Re: From the recent past

:: As recently as 2003, a female acquaintance of mine was, at a German
:: college mathematics exam, greeted by the examining professor with the
:: words "we all know you should rather be in a kitchen right now".

: Rebecca Rice <rebecca_rice@xxxxxxx>
: This wording has been bugging me for a while now. "Should rather" is
: not a standard English usage, and I haven't been able to figure out
: whether the teacher was saying that women didn't belong in math (in
: which case I would phrase it as "you should be in a kitchen", or that
: the woman in question didn't want to be in the class and was only
: there because she had to be in (in which case I would have phrased it
: as "you would rather be in a kitchen"). Both of which are bad, but I
: am curious which one was meant. I'm thinking the first, but I could
: be wrong.

Actually, seems to me there are three possible readings

1) you don't want to be in the kitchen, but should want to be
2) you want to be in the kitchen
3) you should be in the kitchen

( there may be many others but ...
yeah, yeah, the Tom Lehrer gag, right)

Of those, "should rather" read literally leads me to think (1).
Except I've heard similar uses with "should" to mean (2)
(near as I could tell from context).

A quick google for "I should rather" finds examples that from
context seem to mean (2). For example

I should rather labor as another's serf, in the home of a man
without fortune, one whose livelihood was meager, than rule over all
the departed dead.

( attributed to Homer, but I suspect Homer didn't write it in
english, and no translator is attributed... )

Or, possibly more sfnal (?)

"I should rather have you than a heap of gold, even if it were very
comfortable to sleep on." -- Naomi Novik (His Majesty's Dragon)



Wayne Throop throopw@xxxxxxxxx http://sheol.org/throopw
.

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