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It’s kind of like the saying, “all that glitters is not gold”. Gold doesn’t glitter? That makes no sense. English syntax is not mathematical logic. The song, “

It’s kind of like the saying, “all that glitters is not gold”. Gold doesn’t glitter? That makes no sense. English syntax is not mathematical logic. The song, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” is not a song about someone who is forced to receive satisfaction.

cobaltoxide 5y ago
I guess Shakespeare did write it that way, but I've always heard the saying as "Not all that glitters is gold." Perhaps he took some poetic license at the expense of logical correctness.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Shakespeare […] Perhaps he took some poetic license That was kind of his thing, when he wasn’t just inventing words to fit rhyme/meter/mood. He’s not who you would go to if you wanted unambiguous documentation of the guarantees you were providing downstream users, that wasn’t really his thing.
derefr 5y ago
A lot of the confusion in English can be relieved, sometimes, by flipping clauses around. “All that glitters / is not / gold” ⇒ “gold / is not / all that glitters.”
dagmx 5y ago
Somewhat related to your points of music... There's an episode of "This is Pop!" on Netflix that explores why the Swedes write so many pop hits. One of the arguments presented is that they speak English well as a second/third language so they're less focused on the lyrics making sense and being grammatically correct, and are free to make lyrics that sound like they work but are non-sensical on reflection. It's just the right amount of separation from the language. Ever since I saw that, I've been listening closer to a lot of the top pop songs over the last decade, and it's fascinating how English is so breakable while sounding right to our mind, but falls apart under scrutiny. (Obviously this is not unique to the swedish writers, even people who only speak English do it as well)
- wincy 5y ago
  The song “I want it that way” comes to mind, the song topped many charts including in the US, and the lyrics are very strange upon reflection. What does “I never wanna hear you say. I want it that way.” mean exactly? Apparently the Swedish songwriter barely spoke any English at all at the time.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    >> I never wanna hear you say, "I want it that way" << Probably?
  - dagmx 5y ago
    That's actually one of the songs that's mentioned, as well as Oops I Did It Again by Britney and Hit Me Baby One More Time Even more recently, Shake it Off by Taylor Swift. Somewhat along the same lines, I was watching the Get Back documentary on the Beatles and the number of songs they write by effectively scatting and then filling in the words that were their big hits is amazing. Again they're writing to fit the tune, then in filling the words based on a general theme. It's very different than the songs they write where you can tell someone's sat down and written the words first.
ay 5y ago
It’s curious that a Russian version is much more precise: “Not everything that glitters is gold”. (The truly 1:1 translation is “not everything is gold that glitters” but that word order felt very wrong and I believe the change doesn’t change the meaning, does it ?) How does it sound for a native speaker ?
- mannykannot 5y ago
  I am a native speaker of English, yet my knowledge of its grammar is almost entirely informal. Having said that, it seems to me that in the 1:1 translation, the object of ‘is’ is ‘gold that glitters’, rather than just ‘gold’, and its subject is ‘everything’ rather than ‘everything that glitters’, and that these are semantic differences, as the intended meaning is specifically about things that glitter. I hope someone more knowledgable can cite the relevant rules here, whether for or against this reading. To avoid ambiguity (whether actual or merely perceived by me), I might say “Just because something glitters, it need not be gold”, but that is not much of an aphorism!
mananaysiempre 5y ago
> English syntax is not mathematical logic Open any book or paper on semantics (the linguistics kind, not the philosophy or the early-20th-century pseudoscience kind) and you might be surprised :) It’s just that the logic is not that straightforward to get out, and of course there’s semantics (the literal meaning, where “Can you pass the salt?” is a question about ability) and then there’s pragmatics (the thing one is actually trying to communicate, where “Can you pass the salt?” is a request with certain degrees of respect and formality attached to it). > “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” This is probably not a very good example as it’s just (AFAIU) not strictly “standard English” in that it exhibits negative concord absent from the standard grammar (for dramatic effect, although “We Don’t Need No Education” is probably a better case). That is to say, this is a phrase in a language (which is very similar to standard English but not quite the same) where the grammar requires dummy negations on complements of negative verbs—a purely syntactic thing that doesn’t even reach the layer of semantics / logic. But then many other varieties of English do that (I remember reading somewhere that the dialect that gave rise to the current standard is actually somewhat unusual among other dialects in that respect), so does my native Russian (and other Slavic languages, and some but not all Romance ones), and Japanese actually requires you to negate the adjective when using the adverb meaning “hardly, not very”[1] while at the same time using some double negations as polite affirmations[2]. [1] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/18006 https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/18006 [2] https://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/teacher/36.html https://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/teacher/36.html

cobaltoxide 5y ago

I guess Shakespeare did write it that way, but I've always heard the saying as "Not all that glitters is gold." Perhaps he took some poetic license at the expense of logical correctness.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Shakespeare […] Perhaps he took some poetic license That was kind of his thing, when he wasn’t just inventing words to fit rhyme/meter/mood. He’s not who you would go to if you wanted unambiguous documentation of the guarantees you were providing downstream users, that wasn’t really his thing.

derefr 5y ago

A lot of the confusion in English can be relieved, sometimes, by flipping clauses around. “All that glitters / is not / gold” ⇒ “gold / is not / all that glitters.”

dagmx 5y ago

Somewhat related to your points of music... There's an episode of "This is Pop!" on Netflix that explores why the Swedes write so many pop hits. One of the arguments presented is that they speak English well as a second/third language so they're less focused on the lyrics making sense and being grammatically correct, and are free to make lyrics that sound like they work but are non-sensical on reflection. It's just the right amount of separation from the language. Ever since I saw that, I've been listening closer to a lot of the top pop songs over the last decade, and it's fascinating how English is so breakable while sounding right to our mind, but falls apart under scrutiny. (Obviously this is not unique to the swedish writers, even people who only speak English do it as well)

wincy 5y ago
The song “I want it that way” comes to mind, the song topped many charts including in the US, and the lyrics are very strange upon reflection. What does “I never wanna hear you say. I want it that way.” mean exactly? Apparently the Swedish songwriter barely spoke any English at all at the time.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  >> I never wanna hear you say, "I want it that way" << Probably?
- dagmx 5y ago
  That's actually one of the songs that's mentioned, as well as Oops I Did It Again by Britney and Hit Me Baby One More Time Even more recently, Shake it Off by Taylor Swift. Somewhat along the same lines, I was watching the Get Back documentary on the Beatles and the number of songs they write by effectively scatting and then filling in the words that were their big hits is amazing. Again they're writing to fit the tune, then in filling the words based on a general theme. It's very different than the songs they write where you can tell someone's sat down and written the words first.

ay 5y ago

It’s curious that a Russian version is much more precise: “Not everything that glitters is gold”. (The truly 1:1 translation is “not everything is gold that glitters” but that word order felt very wrong and I believe the change doesn’t change the meaning, does it ?) How does it sound for a native speaker ?

mannykannot 5y ago
I am a native speaker of English, yet my knowledge of its grammar is almost entirely informal. Having said that, it seems to me that in the 1:1 translation, the object of ‘is’ is ‘gold that glitters’, rather than just ‘gold’, and its subject is ‘everything’ rather than ‘everything that glitters’, and that these are semantic differences, as the intended meaning is specifically about things that glitter. I hope someone more knowledgable can cite the relevant rules here, whether for or against this reading. To avoid ambiguity (whether actual or merely perceived by me), I might say “Just because something glitters, it need not be gold”, but that is not much of an aphorism!

mananaysiempre 5y ago

> English syntax is not mathematical logic Open any book or paper on semantics (the linguistics kind, not the philosophy or the early-20th-century pseudoscience kind) and you might be surprised :) It’s just that the logic is not that straightforward to get out, and of course there’s semantics (the literal meaning, where “Can you pass the salt?” is a question about ability) and then there’s pragmatics (the thing one is actually trying to communicate, where “Can you pass the salt?” is a request with certain degrees of respect and formality attached to it). > “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” This is probably not a very good example as it’s just (AFAIU) not strictly “standard English” in that it exhibits negative concord absent from the standard grammar (for dramatic effect, although “We Don’t Need No Education” is probably a better case). That is to say, this is a phrase in a language (which is very similar to standard English but not quite the same) where the grammar requires dummy negations on complements of negative verbs—a purely syntactic thing that doesn’t even reach the layer of semantics / logic. But then many other varieties of English do that (I remember reading somewhere that the dialect that gave rise to the current standard is actually somewhat unusual among other dialects in that respect), so does my native Russian (and other Slavic languages, and some but not all Romance ones), and Japanese actually requires you to negate the adjective when using the adverb meaning “hardly, not very”[1] while at the same time using some double negations as polite affirmations[2]. [1] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/18006 https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/18006 [2] https://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/teacher/36.html https://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/teacher/36.html