the Rings, So, if you're wondering if it's a construct you should use in normal conversation when trying to fit in with native English speakers, perhaps not, unless you're the sort who might speak like Don Quijote at times in your native language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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