Women and Horses

There are many words in any language which are either openly sexist or sexist in their etymology. In a book I'm currently reading on the etymology of English words and the history behind them, a question arises as to whether the word "bridegroom" is sexist in meaning. The author discounts as "crazy" the explanations some have given for the origin of the word - one who grooms the bride or gives her the value of a horse.

Photo of horses I took a couple of months ago.

In the Anglo-Saxon version of the Gospel of St John, the word used for bridegroom is brydguma. We know what bryd or bride is but what on earth is guma? It's perhaps clearer when brydguma was spelt bredgome in 1340. From my own rather sketchy knowledge of Middle English poetry, gome means man. And it's not just gome. Any student of medieval literature will recall the headache we all had over the dozen or so words for just "man" or "knight" alone and they include, if my memory serves me, tulke, segge, wight  and many more I can't now recall; the weird-sounding ones being from dialects such as the Lancastrian dialect of Middle English. But gome means man and even though I've not read medieval poetry for ages, I can still remember that much. To cut a long story short (and etymological stories can be pretty long), "bridegroom" simply means the bride's man as the author of the etymology book suggests. That's what he says but I hold an entirely different view and that's not the end of the story, as I will explain later.

The anti-sexist sentiment we see today has gone overboard with changes made to the hymns we all love. Let me give examples from famous Christmas carols. "Good Christian Men" has been changed in some hymnals to the effete sounding "Good Christian Friends". "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is avoided in some groups because they can't change the word without doing violence to the tune. In the Christmas hymn the whole world loves "Joy to the World", the line, "Let men their songs employ" is altered so that the word men is replaced with all. Just try singing that and you will see that it doesn't feel the same. And there are countless more hymns destroyed by extreme feminism. I've even heard of suggestions to change the name of the Holy Trinity to the blasphemous "Cloud, Rock and Holy Spirit" because "Father" and "Son" are of course too sexist for some people.

This is all quite unnecessary. Language, like religion and culture, is a good reflection of our human history. Of course any language that has a history exceeding a mere 50 years is bound to be sexist. The Chinese language is one of the oldest languages in the world and it has continued relatively unchanged for a few thousand years. The word for "woman" is written hieroglyphically as someone who kneels. The word for "good" is written to depict the kneeling woman carrying a child. And for "peace", we see that same kneeling woman caged in a house. But nobody has suggested that these ancient characters be changed to something that reflects our non-sexist worldview today.

When I was a boy, the sentence "Every child must drink his milk" was the only correct form because "every" is singular. As I grew older, I had to say "Every child must drink his or her milk" because how could we be so sexist as to exclude girls among the children? Soon people got tired of the additional words and it's now common to say "Every child must drink their milk", never mind the fact that "every" is singular. It's always wiser to sacrifice grammar for political correctness.

My point is you can't change everything. You've got to make up your own language from scratch if you really want to rid a language of all traces of sexism. Sure, bridegroom may simply mean a bride's man but what about the word "bride"? Etymologists will quickly point out that the Old English bryd comes from Old Frisian bred or breid, Old Saxon brud (Dutch bruid), Old High German brut and Old Norse bruthr. But what do these words actually mean? This is what the author of my etymology book does not explore.

The root word really means "one owned or purchased". Some etymologists believe it also has some link to cooking so I suppose a broader view would be a bride is someone who is owned or purchased to do the cooking. I'm tempted to think (although I'm sure I'm etymologically flawed) that the word "bride" has some link to the word "bridle". My Middle English vocabulary has shrunk considerably after years of laying off medieval literature but I do know that "bride" also meant "bridle" in Middle English and in the mid-19th century, "bride" carried the additional meaning of a bonnet-string and that was the time when all women wore bonnets. If I allow myself to be a little more imaginative and I think of the bonnet-string as a bridle (both were called "bride"), I suppose the idea of a bridegroom as one who bridles the bride as a groom does a horse isn't all that far-fetched.

If I were a woman, sexism in language would not bother me one bit. You can't change history and language is a reflection of what we were once like. If I were a woman, I would want a constant reminder of how far we have come from the days when women were bridled and in this respect, language serves as a most effective memorial of what it used to be and how much women have triumphed. Far from denigrating women, sexism in language is a woman's badge of victory.

TAKE this!

Although I have written more than 50 or 60 articles in this blog alone about the outrageous language mistakes made by the Speak Good English Movement, I would be dishonest if I did not say that most Singaporeans aren't at all so clueless about English grammar and usage as the Movement is. If you would like to look at all these articles, please visit my user-friendly one-page list of all the links to these articles.

But there is a group of Singaporeans who are very much like the Speak Good English Movement - hypercritical but ignorant and stupid. These are the people who first told me years ago that cute really meant "ugly but adorable". I thought it was a joke when I first heard it but the person who told me that, a former colleague who normally spoke quite good English, assured me that this was the dictionary definition of the word. Of course I didn't believe her and I dismissed it as her own personal peculiarity until more and more people (all Singaporeans) told me precisely the same thing. It was like a form of national insanity and I have always been trying to figure out the origin of such a quirky definition. Somebody must have started it just to see how many people would be taken in and how far this obviously wrong definition of such a simple word would travel.

When I was in uni, one of my fellow students told me that take meaning "eat" was Singlish and not Standard English as in "He took his lunch at MacDonald's". Naturally, I didn't believe him. I'm positive I've seen this usage countless times in the works of literary giants such as Jane Austen who, I'm sure, had never been anywhere near Singapore in order to be influenced by Singlish. Right at this moment, I'm in the midst of reading a novel by Sebastian Faulks and I have noted at least two separate occasions when take is used to mean simply "eat".

Knowing how rotten the Speak Good English Movement really is, I was not surprised to see this on their website:

Take has a wide range of meanings and I last counted more than 60 different definitions in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary alone. The title of this post makes use of yet another meaning of "take" and despite its brevity, it can quite effectively conjure up a picture of me in a boxing ring socking the Speak Good English Movement across the face and saying "Take this!"

One other definition in the dictionary is "eat or drink". Here's one example given in the Shorter Oxford:

I take my breakfast at George's Cafe. 

You can't find a better example to prove beyond the smallest doubt that the Speak Good English Movement is once again totally wrong. It's fortunate that the dictionary gave an example that is word-for-word what the Movement says is wrong. From my wide experience with some of these educators in Singapore, I know that if I had picked an example such as "She took tea in the garden" (which I believe comes from one of Jane Austen's novels), they might very well respond that you could say "take tea" but not "take breakfast". The example given in the Shorter Oxford should end all argument on this subject. The Speak Good English Movement is just blatantly wrong, as always.

But I don't want to just stop there. I'm interested in how it all started. Who first came up with this lunatic suggestion that you could not use "take" in this way? One doesn't need much sleuthing skill for that. Ever since I first noted how incredibly ignorant of the English grammar the Speak Good English Movement was some time last year, I've been following them on their website and I've also read their outrageously erroneous grammar book (in two volumes). Those who have been following my blog should know this because I have written extensively on their errors (see the link above). And I think I have discovered the source of this ridiculous notion that take when used to mean "eat" is non-standard Singlish.

When I first noticed that Ludwig Tan, a consultant to the Speak Good English Movement, showed an inordinate respect for an unknown teacher in Singapore's National Institute of Education (NIE) called Adam Brown, I took it upon myself to see what it was that this person had written that appeared to have swept Ludwig Tan off his feet. Adam Brown's book which is published in Singapore (of course) is called Singapore English in a Nutshell. If you have read the articles in this blog in which I slammed Ludwig Tan for his astonishing errors in the English language, you will remember that on a couple of occasions I took a swipe at Adam Brown whom Ludwig Tan cited as an authority. Click here for an example. You will recall Ludwig Tan's irritatingly obtuse failure to understand that you can't pit an NIE teacher against the Oxford English Dictionary.

If you are interested in having a look at Ludwig Tan's laughable blunders that I have blogged about, go to Section 1B of my List of Grammar Terrorists.

I looked into Adam Brown's book and sure enough, I finally stumbled upon the source of this error in Singapore. Adam Brown, in his book, explains that take may be used in 3 different situations:

1. "When the thing to be swallowed is unpleasant, such as medicine..."

2. "When the enquiry is about a particular method of eating or drinking: Do you take sugar in your coffee?

3. "When take means 'have delivered'."

I have said many times before that a good teacher is one who does not make up his own grammar rules or word definitions but we see time and again educators in Singapore doing precisely that. What Brown doesn't know is the above are simply 3 of the 60 or so definitions of the word take. Let's get one thing clear: this teacher in Singapore's National Institute of Education is not an authority on the English language. When you need to look up a point of grammar, you consult Burchfield or Quirk or Greenbaum and there are many others too but you do not consult a Mr Brown from Singapore's NIE. Why then do Singapore's educators including the Speak Good English Movement depend so much on this teacher in Singapore who is an unknown in the world of English grammar? And he is absolutely wrong too. We do not know what peculiar regional variant of the English language he is influenced by but we do know he is wrong and has been shown to be wrong in a couple of my previous blog posts.

Can you imagine what it's like when Brown, a teacher in our National Institute of Education, makes an error in English and it doesn't matter if it's a point of grammar or the definition of a word and its usage? He teaches our teachers who in turn teach our students. If Ludwig Tan is representative of all our English language teachers and Tan has been shown to tenaciously refer his readers to Brown's flawed book despite the clear words of the Oxford English Dictionary to the contrary, do you not think Singapore's language teachers would treat Brown with the same respect, misplaced though that may be?  Do you see now why some of these hilarious quirky mistakes can be perpetuated as a Singaporean peculiarity? All it takes is one self-assured but ignorant teacher with an air of overweening authority to teach something wrong and many language teachers in Singapore will just assume he's right and repeat his mistake to generations of students.

Glamour without Grammar

I find it impossible to read the fashion magazine Singapore Tatler. It's the same with all "glamour" magazines that tell fashionistas what clothes are currently in fashion and what watches should be seen on their wrists. In this month's front cover of the Singapore Tatler alone, I see Cartier, Rolex and Patek Philippe all jostling for space to advertise their watches. It's ludicrous that fashion-conscious people have to be told what they should wear or be seen in as if they are not allowed the liberty to live as free people. If you are a free man or woman and do not bother about other people's tastes (because fashion is essentially the dictates of a small group of women and men, the latter usually androgynous looking), you won't be able to find a single article in a fashion magazine that is worth reading. 

I sometimes receive these magazines by post, unsolicited of course. Whenever I have a copy, I would always read the editorial. The editorial in a local magazine is an excellent gauge of the general standard of English of an industry or of the country itself. That is precisely what I did when I received this month's issue of the Singapore Tatler. This is the sentence that stood out like a sore thumb.

If this were a Facebook entry or a blog post or an email, it wouldn't mean anything because one can easily slip up. Missing an article is probably the commonest mistake made when you're typing and you don't like to read through what you have written. But this is the editorial of a leading magazine of glamour and style. In the glittering world of glamour and high fashion, editorials in magazines are read and re-read many times over to weed out the occasional slip. If there is still a grammatical error or a spelling mistake in the published editorial, you can be sure that such an error could not have been the result of an inadvertent slip of the pen but a fundamental flaw of the Chief Editor who would not have realised it was an error even if you had served it to her on a dish with flickering neon lights all round.

In this blog, I have on numerous occasions dealt with this problem of the missing article, a feature common in Singapore English. You can read about those who can't cope with the simple article and they range from the writer of a school anthem to the "language experts" from Singapore's Speak Good English Movement. In another blog post, I wrote about the other side of the coin to this problem. In this instance, the writer of another school anthem added an article when she shouldn't have. It doesn't really matter whether the error is in wrongly leaving out the article or in having one when there should be none. It's still a confusion many in Singapore have over the use of the article.

How could anyone possibly trip up over something as simple as the article? Of all the parts of speech in the English language, the article must be the easiest to deal with. 

Many years ago, a ridiculous song was played in MRT stations every time a train approached the platform. The song was played only for a short while before someone sensibly put a stop to it.  Every time a train was coming, the song would go "Train is coming, train is coming". I was standing on a platform waiting for a train one day when I heard the song for the first time. Then suddenly, like Buddha seated under a bo tree at the moment of enlightenment, I understood it all. You see, people who have a problem with the article are doing a spontaneous translation from their mother tongue to the English language every time they construct a sentence in English. In many eastern languages such as Mandarin and Malay, there is no article. "Train is coming" is a direct translation from Mandarin "火车来了" and from Malay "Keretapi tiba".

But the Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT) has more serious problems to deal with at the moment than to bother about the article and I can perfectly understand that.

But what I really can't understand is how a magazine that takes great pride in setting the trend of what is glamorous in Singapore can possibly be tied up in knots over something as elementary in the English language as the article. And it's not a page written by an Italian fashion designer or a French catwalk model for whom a deliberate error in a language as unfashionable as English might very well increase her credibility as a designer or model. It's the editorial of the Singapore Tatler written by the Chief Editor herself, one Jane Ngiam. And it's an important issue  too - an SG 50 issue to celebrate Singapore's 50th National Day.

You will recall that I wrote a post some time ago about the editorial of another fashion magazine called HIGH. I do not know if the magazine is still in circulation but I don't think that magazine ranks anywhere near the Singapore Tatler which, I'm sure, prides itself as belonging to quite a different category altogether.

I have always remarked that the English language is an amazing language and like Santa's bag, there is always something for everyone. If Ms Ngiam had a personal aversion to the definite article, instead of writing "ground up", she could have written "ground zero" or simply "from scratch" both of which do not require the article.

Jesus and Lee Kuan Yew

In a video that got 16-year-old Amos Yee into trouble for his insults aimed at Singapore's much beloved founding father Lee Kuan Yew, he likened Lee to Jesus and he said they were both "power-hungry", "malicious" and "horrible".

Left: Jesus cleansing the leper painting in a Sicily cathedral

Right: Lee Kuan Yew, Founding Father of Singapore

But was Jesus really all that? If Amos Yee's description of Jesus is correct, his criminal conviction for having offended Christians' religious sentiments surely cannot stand. Because if Jesus was really what Yee says he was, and if there is biblical scholarship that supports him, merely repeating what Bible scholars say cannot be a criminal offence against Christianity.

It's only fair and right if I state at the outset that I am a church-going, church-serving Christian but as always, I will examine the facts rationally and fairly. But before we examine the person of Jesus, it's important for us to understand that like all religious figures, Jesus can be looked at in his two personas. The first is the historical Jesus and the other is the Jesus of faith.  The Jesus of faith is the Jesus created by the church. He is imbued with super-human power and is fully divine. He is also fully man. "Very God and very man" as the Creed tells us.  The Jesus of faith is also the Son of God, the 2nd person of the Holy Trinity and his properties and nature can't be questioned but are to be accepted as dogma. That's the bummer about religion. There's no room for critical thinking. But nobody outside the church is interested in the Jesus of faith. If at all anyone is interested in Jesus, it's the historical Jesus that he's interested in.

The historical Jesus, assuming he exists, is the Jesus who really lived in Palestine some 2000 years ago.  We cannot project the Jesus of faith into a historical setting. The historical Jesus has to be gleaned from various sources and no historian is going to accept any authority, be it so high an authority as the Church, to lay down dogmas about Jesus if they're not supported by evidence. We have to examine the facts.

Because Jesus was never mentioned in non-religious sources and the very few disputed sources where he is mentioned have been shown and accepted by Bible scholars to be forgeries by early Christians, there can be serious doubt about the historicity of Jesus. However, most historians are prepared to accept that Jesus really did exist and that is the view I will adopt for this post. But bear in mind that I do not totally dismiss the arguments of those who deny the historicity of Jesus. I admit they are compelling; but for the purposes of this article, I will take the position that Jesus did exist in history.

Because of the paucity of evidence for Jesus' existence in non-religious texts, we will have to examine the Holy Gospels in order to understand the historical Jesus. Now, you may legitimately ask that if I want to find out the character of the historical Jesus, surely going to the Holy Gospels will only reveal the Jesus of faith and not the historical Jesus. Surely the Gospels will only say good things of Jesus and it is unlikely that the Gospel writers would portray Jesus as anything but the ideal God-man, compassionate and loving and slow to anger. But because there is no secular record of Jesus in order for historians to base their assessment of Jesus, historians have no alternative but to seek recourse to the only available accounts of Jesus ie the Holy Gospels and they have to look for areas in the Gospels where the writers, despite their eagerness to describe a perfect Jesus, somehow inadvertently but truthfully disclosed the other side of Jesus. This is not a simple task. To look for the Jesus with warts and all in a religious text that glorifies Jesus as God is indeed a Herculean task.

Now supposing some early biblical manuscripts do show a description of Jesus that is less than ideal or even downright nasty. And subsequent manuscripts show a different reading and a kinder word is used to describe Jesus. How would you deal with that? Naturally, a historian will have to accept that it's more likely for the original writing to contain that nasty word and a subsequent scribe (always a monk) altered the word to reflect a Christology that is more acceptable to the teachings of the Church.  So the nasty word is looked at very seriously by historians as more likely to be the original portrayal of Jesus.  And that is of course fair.

As it turns out, there are countless examples especially in the earlier texts and in the older manuscripts where Jesus is portrayed in a rather poor light but I will give only two examples from the Holy Gospels in order for us to understand the historical Jesus' true character.  If you are really interested in this subject and would like more examples, you may want to read the books of Bible scholars such as Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is a renowned Bible scholar and historian. Trained in Moody Bible Institute, Ehrman continued his theological education in Princeton under the great Bible scholar, Bruce Metzger.

AN ANGRY JESUS?

I will first read from the Gospel according to St Mark. Mark's gospel is accepted by all Bible scholars to be the oldest Gospel of the four. Many scholars accept that the writers of the gospels of Matthew and Luke copied large chunks from Mark and there is compelling textual evidence to support this. Hence, to understand the person of the historical Jesus, it is always more accurate to look at what the earliest accounts say of him. Later books may be less accurate because the writer had had time to think of what prevailing church doctrines were and there was always the temptation to write a more sugar-coated account of Jesus.

In Mark 1, we read of Jesus healing the leper. I will first quote from the KJV:

And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.

We read in this passage that Jesus was "filled with compassion" when approached by a leper for healing. This may seem like a simple statement of fact to us lay folks but scholars have agonised over this for a long time. You see, the Koine Greek word for "filled with compassion" is SPLANGNISTHEIS (I'm on my phone and I have no access to the Greek alphabet and we'll have to make do with a transliteration). This word is found in many of the later manuscripts. But the earlier and more reliable manuscripts use a different word,  ORGISTHEIS which means "filled with anger" or "becoming angry".  Our earliest text, Codex Bezae which is supported by 3 Latin manuscripts and which textual experts concede goes back to at least the 2nd century uses this word which describes Jesus as angry.

Modern Bible translations today which seek to honestly and faithfully use words as close to the original manuscripts or at least adopt the readings in older and more reliable manuscripts retain the original "angry" when describing the emotion of Jesus at this scene. For example, the NIV which is a modern translation and one used by the majority of churches and Christians all over the world reads in Mark 1:40, 41:

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, ‘If you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’

So, the NIV retains the word used in the most reliable manuscripts and describes Jesus as indignant.

But why was Jesus indignant? Here is where Christian apologists come in. These are defenders of the faith and they will spring into action the moment there is anything that may raise a doubt among the faithful in any way. Some apologists suggest that perhaps Jesus was angry with the disease. But that doesn't make any sense and there is no textual support for this. Others say Jesus was angry with the law that makes a leper an outcast in society. But that again doesn't make sense because it's God's law, the Law of Moses, that strips a leper of all his rights in society and makes him a total outcast. Further in verse 44 Jesus commands the leper to observe the same Law of Moses after he was healed so Jesus couldn't have been raving at the Law of God.

It is interesting to note that the earliest gospel, Mark, also describes Jesus as "angry" in at least two other occasions but when the writers of Matthew and Luke copied the text, they copied everything but left out any reference to Jesus' anger.

In Mark 3:5 Jesus is described as angry in the story of the healing of the man with a shrivelled hand but in the corresponding story in Luke's Gospel we see that the writer of Luke copied almost verbatim from Mark but left out any reference to Jesus' anger. Matthew re-wrote that story and he too left out the description of Jesus as angry.

Similarly, in Mark 10:14, we read of Jesus being angry yet again. The corresponding story as related by the writers of Matthew and Luke completely omitted any references to Jesus' characteristic anger.

There are many other references to Jesus' quickness to anger even on occasions that do not merit it but these would be beyond the scope of this blog post. This is not a theological thesis.

So we have a portrayal from the Holy Gospels of Jesus as one who is quick to anger. When most people would be filled with compassion for a leper, Jesus was filled with anger.


A RACIST JESUS?

This time, we don't even have to delve into the older manuscripts. We only need to look at one of our canonical gospels. That's because this story about Jesus was not removed in transmission and remains in Matthew's Gospel Chapter 15. You can find it in ANY version of the Bible. I'll print it here from the NIV from verse 21:

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, ‘Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.’ 

Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, ‘Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.’ 

The woman came and knelt before him. ‘Lord, help me!’ she said. He replied, ‘It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.’   

‘Yes it is, Lord,’ she said. ‘Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.’ 

Then Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.’ And her daughter was healed at that moment.

This is not an easy passage for the church to deal with. I have read every attempt at explaining away Jesus' racism and cruelty and I must say none of them is valid. Some apologists have tried to show that calling the woman a dog was done as a term of endearment. I'm sure I need not explain to my readers how insane such a suggestion is.

First, Jesus ignored the woman who was crying out and begging for mercy. Notice that Jesus' disciples did not once ask Jesus to attend to the woman. Instead they asked him to chase her away. Jesus' reply was that he would only attend to Jews. But the feisty woman knelt before Jesus and begged him for help. This time, he couldn't ignore her. But what did he say to her? You can read it for yourself Jesus' shocking words that I can't even bear to repeat.

It is well-known that Jews at the time of Jesus would never talk to a Canaanite woman. They were racists of course. Jesus showed himself to be no different from the average racist Jew in the first century. Calling a Gentile a dog was common in those days. In fact, even today, you may hear the same word used on Arabs by Jewish extremists.

THE HISTORICAL JESUS

For the historian, the historical Jesus was most probably an apocalyptic zealot. There were many such zealots in Palestine at the time of Jesus. In fact about a hundred years before Jesus, there was one such zealot by the same name as Jesus who was crucified for treason. Those who deny the historicity of Jesus believe that Jesus was a myth created a hundred years after the earlier Jesus was crucified. It is not within the ambit of this post to examine such a claim.  All I wish to say here is that the historical Jesus, as the evidence stands today, may very well be an apocalyptic zealot.

An apocalyptic zealot believed that the Romans had to be thrown out of the holy land and a Messiah would be raised by God to lead the people in an insurgency against the Romans. There is a great deal of textual evidence for the argument that Jesus was an apocalyptic zealot and a case can be made for such a claim based solely on the Holy Gospels.

When someone calls Jesus a horrible person, he is referring to this historical Jesus. Some Christians may be annoyed because they fail to see that the criticism is not directed at the Jesus of faith, the godhead in the Holy Trinity but at the historical Jesus who, even from the two passages in the canonical Gospels that I quoted above, does appear quite horrible.

Poor Raffles Girls' School!

I love a good fight particularly when I'm right and have truth and right on my side and there is no fight that I await more eagerly than a spirited and angry reply to this post in my blog: Singapore School Anthems Part 2.

For almost a year, there was total silence to that post and then one day, I got this one-sentence comment from someone who presumably wanted to defend her favourite school anthem. But the one sentence contributed nothing whatsoever and I replied to it promptly.

Miss Anialet Tan made no further response. After that reply of mine, she withdrew into silence which was a shame. I was hoping some plucky Mother Goose with a large dose of that mindless loyalty to the school would grab her rolling pin from the kitchen and confront me. I didn't have that long to wait. One Mother Goose recently came feverishly at me but I only saw it a few days ago after returning home from abroad. I will post her comment verbatim but I will break it up into segments so that I can respond to each point she raised. This woman who calls herself Caesium writes:

To be exact, the song was an old British war hymn. It is also the school song of a few other British schools; one example is Clydebank High in Scotland. Link: http://abbotsford.typepad.com/abbotsford/2012/06/from-high-olympus.html. It is true that the anthem is plagiarised, save for the last stanza and the refrain which were added by RGS to the old war tune.

I have googled this ridiculous song and all I can see is that this is a song of a school called Clydebank High School in Scotland. Let me tell you a little more about Clydebank High School. It's a pretty new State school or what we would call a government school. It started in 1872 with only one qualified teacher and it was meant to be a school for the children of shipyard workers in this western part of Scotland. I will say more about the location of this school later. I have a lot of respect for a school built for working class children but if I must plagiarise a song the way RGS shamelessly did it, I would be careful not to pick the song of such a school. It's inevitable that while a school for the children of shipyard workers may have admirable strength in many areas of education and character building, a firm grounding in the classics (such as Greek mythology) or even in English grammar may not be something it can boast of. And why should it? So please don't misunderstand me. I do not fault Clydebank High School at all and I will reiterate my view that any school that is built for the children of labourers deserves our profound respect.

But I fault Raffles Girls' School for plagiarising the entire lyrics of the song of this working class school. If you must steal, be clever and steal from a more appropriate source.

Caesium continues to say this:

However it is not true that it is ungrammatical and inaccurate. Nobody said the sacred fire referred to the Promethean flame. That you think it is only proves RI's regrettable influence over the perception of RGS and nothing more. 

What I wrote in my blog post has nothing to do with any influence from RI.  Here is an excerpt of what I wrote about the "sacred fire" gaffe that RGS made:

Apart from linguistic problems, the writer is obviously unsure of her Greek mythology. Writers of school anthems must be careful when they want to introduce elements from Greek mythology into a song. If they do it clumsily, they can appear pretentious and silly. They must not do it on the misguided understanding that it will imbue the song with a respectability it otherwise lacks. You can't make a rotten song great by throwing in the names of Greek mythological figures especially when you know nothing about Greek mythology. My sympathy is actually with RGS. I understand why this was done. RGS is closely related to Raffles Institution (RI) which is Singapore's top school. The RI anthem makes a direct reference to Prometheus but it is done in a subtle and tasteful way. The reference to Greek mythology in the RI anthem lends further depth to the meaning of the song and it enhances the beauty of the song. RGS, ever envious of RI's superiority, probably felt that it should not be left far behind and so it threw in Greek mythological references without a firm grounding in mythology. That may have moved the RGS anthem writer to write "On us the sacred fire descends" but then she should have read up more about this fire before she comes up with this gaffe: 

 The magic fire that moves the gods to love us. 

When Prometheus stole fire and brought it to men, the gods were far from being moved by feelings of love. If the punishment they meted out to the thieving Titan is anything to go by, love is the last emotion they felt.

Caesium claims that the "sacred fire" in the RGS anthem did not refer to Prometheus' fire. But she says nothing more. That's because just like her school, Caesium knows nothing of Greek mythology. What sacred fire or magic fire is there that "moves the gods to love us"? If your knowledge of Greek mythology is zilch, you cannot make up your own sacred fire and claim that it's what moves the gods to love us without identifying in the first place what this fire is. That's precisely my point. You cannot make up your own story and try to insert it into Greek mythology just because you are clueless about the Classics.

Next this volatile liquid Caesium writes:

Further, the Bible is not the definitive grammar guide. I suggest you look to the Oxford English instead for linguistic advice, which states "In the 15th century, when 'you' had become the dominant subjective form, 'ye' came to be used as an objective singular and plural (equivalent to thee and you)."

This is hilarious. Did the clucking hens not teach her how to think rationally? I have not said anywhere in my article that the Bible is a definitive grammar guide.  My precise words are that the Bible (KJV or AV) "gives the best illustration of how one should use 'ye'..." but of course Caesium is so wooly headed that she's unable to distinguish an "illustration" from a "definitive grammar guide". But I would not have expected more from this Mother Goose.

"Ye" used in the objective case only became common for a very brief spell and by the time Shakespeare wrote his plays and particularly in the 17th century, the use of "ye" as an objective pronoun decreased in literary language but it was still common in conversational language and in dialectical usage (which is precisely what I wrote in my blog).

This is what I wrote verbatim in my blog:

While still on the first stanza, we next see one of the most jarring lines (it's hard to decide which is most hideous since every line seems to be jostling for that honour) 

Rise, sisters, rise, the world is all before ye 

In standard usage, "ye" is the archaic form of the 2nd person plural pronoun in the subjective case. In standard archaic English, "ye" has from its first usage been nominative. There are of course later instances in the past where its use in the objective case is recorded but in these instances, such use is almost without exception colloquial or dialectical. 

The Authorised Version of the Bible gives the best illustration of how one should use "ye" but this is hardly useful to most of us who are quite content with using the good old "you" (or perhaps I should say the newer "you"). But we always have in our midst those who think they can spice up their lacklustre writing with a few archaic expressions and these are the people who should take heed of the following highly instructive sentence from the Bible which illustrates quite comprehensively how one may properly use "ye": 

If ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? 

If Madam RGS-Composer (that's the honorific Chinese language teachers love to use) had read her Bible diligently, she would have written "the world is all before you" and the hope and rousing beauty that this line evokes in its Miltonian simplicity would have been spectacular.

I always like to do a bit of investigative work and get into the mind of the writer just to see why she wrote what she wrote or as Jeeves would put it simply, to get to the psychology behind the problem. Why did she write "ye" when "you" would have been so much more elegant? 

My guess is she had probably been reading the Scottish poem called "The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond". 

Oh, ye'll tak' the high road, and I'll tak' the low road, 

And I'll get to Scotland afore ye; 

But me and my true love will never meet again 

On the bonnie, bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond. 

Notice the use of "ye" in the objective case? "And I'll get to Scotland afore ye". I've already explained that "ye" used in this way can be found in dialectical writings and it is easy to see many examples in Scottish poems. But I really doubt very much if any respectable girls' school will want to fashion their school anthem after "The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" especially when for the rest of the anthem, we see failed attempts at Greek mythological allusions. The two just don't make good bedfellows.

What I wrote is absolutely correct and now that we know that RGS stole this song from Clydebank High School, what I said about "The Bonnie, Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" is spot on. Clydebank High School is only about 10 miles from Loch Lomond. But of course this poem is hardly what a respectable girls' school should look to for its guide on English usage when writing its anthem.

Next, Caesium writes this:

A song is in essence a poem and in poetry one aims not to be too literal. Thus 'the glory' is a proper noun known only to the singer. It should in fact be read as 'the Glory'.

Although I'm the last man on earth to be a sexist, I must confess that I cannot help but gravitate towards sexism whenever I read what Caesium writes and I'm so tempted to declare that she sounds so deliciously feminine in her imbecility.  I have met a few women who are perfect dunderheads like Caesium and these women tell me that they write poems. Many featherheaded women who have no firm grounding in grammar think it's all right for them to take to poetry-writing because poetic licence can excuse their shoddy grammar. But poetry-writing is not for fools and illiterates. What Caesium has written above is so outrageously incoherent and deliriously wrong that I cannot believe she wrote it without blushing as any decent woman should when she knows she's writing bunkum. She does not even know what a proper noun is.  This is how I explained in my earlier blog post why the first sentence of RGS's anthem is incorrect:

The very first sentence is elliptically jarring. 

From high Olympus flows to us the glory 

The glory of what? That's probably on everyone's lips when he reads the first line of the anthem of Raffles Girls' School. We saw in Part 1 the strange tendency of the ACS anthem in leaving out an article in a sentence but here, the addition of the article leaves the reader hanging in midair. What the writer probably means is "Glory flows to us from high Olympus". That would be grammatically more acceptable but it doesn't cure the sentence of the pervading sense of childish hubris that informs the entire anthem. It reminds me of a loud bungling supercilious little girl who doesn't know how to be tasteful in her boastful speech. This reference to Olympus is pretentious and falls flat particularly when there is no reason to speak of it in the first place. I'll deal later with this tiresome need of the anthem writer to force a bit of Greek mythology into the song and I'll suggest what I believe is the reason for this need. I love to get to the psychology behind the problem. But more of that later when I discuss the anthem's allusions to Greek mythology.

Caesium says "the glory" is a proper noun! She doesn't even know the parts of speech and that, mind you, is elementary English.  Capitalising it does not cure the sentence of a glaring ellipsis. But if she doesn't know what a proper noun is I'm sure she doesn't know what I'm talking about. Didn't the clucking hens in RGS teach her simple English grammar? "Thus 'the glory' is a proper noun known only to the singer" must take the cake as the looniest sentence I've ever read in all my life.

Next, Caesium writes this:

Lastly, I am aghast that you have never heard of the phrase 'heart to heart'. You remind me endearingly of Polonius. I rest my case.

This is another statement that can only spring from an unthinking person. I'm avoiding the word "dumb".  Let's see what I wrote exactly and you'll see why I think Caesium's statement reveals the kind of muddle-headedness I cannot tolerate.  Here's what I wrote in my blog:

There are many instances where the writer of the RGS anthem leaves the reader befuddled as to the intended meaning. For example, in "So heart to heart we'll scale the heights of learning," what is meant by "heart to heart"? I'm tempted to think Madam RGS-Composer meant "side by side" which would appropriately highlight the solidarity and camaraderie of the girls. In the Mandarin Chinese language, the word for heart is liberally used in just about anything you can think of. The anthem writer availed herself of the same liberty when she wrote this anthem.

At no point did I say that I had not heard of the term "heart to heart". I merely asked what "heart to heart" meant in the line in the RGS anthem "So heart to heart we'll scale the heights of learning". Of course everyone knows what "heart to heart" means. As in a "heart-to-heart talk", the term means candid and intimate. It has no application here. And yes, if I may allude to the same play, Caesium reminds me of Ophelia who spoke inanities at the height of her delirium.

Is there another Mother Goose from RGS who might want to grab the rolling pin and come at me? I'm ready for you, 'sisters in learning and sisters at heart"!

AMOS YEE'S "GRAMMAR ACCORDING TO A SCHOOL DROPOUT"

I'm really not interested in the petty juvenile dust-up between Amos Yee, the infamous school dropout, and just about everybody else in Singapore. But as I have said many times in my blog, I'm more interested in impersonal concepts such as religion and atheism and in this respect, I don't think I will differ much from Amos Yee except that he obviously is quite unable to see the bigger picture but that's not the purpose of this post and so I won't digress any further.

I happened to read Yahoo News recently and I came across an article about Amos Yee which I wouldn't have read if my eyes hadn't focussed on a small paragraph about grammar. Yahoo News says quite unashamedly that the article "originally appeared on Vulcan Post". So I went to Vulcan Post to read the original article on Amos Yee and grammar. This is the paragraph that caught my interest:

Philip Ng on the meaning of wealth

A friend of mine just posted on Facebook this article which was published almost a year ago about a talk on wealth given by Philip Ng, CEO of Far East Organisation, and one of the richest men in Singapore. Instead of talking about the strategies in accumulating wealth, Ng, who is a devout Christian, quoted St Matthew 19:24 which reads, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

This is a story from the Holy Gospel about Jesus' meeting with the rich young ruler who asks Jesus what he has to do to "have eternal life". Jesus' reply is that he has to do good and obey the commandments. The rich man explains that he has done all that from his childhood. Jesus then says he has failed in one area - he should sell ALL that he has and give them all to the poor. The man is unable to do that and he walks away sadly. Jesus then turns to his disciples and tells them that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

If you look at the comments at the bottom of the article, you will see the comments by some of the readers who expressed surprise. Was Philip Ng going to sell all he had to give to the poor? Obviously not. Then why did he quote this part of the Holy Gospel?

Here is where non-Christians, quite rightly and reasonably, do not understand how a Christian thinks and I don't blame them one bit. Although I'm a devout Christian myself, I must confess that we Christians are so conditioned that we are unable to see anything that is wrong with our Gospel stories or how they don't gel with reality or how much at variance biblical teachings are from our own personal lives. We have through years of conditioning become so inured to biblical errors and discrepancies that we don't really see them at all. And when they are shown to us, we will find some way, however ludicrous, to justify the biblical text.

I'll tell you how a Christian mind works. This applies to followers of all other religions too but I'm more familiar with my own religion. I'll take an example from an article I wrote in this blog years ago. As I've shown in that article, Jesus promises in at least 5 different places in various gospels that his Second Coming would take place in the lifetimes of some of his disciples and hearers. Apart from these unambiguous words of Jesus, this is also how the early Christians and St Paul understood Christ's Second Coming to be - while most of them were still alive or in any case not later than the first century.

But as I wrote in that article, some scribes even tried to alter some of these verses around 200AD. They were worried that since it'd been 200 years after Christ and he still hadn't come, how likely was his coming, given that he had broken his own promise in the Gospels? But it's been 2,000 years now and we still continue in the same faith without a problem. How is that possible?

You see, the religious mind works this way. You put the cart before the horse. You first decide that the Bible is the word of God and the Holy Gospels tell only the Gospel truth. If reality tells you that certain things didn't come to pass as foretold by Jesus, it CANNOT be that Jesus was wrong because after all, he is God Almighty himself and Second Person of the Holy Trinity. And the Gospels can't be wrong either because they are a part of God's holy word.

So proper Christian exegesis will have you understand that Jesus DIDN'T MEAN that he would be coming back in the lifetime of the disciples. Why? Because it didn't happen so he couldn't have meant that. This has led some Bible scholars to concoct a principle of interpretation which is sometimes called the Principle of Compression. According to biblical scholars, Ridderbos and Leon Morris, prophecy usually compresses time so that the time of Jesus' resurrection up to his Second Coming is compressed to read as one event. So, Jesus' resurrection which the disciples must have seen (if you believe the Gospels) and Jesus' Second Coming which they didn't see because it hasn't happened yet - even though separated by more than 2000 years - are essentially one event. Leon Morris says, "They would see the early manifestation in the resurrection and what followed immediately, though the final fulfilment of the words is yet future."

But of course this is terribly dishonest. Jesus says in the Gospels that his hearers would see him coming in the clouds in all his glory with the angels and these scholars are saying that although Jesus' hearers didn't see that, they must have seen his resurrection and let's pretend both events (the resurrection and the Second Coming) are one and the same in order to make the words of Jesus true.

Leon Morris writes further, "Some such understanding of Jesus' words is surely required." Why is it required? Otherwise, Jesus wouldn't be telling the truth.

This exercise may seem strange to the atheist who is not familiar with the need of the religious person to justify the claims of his religion.

So when Philip Ng quotes Matthew 19:24, he fails to consider the fact that his words would be quoted to non-believers and they will find it hard to understand what he's saying.

From the clear words of Jesus, a rich man CANNOT enter the kingdom of God. He can't have eternal life (to use the rich young ruler's words). There is no mistake about this. It means the same thing whether you are reading the English translation or you're reading it in Koine Greek. But what constitutes "rich"? Bible scholars and historians are agreed on this. In the eyes of anyone living in the time of Jesus, all of us who can read my blog on their computers or iPads or tablets or mobile phones are filthy rich. We are all barred from entering heaven and there's no way you can honestly dispute that and of course Philip Ng, by virtue of his immense wealth, is barred a thousandfold.

So the Christian looks at the verse again and he tries to re-interpret it. One way is to pretend that the eye of the needle is really some other object and camels do go through it. This is a common way for Christian apologists to justify or alter the meaning of a biblical verse and its falsehood is usually not apparent to the deeply religious who are desperate to grasp at any straw. But if you read the entire passage, it's obvious Jesus is saying no rich man can enter heaven and that's that.

I recall reading in one of James Joyce's novels a priest reading this same passage in church. Joyce intends it to be satirical and I remember feeling rather edgy as I read the novel because naturally this is one of the many passages we Christians are uncomfortable about when it's handled by a non-believer.

If you look at the historical context, you will understand why the Gospel passage says that. All known writings at the time about the Christian community in the first century tell us that Christianity was the religion of slaves and very poor people. Even the early Church Fathers accepted this without question. Certainly at the time when the Synoptic Gospels were written, every Christian was poor. Those who had money or property had to sell away everything they had and give it to the Christian community. Early Christians were perfect Communists. This can be seen in Acts 5 where Ananias sold his property but kept a portion for himself and gave the rest to the church. Because he deceived the church into thinking he didn't keep any proceeds for himself, he was instantly struck dead by God, or so the story goes.

Given that this was how the early church was like, it's not surprising to read in the Gospel of Jesus slamming rich people. But of course unknown to the Gospel writers, the church became very successful and one of the richest men in history, the Roman Emperor, even accepted the faith 300 years later and then suddenly, this passage becomes painfully anachronistic. But the religious mind is very malleable. Christians no longer look upon the rich as automatically debarred from heaven. We merely say this passage is a reminder to us not to love Mammon and to hold our wealth as stewards for God. Hey, that's not what Jesus says in the passage but we have more important things (such as our investments) to think about.

The Real Reason for the Muslim World's Outrage

I'm sure most people have seen the horrific video of the burning of the Jordanian pilot and it is indeed gruesome but let's put in perspective - there have been much worse videos I've seen from the Islamic world. You may remember the beheading video of Nick Berg by another Muslim terrorist group in 2004, long before the formation of the Islamic State. This was quickly followed by the video of the beheading of a South Korean called Kim. In both videos, the victims had their heads sawn off by a dagger. I thought those videos were much worse than the recent video of the burning of the Jordanian pilot and I remember feeling faint after watching them. Perhaps between then and now, I've been inured to violent videos now that the world is seeing more and more Islamic terrorist groups in action. Just days before this video of the Jordanian pilot's murder was released, the Islamic State released videos of the beheading of two Japanese men. There was no outcry from the Muslim world.

My first thoughts did not do justice to the Arab world or to Muslims. I thought they were just exhibiting their tribal clannishness or cliquishness and they had nothing but indifference for the deaths of non-Muslims or non-Arabs. But that's not true. The Islamic State is known to be hostile to Muslims too. They view Shiites as apostates and they aren't particularly kind to non-extreme Sunnis either.

Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb

Why then are Arab nations only united in their anger for the Islamic State's murder of the Jordanian pilot? Why is the Muslim world jointly and vociferously outraged only now? It was only after I read the words of the Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of Al Azhar, that I understood perfectly the reason for the Muslim world's outrage. Al Azhar is the seat of Sunni Islam and Al Azhar is to the Sunni Muslim world what the Vatican is to Roman Catholicism. What Muslims are most unhappy about is the METHOD by which the Jordanian pilot was executed - by way of immolation while locked in a cage. Sheikh Tayeb, after condemning the Islamic State for burning the Jordanian pilot, goes on to call for the Islamic State’s extremists to be “killed, or crucified, or their hands and legs cut off.” The incongruity of what he is saying is of course lost on him, so staunchly is he upholding the methods of killing that are approved in Islam and of which he is suggesting should be the fate of the Islamic State criminals.

I have seen the barbaric slaughter by Islamic groups of innocent people and I must say the burning video is not so horrific as some of them. I've seen a video of a thieving boy having his hand cut off after a shariah court meted out the punishment. Beheadings which are gruesome to us are nothing new to the average Muslim in the Arab world. Public beheadings are carried out in Saudi Arabia to this day. The worst video I've ever seen showed the stoning to death of a woman allegedly guilty of something as minor as adultery. And if you are familiar with Islamic jurisprudence, you will know that an adulteress in the eyes of the Shariah court may really be as innocent as a new-born babe. Victims of a gang rape are frequently sentenced to death in the Arab world and it used to puzzle me to no end until I discovered the reason for this. In Islamic law, a man can only be convicted of rape if there are testimonies from 4 eye-witnesses who must be adult Muslim men as to his guilt. It's very hard to find even an eye witness in a rape case and of course if it's a gang rape, the four or more Muslim men present at the rape scene are almost always the accused rapists themselves and it's not surprising that they usually testify that the woman is a prostitute and the Shariah court has no alternative but to find her guilty of adultery and death is the right punishment.

Why is the Arab world outraged by this and not by the stoning of rape victims even if some of their death sentences are commuted to life imprisonment? I've seen a stoning video and I must say that if I have to choose my mode of execution, I would rather be burnt like the Jordanian pilot rather than be stoned to death. The burning may be dramatic but it is swift.

The Arab world is not disturbed by the executions of rape victims because they are all done in accordance with Islamic teachings. What disturbs them about the burning of the Jordanian pilot is their belief that only Allah has the right to burn people.

The Hadith by Imam Abu Daud and Imam Ahmad says this:

Do not punish anybody with Allah's punishment (fire). Only Allah can punish anybody with (fire).

The Arab world is outraged only because the Islamic State is usurping Allah's monopoly over the use of fire as a form of punishment. But contrary to Obama's and the Western world's insistence that the Islamic State is not Muslim, the Islamic State was formed to preserve the sanctity of Islam and the teachings of the Prophet. And they have their Islamic scholars too. As soon as the video was released by the Islamic State, they issued a fatwa to explain that the execution by burning was perfectly in accordance with Islamic teachings and they cited precedents of such a punishment being meted out in the past by Muslim saints and even Muhammad himself. I don't want to go into the gory details of what Muhammad and his Companions actually did with fire on their hapless victims but because their actions might seem to contradict the Hadith that says fire is to be used solely by Allah, the Hanafis and Shafi’is (two major Sunni schools - almost all South East Asian Muslims are Shafi'i Sunnis) have distinguished that saying in the Hadith as an "affirmation of humility".  As Al-Muhallab says, “This is not an absolute prohibition, but rather it is the path of humility."  In other words, if you don't kill a man with fire, you are just being humble; you are, in humility, reserving fire purely for Allah's use. But the use of fire as a means of execution is not strictly prohibited.

I don't want to adjudicate on this and decide which side is right or wrong. But there's so much biased and unfair reporting in all the major newspapers which repeat ad nauseam the position given by Muslim clerics in Jordan and Egypt on this issue but they do not publish the arguments of the Islamic experts from the Islamic State.

What we have here is a theological dispute between Muslims on whether an execution by fire is legitimate in Islam. It's no different from a disagreement over the meaning of the Eucharist - is it the body of Christ or is it a symbol of the body of Christ. Give religious disputes some time and you can have even more variations -  perhaps it's neither the body of Christ nor a mere symbol of it but could it be that the Eucharist CONTAINS the body of Christ? But not all religious disputes are as gruesome as the current dispute between the Islamic State and moderate Muslims on what method of killing is legitimate. For the Eucharist, whether you believe it's the body of Christ or it contains the body of Christ or it's merely a symbol of the body of Christ, you are still consuming the same wafer and all 100 calories of it.

As changeable as language

I usually prefer reading fiction in my spare time but for the past few weeks, I have been reading nothing but books on grammar and linguistics. That's because I recently read that a new edition of my favourite grammar will be published in the middle of this year. You might ask what good a new edition does to anyone. Language is no different from the mobile phone or the computer. It changes all the time. In fact, it mutates much more rapidly than anything else I know.

When I was a lad, I was made to spend a long time studying the distinction between "shall" and "will". This may sound ludicrous to those of you who are not familiar with the complexities of English grammar and you may very well think I was a little thick to have to grapple with something so apparently easy. But it is far from easy. Even the grammarian Burchfield himself referred to this as "immensely complicated". And this is not the only problem with English grammar. There are many other such immensely complicated aspects of grammar that those of us who do not have to study them are blissfully unaware of.

But language belongs to the masses and follows the law of democracy and the masses do not like to put their minds to anything that is immensely complicated. Within a decade or so, the English-speaking public put its foot down and the immensely complicated distinction between "shall" and "will" has all but been relegated to the pages of linguistic history.

How do you think I felt when I first discovered that I had pored over Jespersen (that's the grammarian who wrote the longest thesis on this subject) and the tracts of the Society for Pure English only to be told years later that all those rules no longer applied? Naturally, I wanted them to continue to apply just to justify those otherwise wasted hours of my childhood.

But that's not how language works. Purists can scream blue murder but nothing can stop the inexorable progress (or deterioration, as purists would insist) of language.

Most of us don't like to suffer for nothing. I remember reading in the newspaper about an interview with teachers in England who insisted on cautioning students against splitting their infinitives. One of them said his teachers used to rap him on the knuckles every time he split an infinitive and so he continued to rap his students on the knuckles when they split their infinitives.

More than 3 centuries ago, Daniel Defoe (the chap who wrote Robinson Crusoe) proposed the formation of a Society to regulate and police the use of English words. It did not come to anything. A century later, Samuel Johnson with great foresight says in the Preface to his Dictionary that it is not possible to "embalm" the English language. He speaks of the futility of any attempt to police language and before referring to the inability of the French Academie to stop the tide of change in the French language, he says this which is best quoted verbatim:

...sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength.

Those who know me well must know that I'm always opposed to any attempt to control or regulate the language. Do we correct all errors and if so, how far back do we go? Take the word adder which we all know to be a snake. It started life as a nadder but over time, it became an adder. I suppose if you say "a nadder" repeatedly, it doesn't take long before it sounds like "an adder". And that's how we get the word "adder". Do we go back in time and insist that the poor snake should be known by its original name, nadder?

As I eagerly wait for the publication of the new edition of my favourite grammar, I have been going through some of my very old books. Some of the entries cannot help but bring a smile to the face.

I remember reading this just as I was leaving my childhood and entering the cusp of adolescence and becoming a teenager and I remember asking myself if such a common word could possibly at one time have been in dispute. That's how mutable language is.

I urge the Speak Good English Movement to do the only decent and honourable thing

What do respectable people do when they discover that books printed by their organisation are so erroneous that you can hardly turn to a single page that does not contain some egregious blunder? Surely the least they could do is to withdraw the books from the market?

I was in Kinokuniya Book Shop this afternoon and I saw that disgraceful English As It Is Broken (Volumes 1 and 2) on the "Linguistics" shelf. Can you imagine such a piece of trash sitting on the shelf with other books on Linguistics?

I have in more than 30 or 40 posts in my blog shown quite conclusively that you cannot turn a page in either volume of this piece of execrable work without encountering some shocking error in grammar. And it purports to be a book on good English grammar and usage.  A list of all the posts that I have published on the errors in this book can be found in my MASTER LIST of the blunders of those I have termed "grammar terrorists" - people who tell others they are wrong in grammar when in fact they are the ones who know practically nothing about the rudiments of English grammar. Like all terrorists, they attack innocent people when they are the ones who are wrong in every sense of the word.

Just who are these shameless people who have the effrontery to advise others on grammar when they know absolutely nothing about it? Who is responsible for this book? In both volumes, the Speak Good English Movement is clearly the main culprit behind the book (both volumes). That is one reason why I am up in arms against that silly Movement. You will see in my MASTER LIST that I have also been into the Movement's new website and they show the same lack of knowledge of basic English grammar that is the hallmark of this book.

In Volume 1 of the book English As It Is Broken, the "panel of English language specialists" is said to be from the Ministry of Education. The back cover of that volume says quite unambiguously,

This publication is made possible by the Speak Good English Movement and the Ministry of Education, which provides us with the expertise of its English Language specialists.

For reasons that we are not told, the Ministry of Education pulled out completely from the second volume of that disgraceful book. There is no mention of the Ministry anywhere in the book. This time, we see this on the back cover of the second volume:

This publication is made possible by STOMP The Straits Times, the Speak Good English Movement, and the National Library Board.

All this and the fact that some of the contents of the book appear on the Speak Good English Movement's website tell me that the book is of course the work of the Movement.

It behoves members of the Speak Good English Movement to do the decent thing by pulling the book out of the shelves of book shops all over Singapore and to warn members of the public not to be guided by this most erroneous book. We must bear in mind that the book has been and continues to be a bestseller in Singapore schools and the Movement owes a moral duty to stop misleading students. I have shown instances in some of my posts in this blog of perfectly grammatical sentences written by students which were butchered by the "language specialists" who insisted that the students edit their sentences to conform to the specialists' mistaken rules that fly in the face of the rules of Standard English. This is totally unacceptable. We are talking about students who started out with correct grammar only to have their language ruined by the "specialists". It's highly dishonourable of the Movement not to make a clean breast of this their most embarrassing blunder.

This is my personal blog but instead of writing personal matters, I have devoted a large chunk of this blog to the wrongs of the Speak Good English Movement. But as long as they have not done the decent thing, I cannot rest. Of course apart from apologising to Singapore for their unpardonable errors, they should also resign from the Movement. I have shown that they are not fit or equipped to be the nation's language watchdog. I would suggest that this silly Movement be disbanded.

We don't need a Speak Good English Movement and certainly not one that has shown itself to be totally devoid of even the most basic knowledge of grammar.

St Paul the Reformer

Today is the day when churches all over the world remember the conversion of St Paul and what better church to go to on this day than St Paul's Cathedral? But I'm always very uneasy on this day with the readings in church. The first reading is usually from the familiar passage in Acts 9 about St Paul's conversion to Christianity which would have been fine if the church stops there. But the second reading, as always, is from Galatians. Anyone who is familiar with the Bible must know that you're placing two contradictory passages before parishioners when you have the Acts 9 reading immediately before Galatians 1. But the church is no fool. The reading stops at Galatians 1:16a and for a very good reason too. I will come to that soon.

You see, most historians (except those who are led by their personal religious beliefs to go against the historical evidence) are of the view that St Paul started a new religion that was very much in contradiction with the teachings of the real apostles, particularly, St Peter and St James. The epistles of St Paul are full of grievances against the real apostles who did not accept him as one of them. In 2 Corinthians 11:5, St Paul claims that he is not inferior to those "super-apostles". But it's in the Epistle to the Galatians that St Paul uses the strongest words against the real apostles. He refers to them as "accursed" and "cursed". He warns his readers not to listen to or be influenced by these Judaizing apostles. Elsewhere in other epistles, St Paul is extremely firm against these Judaizers. He preaches a non-Jewish version of Christianity and he will allow nothing to stand in his way.

Nowhere in St Paul's epistles is there any indication that the rift with the real apostles is healed at any point in time. It's only in the book of Acts that we read of the real apostles agreeing with St Paul and are willing to accept Gentile Christians who do not convert to Judaism as long as they abstain from blood and idolatry. We also read in Acts that St Peter, because of a mere dream, is willing to turn non-kosher overnight. That's of course hilarious and no serious historian can accept that. 

Just how reliable is the book of Acts? The writer tries a little too hard to make the relationship between St Paul and the real apostles seem more hunky-dory than it really is. The reading in Acts tells us of St Paul after his conversion and while he's still in Damascus spending several days with the apostles. What we see is a picture of close fellowship between the real apostles and St Paul.

But if one were to continue reading after Galatians 1:16a (which is where the reading in church ends), St Paul's tells a very different story. See Galatians 1:16b to 20: "...my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles – only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing to you is no lie."

St Paul is eager to assure his readers that he is not telling a lie. I believe him. I believe it's the book of Acts that has altered the facts to make St Paul appear to be in the good books of the real apostles. Now, you can see why the church stops the reading of Galatians at 1:16a. To continue reading just a few verses more and any parishioner who is not yet asleep in church will surely spot the contradiction with Acts 9.

St Paul may have betrayed Jesus and subverted his true teachings and the teachings of his real apostles but we can look upon St Paul more as a reformer than a traitor to the faith. Don't forget Jesus' real attitude to Gentiles as can be seen in St Matthew's gospel where he calls Gentiles "dogs". St Paul has merely reformed Jesus' teachings and turned another parochial Jewish sect into a whole new religion fit for not just wealthy Greek merchants but the Roman Emperor himself. If Christianity had remained true to its original teachings as a Jewish sect, it would have died the way the real apostles' religion died off in the first century itself. History tells us that the Ebionites were the most faithful to Jesus' original teachings and their religion fizzled out after the first hundred years or so only to be superseded by the Pauline version of Christianity, which is the Christianity of today and it doesn't matter if you're Protestant, Orthodox or Roman Catholic.

As the church ponders on the conversion of St Paul today, let's not forget his role in the formation of Christianity as we know it today. Without St Paul, there'd be no Christian religion and what a sad world this would be.

Thinking of Charlie

Yesterday in church, the sermon, as expected, touched on the Charlie Hebdo massacre. But the vicar while condemning the massacre as totally repugnant to all that is holy exhorted the faithful to turn the other cheek and to bridle the tongue as the epistle of St James tells us to do. The Christian duty not to cause offence must override our desire for free speech.

I thought I should refer to the sermon in my blog and so I took a

stealthy pic. I hope the parishioner seated next to me will forgive

me for the impertinence but he's obviously the prayerful kind

who would be happy to dish out forgiveness quite liberally.

As a Christian, I am unable to fault the sermon in any way. Christianity always places the Christian at the losing end in any situation. He's to turn the other cheek, if any asks for his coat, he should give his shirt as well, if asked to walk a mile, a good Christian should do two. If there is a religion of peace on this planet, Christianity certainly is the best candidate for such an honour.

But the Charlie Hebdo editors are not Christians. I should have said "were" since most of them were brutally gunned down. Even if they were Christians, so what? It may be right that the Christian should go out of his way not to cause offence to others but what has that got to do with the massacre? It may be right for those of us who were properly brought up in polite society to greet one another when we meet but any one of us can flout the rules of courtesy any time we wish. The correct response to a rude person is a frown and nothing more.

That's precisely my point about the Charlie Hebdo episode. The editors were just guilty of rudeness. But it's their job as the editors of a satirical newspaper to be rude. They were just doing their job. Charlie Hebdo has satirised just about every religion on this planet and nobody has even bothered with them or given them any notice until the two Muslim brothers slaughtered them.

What I find truly outrageous is there is nothing offensive about the cartoons of Muhammad that the newspaper published. Pope Francis recently remarked that if someone swore at another person's mother, he would probably receive a punch in the face. But that's a silly remark because a person's mother is not a historical figure. Muhammad is and like all historical figures, he is naturally subject to the same treatment as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, St Paul, Buddha and many other religious figures from Zeus to Joseph Smith.

Making religious jokes is common anywhere in the world. When I was an altar boy, I made a lot of jokes about almost every sacred object in church. The chief brunt of my jokes was the holy oil which came in vials from the Bishop and which my vicar used to treat with an inordinate amount of respect. Years later, when I taught Sunday School in church, the other Sunday School teachers and I (and sometimes the students as well) would come up with the best religious jokes, some of which were uproariously funny.

When I was very young, I even engaged in inter-denominational banter with a classmate who was an altar boy in a different church. Those from my church would make jokes about his church and we'd tease him about being "touched" by his priest (the notoriety of his church was well known even in the days when I was a young lad). One day, he told me a joke which was quite good. A nun went for confession and she whispered to the priest that she was once a prostitute. The priest turned ashen and hit his fist against the wall of the confessional. "What did you say?" he roared. The nun was trembling in fear and she repeated her words, "I'm sorry but I was once a prostitute".  The priest took out his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow. "Phew! That's quite all right, child," he said. "I thought you said you were once a Protestant".

I couldn't help laughing at the joke but I immediately cooked up another joke and this time it was a boy who went to his Protestant vicar for auricular confession and he said he was once a catamite. You probably know the rest of the story. Don't ask me how I knew the word "catamite" as a young boy but I assure you the priests of my church were all happily married men.

But it's not just Christians who have a sense of humour. The followers of many of the world's major religions do not treat the divine with murderous seriousness. There is even a dish in the Far East blasphemously called "Buddha Jumps over the Wall". That's the dish that is reputed to be so tasty that Buddha himself had to jump over a garden wall to taste it. If you're thinking of ordering it the next time you go to a Chinese restaurant, perish the thought. It's a most disgusting broth that smells like a Chinese medicinal shop. Buddha may have jumped over the wall to eat it but I would jump over a wall and several rivers to be away from it.

After what has happened in Paris, you would think that Muslims are the only ones who have no sense of humour. I don't know what the percentage is of Muslims who have a sense of humour but let me tell a story from my own experience. There was a time in my life when I was terribly insensitive and would say the wrong things without realising it. I was chatting with a Muslim friend who was extremely pious. He's an educated and respectable man who later became a member of Parliament but his daughters were all educated in a Muslim religious school. I noticed that his wedding band was worn on the finger of his right hand which is of course unusual. In reply to my query, he explained that the prophet was known to have worn his wedding ring on a finger of his right hand. At that moment, a very witty thought came to my head and I said something really brilliant but it would not just be lost on someone who had no sense of humour; it would probably offend him. There was another friend of ours who heard our conversation and he jokingly said that my Muslim friend might just pull out a dagger and stab me with it. Now, that is the kind of unfair opinion many people had of Muslims even then. But my Muslim friend laughed good-naturedly at my little joke and he said that I was factually correct since Muhammad really had twelve wives and would presumably have twelve rings.

A lot of people treat Muslims as if they were all terrorists waiting with scimitars to hack you to pieces which is really quite unfortunate. Many people are unable to separate Muslims from Muslim terrorists and these are the people who are doing Muslims a huge disservice. I have been rebuked in the past for slamming Muslim terrorists by non-Muslims who mistakenly thought that insulting terrorists was synonymous with insulting Muslims.

But some Muslims who try to play up the "offensiveness" of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons by comparing them with jokes about the Holocaust are in fact doing their religion a disservice. There is obviously a huge difference between a joke about 6 million Jews who were slaughtered and a cartoon of Muhammad. Holocaust jokes cannot be likened to a mere cartoon of Muhammad. A better analogy of a Holocaust joke would be a joke about the cruel ethnic cleansing by the Serbs in which many Muslims were killed. That would be an example of a truly inappropriate joke and no newspaper however satirical would publish such a joke. Not even Charlie Hebdo. But when educated Muslims bring up Holocaust jokes and pit them against Muhammad cartoons, one cannot help but wonder if their inability to see the huge disparity between the two might have arisen from the same innate anti-Semitism that drove the Charlie Hebdo murderers to attack a Jewish supermarket.

The world should never treat all Muslims as terrorists. There are many Muslims who are wonderful people. We must always distinguish a Muslim terrorist from a Muslim. We must not treat Muslims as if an insensitive word would mean a dagger to our throats. We must treat Muslims like we do people of other religions or no religion. The Charlie Hebdo editors did precisely that. They wanted to treat Muslims no differently from people of other faiths. They have satirised the church, the Pope and Jesus himself. If they could draw cartoons of Jesus who is God himself in Christianity, why shouldn't they satirise Muhammad who was only human and not deified in Islam? Unfortunately, the carnage would only blur further the line between Muslims and Muslim terrorists in the minds of many people. There may be no logic in that but that's how people will think.

Chan Chun Sing's error

Chan Chun Sing has just written to the Huffington Post in response to two articles by Chee Soon Juan that they published recently. Now, I must confess that I have not read the letter carefully and I'm really not interested in whether it's an accurate description of Chee Soon Juan and I'm not here to affirm what he said in the letter or to deny it. I'm not interested in politics but I'm interested in something quite different. How effectively has Chan Chun Sing conveyed his message in his letter to Huffington Post?

Anyone who has lived long enough in Singapore must know that there is, from the Government, a strong palpable opposition to the use of Singapore English or Singlish. The Speak Good English Movement was formed to stamp out Singlish and to get Singaporeans to speak Standard English. But as I have shown in more than 50 articles in this blog, the Speak Good English Movement is not even able to handle basic English grammar and I have shown them to be totally ill-equipped to be Singapore's language watchdog. If you are interested in the numerous errors made by the Speak Good English Movement and their shocking linguistic deficiencies, please see this list in my blog with links to all my posts on the subject.

As I have said, my interest lies not in politics and I merely gave a cursory glance at Chan Chun Sing's letter. If you want to read the letter in full, you may do so on Channel News Asia's website. But what I wanted to see was how Chan ended his letter. The ending is usually where a good writer delivers his punchline.  I actually read the last two sentences several times. The meaning is not as clear as Chan would like to think. Here is the excerpt from Chan's letter which I've taken from Channel News Asia:

This is the kind of mistake that we parents usually warn our kids not to make when writing an essay. I must say I was surprised to see it in a formal letter from a Cabinet Minister to a foreign press. When I first read it last night about an hour after midnight, I could not understand what he meant. I attributed my lack of comprehension to the hour of the night and my sleepiness. I read it a few times. Chan wants to encapsulate Dr Chee's problem in his closing paragraph. But his meaning is murky. In my drowsy state, I asked myself who had been heard by whom but I was left in the dark.

In English grammar, this style of writing is called an ellipsis. The word comes from Latin which means "to leave out". But one must always be careful when one leaves out words which can be inferred from the preceding sentence. You must preserve the structure, for if you don't, you will get absurdities such as the one we see in Chan's letter.

People who are not comfortable with the English language should be careful when their sentences get a bit convoluted and unwieldy. They should read them through to make sure that everything is in its proper order. Chan's sentence, "Dr Chee's problem is not that he has not been heard by Singaporeans", may be simple enough for most of us but for those who are struggling with the language, it can present some thorny problems.

First, it contains a double negative. Next, it's in the passive voice.  That sentence is then followed by the elliptical "His problem is that they have".  It's good to note a simple rule. The elliptical sentence or clause must follow the structure of the preceding sentence or clause. "They" clearly refers to Singaporeans. If you say "His problem is that they have", it must mean that "His problem is that they have BEEN HEARD BY...".  I did toy in that witching hour of the night with the possibility that Chan might have meant "His problem is that they have been heard by Dr Chee himself, ie that they don't want to elect him". But that doesn't sound right at all.

If we must retain the "they" in the second sentence, what Chan presumably means is this:

Dr Chee's problem is not that he has not been heard by Singaporeans. His problem is they have heard him.

You will notice you can't keep the ellipsis if you want to switch from the passive voice to the active voice. But for an effective punchline, the elliptical form is much better and so you have to preserve the passive voice:

Dr Chee's problem is not that he has not been heard by Singaporeans. His problem is he has.