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.

Why Brits wish they could buy gas in Chicago

U.S. gas prices are soaring. The average for low grade unleaded is now $4.00/gallon, and the highest - $4.50/gallon - is right next door in Chicago (out here in the burbs, it's more like $4.39).

Let us briefly interrupt our hyperventilating to consider how our gas prices compare with, say, petrol prices in the UK.

To do this, we'll have to convert liters into US gallons, which, by the way, are different from UK gallons (1 liter = .2642 U.S. gallons) and US gallons into liters (1 US gallon = 3.7854 liters). We'll also have to convert British pounds sterling into US dollars (£1 = $1.6476 today) and US dollars into British pounds sterling ($1 = £0.6069). And then we do some math.

The result: If the UK had petrol for $4.00/gallon, they would be paying £0.64/liter. However, the UK average price for low grade unleaded on May 10 was more than twice that much: £1.37/liter.

Or, looked at another way, if we in the US had to pay UK prices for gas, we'd be paying $8.54 per gallon.

UK prices aren't exceptionally high, by the way: all over Europe, prices are similar.

How do Europeans cope? They drive smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. They invest in excellent public transit. They live closer to work. Many of them ride bikes or walk. (The extra exercise not only saves gas; it may also be one reason why Europeans tend to be healthier than Americans.) And, of course, they tighten their belts - their gas prices have been soaring too.

PATHS OF GLORY (DVD)

CNN reports that Claude Choules, 110, has died in Perth, Australia. Mr Choules was "the last known survivor of the 70 million combatants from World War I, a British sailor who witnessed the surrender of the German fleet in 1918."

That was the war known at the time as "the war to end all wars. As we know all too well, it didn't. Approximately 16 million people died in that war, and then 21 years later war broke out again. Estimates of World War II deaths range from 50 to 78 million.

Choules's son, Adrian, told reporters that

his father refused to glorify war.... In later life Choules refused to be interviewed about the wars in which he served. "He always said that the old men make the decisions that send the young men into war," Adrian said. "He used to say, if it was the other way around, and the old pollies were off fighting, then there would never be any wars."

I read about Choules's death right after watching Stanley Kubrick's 1957 film, Paths of Glory, about French officers, troops, and an impossible assignment in 1916. If ever a film illustrated Claude Choules's words, this is it. Self-deception, pride, cynicism, arrogance, injustice, hypocrisy, mendacity - Kubrick explores all these themes in a mere 88 minutes in a film that will incite you to shake your fist and roar at your TV screen.

There are plenty of decent human beings in the film, and some of them are officers. Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), for example, who defends the three hapless scapegoats, is appealingly earnest. The villains range from the oily Général  Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) to the miserable Lieutenant Roget (Wayne Morris), all managing to be despicable without turning into caricatures. Best performance in my book was Ralph Meeker's portrayal of Corporal Philippe Paris, a dutiful soldier who suffers for other men's sins. Nobody won any Academy Awards, however, and the film was so controversial that it was banned in France and Switzerland for nearly 20 years.

OK, it's probably not a date night film, but it's gripping, provocative, and brilliant - will that do? Preview it here, or read this excellent review and summary, or read the book it was based on ("a chilling portrait of injustice, this novel offers insight into the tragedies of war in any age"), or ask Netflix to send you the DVD.

In case you're wondering about the title: It comes from Thomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," line 36:

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

VIRTUALLY YOU by Elias Aboujaoude

A virulent danger lurks in our homes, in our offices and—very likely—in our pockets. It may rewire our brains and erect a barrier between us and our cultural heritage (says Nicholas Carr in The Shallows). It may play havoc with our personal relationships and our sense of identity (cautions Sherry Turkle in Alone Together).

It may even nudge us into full-fledged pathological behavior, either creating new disorders or bringing out abnormalities that already lie deep within us. So warns Elias Aboujaoude—a psychiatrist and the director of Stanford University's Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic located in Silicon Valley, the world's technological heart—author of Virtually You, one of this year's most thought-provoking jeremiads.

The danger, according to a swelling chorus of authors, is the Inter­net, or the way we use the Internet, or the way we have stopped doing a lot of things we used to do before the Internet took over our lives. "While the Internet is a force for good in many arenas," writes Aboujaoude, "it also has the power to interfere with our home lives, our romantic relationships, our careers, our parenting abilities—and our very concept of who we are."

From the opening paragraphs of my review, newly published in "Christian Century" magazine and on its website. Read the rest of the review by clicking here.

THE FIFTH WITNESS by Michael Connelly

Six years have passed since attorney Mickey Haller, aka The Lincoln Lawyer, defended rich young Louis Roulet against murder charges. Haller has recovered from physical injuries sustained during that case and spent time in rehab shaking a painkiller addiction. Working with half-brother Detective Harry Bosch, he has defended a Hollywood producer (The Brass Verdict) and threatened to quit law altogether. Then, switching sides, he has prosecuted an accused child molester (The Reversal). He is brilliant at whatever he tries.

But Haller has hit hard times. The economic downturn has left criminal defense lawyers without clients: though crime still flourishes, criminals are short on cash. To survive, Haller is now fighting foreclosures. Individual payments are low, but an ad campaign has brought him lots of customers. The downside? The work isn't very challenging—until one of his clients, Lisa Trammel, is accused of murdering the banker who foreclosed on her house.

That's the beginning of my review of "The Fifth Witness," which is now online at Books & Culture: Web Exclusives. Click this link to read the whole review (it's not all that long). Click it quickly, before Connelly's next book comes out this fall!
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Related posts on this blog: 
The Lincoln Lawyer
The Reversal

On the royal wedding: a note to its cultured despisers

3-year-old Grace van Cutsem is not amused.

Some of my friends apparently identify with the kid on the balcony. The royal wedding? How anachronistic: "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" How tiresomely patriotic: all British Empire and military display. How clichéd: "England's green and pleasant land." What a colossal waste of money - a  £50k forest in Westminster Abbey! Some of these critics are even women.

I confess: I hear them, and I more or less agree with them, and still I got up at 4:00 a.m. and watched the wedding, every minute of it, just as I watched Charles and Diana's wedding 30 years ago, hanging on to every word, every image.

In the evening I came back for more, and when I turned on the TV news, I knew why I can't tear myself away. What are the options? Shelling in Syria. Rising death toll from tornadoes in the American South. Libyan civil war spilling over into Tunisia. Endless political bickering. The only happy news came from London.

The romance! the dress! the hats! the horses! the trumpet fanfares! the choir! the queen all in yellow! the gorgeous young couple, so obviously in love! Do I want to turn from that and blog about union bashing or cow bashing or Obama bashing? I don't think so.

I mean, what's the reason some of us get exercised about politics and the economy and international relations, anyway? Isn't it because we have a dream of love and beauty and peace for all? Don't we want to affirm the words spoken by the Bishop of London yesterday, that "every wedding [should be] a royal wedding with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future"?

As "we stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril," can't we agree with the bishop that "we shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another"?

To be sure, the bishop pointed out that "personal relations alone will [not] supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden." And royal weddings, of course, will not eliminate poverty or dictators or conspiracy theorists. But when 2 billion people gather around the TV set to watch a wedding (or a funeral or the Summer Olympics), it is not mere escapism - it's a celebration of the things that give life meaning, the values we share that we hope, by our political involvement, to extend to as many people as possible.

MADE IN DAGENHAM (DVD)

In 1968, 179 east London machinists walked off the job and changed history. The machinists weren't complaining about having to work long days in an airless room that quickly became unbearably hot. They objected to being classified as unskilled workers when  their work - making seat covers for Fords - required a great deal of skill. They also objected to being paid considerably less than fellow workers who were less skilled than they were. And they objected to, year after year, being patronized, lied to, and eventually ignored by union officials. The 179 machinists, of course, were women.


Made in Dagenham is funny, sassy, infuriating, and occasionally moving. Watch it for an evening's entertainment, or watch it to remember - or to learn - what life was like only 43 years ago. 1968 was the year when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. It was the year of the Tet offensive and the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Student protests, especially in France, were huge. The Beatles sang about Lady Madonna ("wonder how she manages to feed the rest?"). They might well wonder - women earned less than 60% of what men earned, and it didn't look like things were going to get better anytime soon.

Of course women should have equal pay, some of the more enlightened men-in-charge told us. But these things take time. You can't expect things to happen overnight. Making demands will get you nowhere. That's what the same enlightened men-in charge-had been saying about civil rights for people of color just a few years earlier. And that's what the weaselly union and business leaders told the women machinists in east London.

Fortunately, the women machinists didn't agree.

In 1968 I taught history and French at a small private high school. The pay scale had three levels: married men earned approximately $7000 a year; single men earned about $6000, and women earned about $5000. The English teacher, the German teacher, and I thought this was not quite fair. All the married men had working wives. We, however, though women, were all married to students and were the sole support of our families. Why shouldn't we earn as much as the married men?

We wrote a polite letter of inquiry to the people responsible for our paychecks. We made no threats; we merely asked for an explanation. Immediately our principal got a terrified phone call from his board chairman. "What's this I hear about a teacher's strike?" the man wanted to know.

Unlike Rita O'Grady, the spunky heroine of Made in Dagenham, we didn't strike. We didn't do anything, in fact: we were nice girls. Those were the days, my friend. I'm glad they finally ended.