Why is “Now I Am Become Death” phrased so awkwardly in English?

No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 378 points – 12 months ago

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?

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For the lazy:

The use of "is become" here relates to verbs of motion/transition; verbs of motion would take be while other verbs would take have. There is no such grammatical distinction in English perfect forms anymore.

English began with this distinction, as did sibling languages like German.

See also the Christmas carol "Joy to the world, the Lord is come."

Lord is come. Rock is push. Flag is win.

Lord is Baba.

And Baba, as always, is You.

French and other languages still have the distinction, while English has switched to using "has" everywhere.

Yep and this construct is still pretty normal in German, we would say for example “ich bin gegangen” (I am gone) versus “Ich hab gesagt“ (I have said). Honestly I don’t think could explain exactly why some words take an “I am” construct but motion is as good a theory as any.

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