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?
He was using some fancier and older form of English. I believe it is grammatically correct, we just don’t use those forms anymore. The first translation of the Gita is from 1785 and it is one of the most translated Asian texts. Famously, every translator places emphasis and projects their own personal worldview unto the text. Though Oppenheimer actually could read and had read the Bhagavad Gita in its original Sanskrit, so he was just giving it his own personal twist.
It’s from English, not Sanskrit. More specifically, an archaic English feature, where you’d use “be” instead of “have” for the present tense, if the main verb denotes a change of state (such as “become”). Note how “I have become Death” sounds perfectly fine for modern readers.
Odds are that Oppenheimer was quoting either an archaic translation Bhagavad Gita, or one using archaic language (this is typical for religious texts).
Also give this a check. English used to follow similar rules for be/have as German does for sein/haben.
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I think he translated it himself. It’s an archaic text though, so translating it in modern english would also be weird probably.
Ah maybe I can learn german understand half the memes on lenny
where you’d use “be” instead of “have” for the present tense, if the main verb denotes a change of state (such as “become”).
But in that example isn’t the “am” replacing the “have”?
I have become death
I am become death
But in that example isn’t the “am” replacing the “have”?
Historically the language replaced “be” with “have”. Then Oppenheimer (or whoever translated his Gita) re-replaced it back with “be”, to sound ancient.
Yes. The conjugates for “to be” are: I am, You are, He/she is, etc.
Can you make “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” correct with some linguistics magic?
Linguistics is mostly descriptive, mind you; it doesn’t “make” things correct, it explains what happens.
That said, “are belong” wouldn’t work. “Belong” indicates possession, not a change of state, so even under older grammatical rules you’d still need to use “have” with it. And you’d need to use it in the past participle (belonged), not the base form (belong). Note that Oppenheimer’s quote doesn’t have this problem because the past participle of “become” is still “become”.
And the present perfect wouldn’t even make sense here. CATS is not saying “those bases used to belong to us, and they still do”; it’s more like “those bases used to be yours, but now they’re ours”. You’d need to use the simple present here, “belong” - “now all your bases belong to us”, without an auxiliary, with the “now” highlighting that this wasn’t true in the past but it is in the current time.
He used archaic form of English instead of contemporary, possibly for the sake of dramatic effect.
Imagine that it’s part of a longer monologue filled with "thou"s, "betwixt"s, "harken"s and you’re on the right track.
There’s a discussion here:
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.
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I think grammatical simplifications like this are part of the reason why English is so popular as a second language around the world.
Not really. The reasons for the popularity of a language are rarely intrinsic; most of the time, the language is simply piggybacking on the power relations involving its speakers. Such as wooden walls on the sea (i.e. the British navy).
It’s also worth noting that, most of the time, languages don’t really “simplify”, they simply shift the complexity back and forth between internal systems. I don’t have a good example of that involving the perfect tense, but consider noun cases - sure, English got rid of them… but as a consequence word order became syntactically rigid, and its old role marking topic/comment was taken over by articles. The morphology got simpler, but the syntax became more complex as a result.
Is “ik heb … geworden” even correct Dutch? It feels so awkward for me to read
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It’s not awkward? Because that’s subjective, for me it’s awkward to read.
Or is it not correct? Because yay then, I guess.
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Okay great haha
I have not sure. I am become a suspicion it’s from Old English (the malt liquor, not the language).
Students of French will recognize the use of the verb “to be” along with verbs such as “come” or “become”. As others have mentioned, we changed this in English, but it remains so in other languages.
I was curious about this last week and found an article that provides some other examples of this type of usage:
“The translation’s grammatical archaism made it even more powerful, resonating with lines in Tennyson (“I am become a name, for always roaming with a hungry heart”), Shakespeare (“I am come to know your pleasure”), and the Bible (“I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness”).”
The article also provides some commentary from a scholar about how to translate the original Sanskrit that Oppenheimer is referencing.
Edit: This article is referenced in the above article, and provides some interesting insight into why Oppenheimer was thinking of this quote. His situation was very similar to the situation of Arjuna, who speaks the original phrase in the ancient story. It really gives some additional insight into how many different mental levels Oppenheimer must have been able to conceptualize.
The original line comes from Chapter 11 Verse 32 of the Bhagavad Gita.
कालोऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत्प्रवृद्धो
(kālo ’smi loka-kṣhaya-kṛit pravṛiddho)
The most literal translation would be: “I am mighty Time, the source of destruction of the worlds.” But काल can alternatively mean Death, and it looks like that’s the interpretation Oppenheimer chose. The verb here is a simple “am”, as in “I am Time/Death”. So the “am become” part is not due to any feature of Sanskrit itself.
But people usually take some liberty while translating poetry. Given the context (i.e. Krishna convincing Arjuna to fight, and showing him his true form), it makes sense to use “I have become” or even “I am become” (as explained in the other comments, it’s grammatically correct).
Only tangentially related: Latin, the dead language, heavily tied into romantic, classical education. I recently found out that Latin in general wouldn’t say, I did this, but instead, this was done. Less of an emphasis on individual agency. Fascinating aspects about linguistics, how thought, sense of self has evolved over millenia.
Because English is a terrible language.
Signed, an English speaker.
