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?
Yup it’s still like this in Dutch. It’s “ik ben … geworden” instead of “ik heb … geworden”.
I think grammatical simplifications like this are part of the reason why English is so popular as a second language around the world. It’s just easier to learn than many other languages. Another big simplification for example is that nouns are not gendered like in most other European languages.
Is “ik heb … geworden” even correct Dutch? It feels so awkward for me to read
No it’s not
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.
Sorry for the ambiguity, I meant it’s grammatically not correct.
Okay great haha