"We're the greatest" - an empty boast or a call to action?

I believe we can seize this future together -- because we are not as divided as our politics suggest; we're not as cynical as the pundits believe; we are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions; and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and forever will be, the United States of America. And together, with your help, and God’s grace, we will continue our journey forward, and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.

--President Barack Obama, 7 November 2012

Yesterday I joined a Facebook exchange about whether the United States is indeed the greatest nation on Earth. By quite a few objective criteria, I argued, we trail other nations: health care accessibility, lifespan, maternal mortality, education, infrastructure development, employment, equality of opportunity ... well, the list is frighteningly long. We are clearly not the greatest nation on earth by any standards that people from other nations would accept, and we are becoming less great every year (for a European view of America's decline, read this sobering article - in English - from Monday's Der Spiegel).

Yesterday I also told my two little dogs - Muffin the poodle mix and Tiggy-Winkle the terrier - that they are the best little dogs in the world. By quite a few objective criteria, I am deluded about my dogs. Tiggy  digs holes in upholstered furniture, and she barks so much that she was nearly kicked out of obedience school ("Just give up," the trainer advised; "she's going to bark, whatever you do"). Muffin snores, refuses to cooperate with her groomer, and bites large dogs. But I love my dogs passionately. I wouldn't trade them for any Westminster champions or obedience winners. Several friends, watching me interact with Tiggy and Muffin, have said they would like to be my dogs.

Some people who say America's the greatest really believe that we have the best health care, the best education, the highest incomes, the most liberty, the least corruption, and the most opportunities to succeed. Sadly, these people are deluded. That may have been true in the 1950s, but it is not true today.

However, I suspect that most people who say America's the greatest, including our president, aren't thinking about data at all. They are saying they love America passionately and that they wouldn't consider moving elsewhere even if they found a country that surpasses America in every quantifiable area. They are saying they believe in our founding fathers' vision of America as summarized by Abraham Lincoln: "a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." They are saying they love the spacious skies, the amber waves of grain, the purple mountain majesties, the fruited plain - and especially the patriot dream that sees beyond the years (I really think "America the Beautiful" should be our national anthem). They are saying they are willing to work hard to make the dream the reality.

The people who truly believe America is greater than any other country need to check their data. They might also want to read Jesus' story about the Pharisee and the publican (Luke 18:10-14) or Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" or Carl Sandburg's "Four Preludes on Playthings in the Wind." Hubris does not make America strong. To the contrary, by blinding us to our problems, it keeps us from fixing them.

But the people who know that America has serious problems and yet love her anyway - love her so much that in their enthusiasm they sometimes say America is the greatest nation on Earth - are the people who can lead our country back to equality of opportunity, who can work to improve our schools, our health care, our roads, our businesses, our environment, our immigration policies, and our working conditions. Most important of all, these are the people who can encourage us to be concerned not only for ourselves but also for one another.

When people in other countries hear Americans say America is the greatest nation on Earth, they tend to think this is an empty boast from a nation of bullies (after all, we do have the biggest military on earth, outspending the next 13 countries combined). If, however, they understood us to mean We love America and want to make it great, I suspect they would be more indulgent toward us, even if they didn't care for our word choice. In the interest of international understanding, we would probably do well to change our diction.

In the late 1930s, as nationalism intensified and much of the world was on the brink of war, Lloyd Stone and Georgia Harkness wrote words to the tune Finlandia that express American patriotism at its best. Here are two of its verses:

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine.

But other hearts in other lands are beating,

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.

But other lands have sunlight too and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.

This is the language of hope and love, not of bluster.

It is the language President Obama used in his victory speech:

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That's what makes America great.

It is the language that can lead us to "crown [our] good with brotherhood / From sea to shining sea." And beyond.

Grammar sins: a case study

From Nicolas Poussin,
 Le Christ et la femme adultère

You know the story. A woman was caught in the act. The religious leaders grabbed her and brought her to Jesus. Are you a biblical literalist? they asked. Because if you are, shouldn't we stone her? What would Moses do?

Quick, now. What did Jesus say?

About.com's French Language website quotes his words thus: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."

My inner grammarian wincing, I dashed off an email to the website's author: "That should be 'Let him who is without sin ... ' (i.e., 'Let him ... cast the first stone'; I don't think you'd be tempted to write 'Let he ... cast the first stone').

Of course she knew the difference - she herself is a grammarian. But, she said, she was just quoting the Bible, which says "Let he ...."

Actually it doesn't, at least not in the King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New International Version, the New American Bible, the Common English Bible, the Douay-Reims Version, or presumably any other version that uses copyeditors. Lacking a Bible at hand, she explained, she had found the verse online. Just Google it, she told me.

So I did. I am pleased to report that when I compared "Let him who is without sin" to "Let he who is without sin," correct grammar won, 3.8 million to 1.3 million.

I also learned that "Let He Who Is Without Sin" is the name of a Star Trek episode.

It's a good thing modern English tends to use only three pronoun cases (such as he, him, his). We'd never learn to speak Hungarian - it has at least 18 cases.

But hey, if you use the wrong case, I won't stone you. I'm not without sin: I refuse to say "It is I."

Apostrophes are easy: a three-minute lesson

You wouldn't know it from reading blog comments or grocery store signs, but you know what? Using apostrophes correctly is really, really easy. Here's a three-minute lesson that will turn you into an apostrophe expert for life.

Rule 1. Never use an apostrophe to make a word plural. Never! No exceptions. Not even if the word ends in a vowel. The plural of apostrophe is apostrophes. The plural of 1920 is 1920s. The plural of LCD is LCDs. The plural of do is dos. Really.
   Corollary: Do use an apostrophe to make a single letter of the alphabet plural. Example: There are two p's, four i's, and four s's in Mississippi.
  No to words, yes to letters.

Rule 2. Use an apostrophe to replace the missing letter(s) in contractions. Most of us don't have too much trouble with this one. We know how to spell words like I'll, he'd, can't, shouldn't, it's (meaning it is).
   Put Rule 1 with Rule 2, and you become one of the few people in the United States who know how to spell dos and don'ts.

Rule 3. Use an apostrophe to make a noun possessive. Put it immediately after the noun that tells who is doing the possessing. (If you're not sure, just turn the phrase around and you'll instantly see where the apostrophe goes.) Examples:

• the boy's dog = the dog that belongs to the boy
• the boys' dog = the dog that belongs to the boys
• the Smiths' house = the house that belongs to the Smiths
• the smith's house = the house that belongs to the smith (would he be a blacksmith, perhaps?)
• the woman's room = the room belonging to the woman
• the women's room = the room intended for women (since the word womens doesn't exist, there is no reason to put the apostrophe anywhere else)
• the newspaper's reputation = the reputation of the newspaper
• the newspapers' reputation = the reputation of the newspapers

   Corollary: Never use an apostrophe to make a pronoun possessive. Not even if the pronoun is it. Examples:

• his dog = the dog that belongs to him
• their house = the house that belongs to them
• her room = the room that belongs to her
• its reputation = the reputation that belongs to it

OK, you're an apostrophe expert now. How hard was that?

________________________________

If you want to debate the fine points, you can always discuss what to do with words that end in s or z. Is it Jesus' name or Jesus's name? Thomas' car or Thomas's car? Style books differ. But notice that the apostrophe still follows Rule 3 above: it still comes immediately after the noun that describes who owns the name (Jesus) or the car (Thomas).

The revised liturgy: medieval words, modern sexism

The bishops have spoken, or at least succumbed. This weekend American Catholics began saying new words at mass. Well, perhaps new is incorrect - the aim of the revised liturgy is to bring back older words that are closer to medieval Latin. In a time when the Catholic church has been rocked by scandals of almost Renaissance proportions, this move is supposed to make American parishioners feel more holy. It is also supposed to bring us in line with European-language liturgies, whose translations are closer to the medieval text.

Yesterday I went to the 10:30 mass at St. Michael's Catholic Community. The Bishop of Joliet, resplendent in purple robes and gold miter, processed medievally down the center aisle behind an honor guard of Knights of Columbus wearing feathery hats. When he greeted us with the customary "The Lord be with you," half of us responded "And also with you" while the other half said, medievally, "And with your spirit." By the end of mass, we had all caught on and were saying the revised words. I didn't feel especially holier. I did, however, feel greater kinship with European Catholics, who rarely attend mass.

Catholics sometimes reproach Protestants for acting as if the Holy Spirit stopped working with the church in the first century, after the New Testament books were written. Tradition, Catholics maintain, is the Spirit's continuing work in the church. Even the Spirit, however, has a bad century now and then, or at least a bad continent. Apparently the words he inspired the Western European church to use in the 11th century were superior to those he inspired the American church to use in the 20th century. So now instead of simple words like one in being and born, we're back to medieval words like consubstantial and incarnate; and instead of affirming our faith as part of the believing community ("We believe in one God ..."), we're back to medieval individualism ("I believe in one God"); and along with with our guilt-ridden medieval ancestors we can strike our breasts and confess that we have sinned "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

And of course we are just as sexist as ever. More so, in fact. A medieval priest did indeed say "Pray, brothers" (oráte fratres), but not at every mass. More likely those words were spoken to brother priests at  concelebrated masses, not to male and female parishioners at typical parish masses. And the medieval creed did indeed affirm that Christ came down from heaven "for us men" (propter nos homines). Never mind that any 21st-century English-speaker hears that as "for us males," whereas the Latin means "for us humans." Why change good sexist texts that are already close to the Latin words, even if the meanings have completely changed?

Alas, as Fr. Nonomen lamented in Commonweal magazine, "the majority [of parishioners] won’t care. They will dutifully learn all the new responses and musical settings and generally remain unaware of the powerful changes this liturgical language is likely to work on the church their grandchildren will inherit." Or will not inherit, as more and more of us get tired of medievally resplendent bishops making excuses for bad decisions by incompetent men in high places, and quietly drift away.

Speak King James English in one easy lesson!

Can you tell an -est from an -eth? A thee from a thou? And what's ye* all about, anyway?

If you want to make fun of turn-of-the-seventeenth-century English, or if you have the nobler aim of understanding Shakespeare or the King James Version, this short lesson may help.

Contrary to popular opinion, writing like a Jacobean is not quite as easy as adding eth to every verb. But it's not all that difficult, either. Here's the one clue that makes it all fall into place:

Jacobeans made a distinction between you (singular) and you (plural).

Since Texas hadn't been invented in 1611, they didn't have the you-all option at their disposal. So they used a different set of words to distinguish you, my friend, from you guys. Look at the charts below to see how it works.

Subjects and Verbs

	Singular	Plural
1st person	I speak	We speak
2nd person	2011: You speak 1611: Thou speakest	2011: You speak 1611: Ye speak
3rd person	2011: He (she, it) speaks 1611: He (she, it) speaketh	They speak

Objects

	Direct	Indirect
1st person singular	They love me	They give me the books
2nd person singular	2011: They love you 1611: They love thee	2011: They give you the books 1611: They give thee the books
3rd person singular	They love her (him, it)	They give her (him, it)the books
1st person plural	They love us	They give us the books
2nd person plural	They love you	They give you the books
3rd person plural	They love them	They give them the books

Possessive pronouns

1st person singular	My books (mine eyes)	The books are mine
2nd person singular	2011: Your books 1611: Thy books (thine eyes)	2011: The books are yours 1611: The books are thine
3rd person singular	His books; her books	The books are his or hers
1st person plural	Our books	The books are ours
2nd person plural	Your books	The books are yours
3rd person plural	Their books	The books are theirs

So, what about those verbs?

Actually, they’re mostly like ours. As you’d expect by now, the verb that goes with the 2^nd person singular is different. If your subject is thou, your verb is likely going to end in the letter t. You know about thou shalt [not]. Other common (and irregular) verbs are thou art, thou wilt, thou hast, thou dost, thou canst, thou wouldst, thou shouldst, thou couldst … they all end in t, and most of them end in st. Less common (but more regular) verbs tend to end in est, especially if it’s easier to pronounce that way: thou eatest, thou drinkest, thou sleepest, etc.

Exception: if your verb is in the imperative mood, it’s just like a modern English verb. “Eat! Drink! Be merry!” works just as well in 1611 as it does in 2011.

If your subject is he, she, or it, your verb is likely going to end in the letters th: he hath, he doth, he saith [not sayeth], or the ever-popular eth: almost everything else. He prayeth, he loveth, he eateth, he drinketh. Think of it as a lisp. If the modern English verb ends in s, substitute th or eth and you’re talking like a Jacobean.

But if the modern English verb doesn’t end in s, then don’t mess with it! A Jacobean can, would, should, and could.  And the verb to be breaks every rule. A Jacobean, like a 21^st-century person, is what he is.

_____

Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe is something else altogether. Here the Y is a now-defunct letter that is pronounced th.

It's a boy!

Our fourth grandbaby, due September 9, is a boy. His parents saw his anatomically correct picture yesterday, and his father posted it on the refrigerator. His grandfather and I have taken to calling him Cholmondeley (pronounced Chumley), which goes very well with his last name.

Naturally, I’m thinking about gender.

We’ve been keeping track of Cholmondeley for three months, ever since he was the size of an almond. As he grew, we called him the Kiwi, the Peach, and the Hamster. But now that we know his gender, he’s a person.

I know, I know. Depending on your philosophy, he’s been a person since the moment he was conceived, or possibly from all eternity. Or, on the other hand, he won’t be a person until he’s born, or possibly later, but is in the process of becoming one. Gender has nothing to do with it.

But I’m not speaking scientifically or theologically or philosophically or politically. I’m just saying how I feel, as his grandmother. I can imagine him now, this second grandson of mine. I can think about how he’ll look in those little-boy outfits at Carson’s that line the aisle between women’s lingerie and the women’s lounge (their marketers know that grandmothers are likely to walk that way). I can wonder if his tastes will run to stuffed bunnies or board books or finger paints or drums.

Some years ago, when I was working for a religion publishing company, several authors and I got into lengthy discussions about gender pronouns. Our editorial policy insisted upon gender neutrality in referring to people, but we were fuzzier about how to refer to God.

One author upbraided me every time she noticed a book of ours using masculine pronouns for God. God is neither male nor female, she rightly observed, and using he, him, and his when writing about God perpetuates misleading stereotypes.

Another author rightly observed that we simply can’t speak of an individual person without gender references. To refuse to use personal pronouns for God, this author insisted, was to rob God of God’s personal characteristics and to turn God into some kind of impersonal force – besides, of course, butchering the English language.

I agree with both authors, and I suggest that for the next four millennia – equal to about the amount of time we monotheists have been calling God he – we call God she. Feminine pronouns are as inaccurate as masculine pronouns, they do an equally good job of emphasizing God’s personal nature, and for many people they make God seem warmer and more accessible, sort of like the Blessed Virgin.

Myself, I like to think of God as a large, comfortable, but no-nonsense woman who hugs me when I need to be hugged and chews me out when I need to behave. I call her LaHoveh. She’s certainly a mother and, given how long she’s been in business, she’s clearly a grandmother too. I imagine she’s already looking out for Cholmondeley.

There's no such thing as a split infinitive

I am so tired of politics. And religion. Especially when they crawl into bed with each other and start shouting. So today I'm going to forget about them altogether and revolutionize English grammar instead. English-speaking friends, it is impossible to split an infinitive.

Not that most of us care. If asked what's wrong with Star Trek's aim, "to boldly go where no man has gone before," we're likely to point out its sexism, not its placement of the word "boldly." But if you harbor any residual guilt about split infinitives from long-ago English classes or from several decades of of copyediting, here's good news.

Structurally speaking, it makes no sense to say that the infinitive in Star Trek's mission statement is "to go." Nope. The infinitive is "go." Just plain "go."

In other European languages, the infinitive is one word, not two. "Go," for example, is aller in French. "To go to France" is aller en France. But the French, like the English, often use little words like the English "to" when a sentence has two verbs. "He begins to read" is il commence à lire, and "she decides to leave" is elle décide de partir.

Why then do English speakers say that the infinitive is "to read" and "to leave," while French speakers do not say it is à lire and de partir?

Well, one explanation is that in French, depending on the sentence, the same infinitive may require "à" or "de" or no preposition at all. In English, by contrast, the "to" is always required ... except that it isn't.

Yes, we always say "I want to go," never "I want go," and even though le prince du Danemark said "être ou ne pas être," the original Hamlet said "to be or not to be."

But we never say "I must to go" or "I can to go" or "I may to go" or "I had better to go" or "I should to go." And in all of these sentences, the second verb is most definitely an infinitive.

So why should even the most rigorous grammarian have "to go boldly" when he or she "can boldly go"? No reason at all : the infinitive, even though often coupled with "to," is simply "go." You can split it from its preposition, but you can't split the infinitive itself.

Blair Shewchuk, CBC News Canada's Senior Editor of Journalistic Standards, would probably disagree with my analysis (everyone does). He quite cheerfully approves separating the "to" from the verb, however, and that's what counts. In "To Boldly Split Infinitives," a delightful summary of the debate, he tells of one author with the right spirit:

In a letter written in 1947, U.S. author Raymond Chandler put it this way: "Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split."

I like that. It's bold.