language

Britannica blunders 1

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The once-respected name of Britannica has really sunk. In an article on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, they misquote and misinterpret the most famous line of the play, while thinking they’re correcting a misconception.

The most famous line of the play, “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”, is often misinterpreted. The archaic word wherefore does not mean “where”, but “why”, rendering the modern English translation as “Why are you, Romeo?”

That’s not what the line is! It’s “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” with no comma. Juliet isn’t asking why Romeo exists. She’s asking why he’s Romeo — meaning why he is Romeo Montague, a member of an enemy family. The next lines make this clearer: “Deny thy father and refuse thy name, Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”
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Oligarchy: The polite way to say “conspiracy”

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An oligarchy is a government run by a small number of people. If a country is an oligarchy, it’s not a democracy. It might have the appearance of democracy, with elections for show, but the ruling insiders call all the shots. Some countries fit this description. Most would say that the United States doesn’t, and until recently claiming it is would have fallen under crazy conspiracy theories.

It’s getting more popular, though, to claim the USA is an oligarchy. An article in The Nation, not usually considered a fringe publication, is titled “It’s Official: America Is an Oligarchy.” Its “evidence” is that some people are very rich. Today I saw a post by Robert Reich casually taking it for granted that we’re living in an oligarchy, and a search turned up an article by him titled “How America’s oligarchy has paved the road to fascism (Why American capitalism is so rotten, Part 7)”. He makes it clear he understands what the word means, and he claims that the current American oligarchy emerged around 1980.
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The attack of the singularized plurals 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged grammar language writing on by

English includes many nouns that end in “-um” or “-on” and are pluralized by changing the ending to “-a.” They come from Latin and Greek respectively. Examples include “medium,” “datum,” “ovum,” “criterion,” and “phenomenon.” As with everything else, the language isn’t consistent; we have museums, not musea; morons, not mora; polygons, not polyga. I wouldn’t complain if the language regularized the endings of all these words. “Bacteriums” and “phenomenons” would sound weird at first, but we could get used to it.

What’s happening instead is that people turn the plurals into singulars. With some words, like “data” and “media,” the change has been firmly established. Others are substandard but turn up often, like “a bacteria” or “a phenomena.” Recently I saw a writer friend who should know better talking about “a criteria.” This doesn’t make the words any more regular, since double-pluralizing “medias” or “datas” is still frowned upon. It leaves us with words that are the same in the singular and the plural.
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What really is a theocracy?

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About a year and a half ago, I wrote about the overbroad use of the term “Fascism” and what it really was or is. Another political designation that gets freely tossed around is “theocracy.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided.” This is too broad; governments of all kinds have claimed that God guides their heads of state. Listen to traditional patriotic songs, and you’ll hear lots of claims that the leaders act under God’s guidance.
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Prescriptivism or consistentism?

This entry was posted in Commentary Writer ethics Writing and tagged grammar language writing on by

Recently I replied to an online point that said that if the US enacts laws that enforce Christian views, the country will be a theocracy. I pointed out that all or nearly all European countries for most of history have met that criterion and that the USA itself was a “theocracy” by that measure until at least the 1960s. The person making the post rebuked me for being a “prescriptivist” and implied it’s consistent with being a libertarian.

First, it’s not a political issue. I don’t advocate laws requiring people to use words with standard meanings, except in legal documents. Aside from that, I’m not exactly a prescriptivist. I prefer to consider myself a “consistentist.” Whatever meaning you give to a word, stick with it and don’t conflate it with other definitions. If you want to use “glory” to mean “a nice knock-down argument,” don’t use it to mean “splendor” at the same time.
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