|
to that English we clearly borrowed... Comments by Sandra Dodd unless otherwise indicated
Those are singable, with difficulty. "Three Blind Mice" I found on an office humor site here, and the other I learned on a bus trip when I was a kid, in the 1960's. The best thing about them is that they show the simplicity of plain English words, and their poeticism. When people praise the King James Bible, it's not for its thees and thous, it's because it's in real based-on-Anglo-Saxon everyday English, and not tarted up with Latinisms and French borrowings. In the first one above, it might've been funnier to use "a trio" instead of three but it would probably be unsingable. "Three" is English. And the pronouns and prepositions are English (she, with, your...). In the second one, "craft" is an English word, but boat is older and would be plainer and unambiguous. "Down" is plain. A replacement phrase wouldn't be singable.
|