Say that again . . . only this time in Latin

[idiosyncratic]

I first became aware of Sister Joan when she was on Bill Moyers NOW a few weeks back. She was a brilliant speaker as she explained true Religious faith vs. the Religious Right and their attempt to force their beliefs on others.

Her most recent newsletter is excellent as she writes about this administration's use of language.


From Where I Stand

I haven't thought of my Latin teacher for years. A pity. She was not the most exciting person in the world, but she said one thing which, though I didn't have a clue what she meant at the time, I am finding to have more meaning every day. Latin, she said, was a dead language. English was a living one. So?

You have to listen very hard these days to grasp what's really being said. It's all in English but not the English you and I once thought we knew. In fact most of it, at least some very important parts of it, do not seem to mean at all what they did when I first learned the words.

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For instance, "mandate" used to mean something like impressive authorization. Now it apparently means any amount of support a little over 50-50.

<snip>

See what my Latin teacher meant by a "living" language, those whose words stay always in flux. Or as in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty says in rather a scornful tone to Alice: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean."

From where I stand, it's beginning to look like Humpty Dumpty was on to something. But that worries me. You see, I read another comment about the political use of language once. This one says: "We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth. We can and must write in the language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, scorn, and the like, toward those who disagree with us."

Know who wrote that one? Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.


What a wonderful analysis of what is going on. I just signed up to receive her newsletters as they are posted.