English questions

[temur]

I am a not native speaker and thought there could be others like me who want to ask questions that trouble them.

My first question:

Life is but a dream - what does it mean? Does it mean that life is a dream or that life is not a dream? If the latter is true, how does it make poetic sense when this sentence is in a song?

[Tyler]

It means life is only a dream. I believe it is short for "life is nothing but a dream."

[cosmictraveler]

Perhaps it could mean that we see many things in life that we can only dream about doing or having. We keep ourselves wanting things we may never be able to have. :shrug:

[Medicine*Woman]

*************
M*W: If you're referring to the song of late 50s, early 60s, "Life Is But A Dream, Sweetheart," I think it means "life is too good to be true, now that he's found a girl he really likes. His life is like a pleasant dream with the sweetheart."

[Fraggle Rocker]

It means life is only a dream. I believe it is short for "life is nothing but a dream."Bingo. Although it may be so old that it was "life is naught but a dream."

[Michael]

what does it mean though?
- That we are in a real live dream? If so who's?
- That the construct we view and call "life" is mostly just made up with little reality in our dream world? As if we are dreaming most of what goes on in our lives, make it up as we go along, make assumptions that are not true?
- Or does it suggest this person just fell in love and feels dreamy?
- or something altogether different....

[Fraggle Rocker]

Originally Posted by MW: If you're referring to the song of late 50s, early 60s, "Life Is But A Dream, Sweetheart". . . .It was a doo-wop song and the title was "Life Could Be a Dream, (Sweetheart)." I found an old R&B tune named "Life Is but a Dream," but I didn't recognize it from the 1950s and 60s. I think it was resurrected for the soundtrack of a recent movie.

However, every one of us (at least Americans, perhaps all anglophones) has sung that line:

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
:)

Here's a poem by the author of "Alice in Wonderland":LIFE IS BUT A DREAM

by: Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

BOAT, beneath a sunny sky
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July--

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear--

Long has paled that sunny sky;
Echoes fade and memories die;
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die;

Ever drifting down the stream--
Lingering in the golden gleam--
Life, what is it but a dream?

"Life is but a Dream" is reprinted from The Hunting of the Snark and Other Poems and Verses. Lewis Carroll. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903.I think the kind of dream they're all talking about is a daydream.

[temur]

Thanks a lot for yall's replies.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Thanks a lot for yall's replies.Aha: an illustration of the evolution of language, right here on our board!

Like the speakers of most European languages, the English struggled with the issue of second-person pronouns. Back in the era of Middle English, from the Norman Invasion in 1066 with its sudden and massive French overlay, through roughly the 1400s, thou was the singular and ye was the plural. Each had its inflections: thou-thee-thy-thine and ye-you-your-yours, but thou and ye were the nominative case.

But thou acquired the cachet of being a word only appropriate for familiar situations--family, friends, adults speaking to children, royalty speaking to their subjects, etc. People wanted a more polite or respectful way to speak to "honored" strangers and to their social superiors. So, as in most European languages, they co-opted the plural pronoun, ye, to serve as a "polite singular." Just like French vous, Swedish ni, Russian vy, etc.

Somewhere along the way the grammar broke down, and for both singular and plural, the nominative case ye was replaced by the accusative case you. We see this same force at work among the Quakers, the only people who didn't adopt a formal singular pronoun: they address each other as thee, the accusative, rather than thou, the nominative.

Eventually, virtually everyone but the Quakers discarded the old singular pronoun and began using you for everybody. This left a void in formal use, and all kinds of awkward constructions filled that void, such as your honor, your grace and Your Majesty.

But it also left some awkwardness in the precision of the language. When you address a person as you, are you referring just to her, or to her entire family or other logical group? In the American South, the phrase you all was coined as the new plural. It was eventually shortened to y'all. But it has no possessive. It doesn't work to say your all.

So Southerners eventually did the logical thing and added the universal possessive ending, and now they say y'all's, as Temur has demonstrated. The evolution of language in action.

This phenomenon has gone through even more iterations in some other languages. In Portuguese, the plural pronoun vos was co-opted for the polite singular, which eventually lost its politeness and was used for everybody. Then they developed vossa merce, "your grace." That mouthful was shortened to voce, the same word as Usted for you Spanish speakers. But they didn't stop there like the Spanish did. Tu, the singular pronoun, and vos have died out in much of the Portuguese-speaking world, where children address their dogs as voce.

So they had to invent yet another new "polite" pronoun to fill the void. And what a complicated mouthful it is: You have to choose o senhor, "the gentleman", a senhora, "the (married) lady," or a senhorita, "the (unmarried) lady."

We should be glad that the pragmatic speakers of English came up with such a sensible coinage as yall's.

[James R]

My first question:

Life is but a dream - what does it mean?

It means "Life is only a dream."

My guess is that there's probably a link back to Shakespeare in this, but I'm not sure.