Is the meme, "all your base are belong to us" correct for any time period?

Question

Surely many people have heard, “all your base are belong to us”. It is a popular internet meme from 2000.

The Wikipedia page calls it “broken English”, but it seems as if some translations of The Bible use the same construction, as evident in this question:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. —II Corinthians 5:17

If “all things are become new” is correct, then could “all your base are belong to us” also be correct? Do both of these follow the same form?

The 'God' questions are not easily answerable here. You should ask that at christianity.SE. — Mitch, Jun 14 '12 at 16:34
I edited out the first usage. I was uncomfortable editing out the final one though, as he made it part of his fundamental question. — T.E.D., Jun 14 '12 at 16:44
I never understood what that means. Reading the Wiki, I still don't. — paddotk, Jun 14 '12 at 20:37
Related: Is it acceptable to use "is become" instead of "has become"? — RegDwigнt, Jul 13 '12 at 14:13

score 23 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 02 '12 at 15:35

No, they are completely different constructions.

Become in the phrase “are become” is the past participle, and the construction is an older form of “have become”. (It’s just a coincidence that become has the same form in its infinitive and its past participle).

Older English often used forms of be to form the perfect of some verbs, particularly verbs of motion, and verbs of change of state, where today we would use forms of have. You can find many examples of “is come”, “are arrived”, “is changed” and so on. The parallel construction is still used in French: “je suis arrivé” (“I am arrived”) as opposed to “j’ai vu” (“I have seen”).

But belong does not function as the past participle of belong: a parallel construction would be “they are belonged to”, which is not grammatical because belong is transitive (takes an object) so its perfect was never formed with be. In any case, the meaning of “all your base are belong to us” is not perfect.

score 5 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 02 '12 at 15:31

5

I’ll address the last question, “And, is it possible that they were both written under the direction of God almighty?”

The Bible was not written in English. Paul’s letters, in particular, were written in Greek. Some people translated it into English, but there are loads of such people, and if you check I think you’ll find most of those translations don’t use that construction, but a more modern one.

edited Oct 02 '12 at 15:31

MetaEd

28,488

answered Jun 14 '12 at 16:53

T.E.D.

18,544

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It is considered that the translations had God's influence. – Mitch Jun 14 '12 at 17:02
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@Mith - Addressing that really does belong over on christianity.se (Hint: it won't go over great even there). But simple logic says that English and Greek are different languages that do not perfectly map to each other, so translating the original Corinthians perfectly into English simply cannot be done, no matter how well guided. – T.E.D. Jun 14 '12 at 18:42

Is the meme, "all your base are belong to us" correct for any time period?

2 Answers2