How does one say “pwn3d” in the subjunctive?
We were quite delighted by Karie’s post about the subjunctive in Northanger Abbey.
“A woman, especially,if she have [sic] the misfortune of knowing anything,should conceal it as well as she can.”
Jane Austen,
Northanger AbbeyBack to Jane Austen and subjunctives from my previous post…
The picture above is from page 11 of Masterpiece’s The Complete Guide to Teaching Jane Austen, a beautiful, full-color, teaching guide aimed at educators who want to use the film adaptations of Jane Austen’s works in the classroom. I was looking through the guide and came across the above-referenced quote with the bracketed [sic].Inserting a [sic] in a quoted text draws attention to the fact that an apparent error in spelling or grammar is part of the original and not an editorial blunder:
Karie (who has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages, Phi Beta Kappa) goes on to prove that Jane Austen’s use of the subjunctive in that quotation is correct. Not that we ever had a doubt. 
March 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
Yes, indeed! How dare they “sic” Jane Austen!
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
Would the explanation be something like ‘If I were…’ in the second conditional (the sentence quoted from NA being one such)?
That’s what I had told myself when I came across it and wondered if in ‘old’ English ‘If she ‘have…’ was allowed like ‘If I were…’is.
Yes, Tina B - How dare they ’sic’ Jane Austen
March 3rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I’m too embarrassed to ask my kids — what does “pwn3d” mean, and how is it to be pronounced?
Blushing Bobbie
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:43 pm
It’s pronounced “owned,” and it means Karie delivered a smackdown, and thereby the other party was “owned.”
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Make pwnage into a subjunctive? I believe pwn3d needs a helper verb. How about “If Masterpiece were pwn3d by Karie, they would surely cry.”
March 4th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Well, huh. I thought pwn3d represented “pawned”, which changes the concept completely.
March 4th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
I’m also glad to know what “pwn3d” means. Thanks for clearing that up for me too!
March 5th, 2008 at 7:13 am
Unfortunately, grammar doesn’t seem to be taught in the English-speaking world as completely as it is in other languages. There are times when I have to resort to my French grammar to figure out something in English.
That said, the great Dr. Chapman didn’t “sic” Jane, but he did correct her. In Emma, he found that Mrs. Elton uses the expressions caro sposo, cara sposo and caro sposa interchangeably, so he changed the text of his editions so that the phrase is always grammatically correct (caro sposo). But one of the Penguin editions that I have says that it is their contention that Austen used those 3 versions of that single phrase intentionally, to show us that Mrs. Elton is pretentious and not as well educated as she’d like everyone to think.
March 5th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Yes, I would say that too, Julie.
The very fact that she uses *all* three grammatic forms at different times means sheknew *all* three of them.
If she wasn’t sure which was the correct use she would have found that out before using it in her book, instead of using *all* three just because she didn’t know which one was the right one.
Sounds silly.