The English subjunctive may well be dying, but I am shedding no tears for it. This unconcern is, perhaps, a minority view amongst men of letters, for whom saying if I were instead of if I was is often a marker of a proper education, but I’m comforted by the fact that it is the majority view amongst users of English.
The subjunctive, if you’re not familiar with it, is a verbal mood* that appears in a variety of languages. It’s prominent in Romance languages (if you’ve taken French or Spanish, you’ve surely encountered it), and it exists to various extents in other Indo-European languages as well, including English. The basic idea of the subjunctive mood is that it expresses something counter to reality. For instance, one might say:
(1) If Alicia were the President, she’d get Party Down back on the air.
Normally, you’d say “Alicia was”; “Alicia were” would be a misconjugation. But because we’re talking about a counterfactual situation (Alicia is not really the president), we can use the subjunctive mood instead. And in the subjunctive mood, the present tense of the verb to be is were, regardless of the subject.
Often you’ll see people using the regular present tense in these situations, writing in (1) “if Alicia was the President”. That’s because the English subjunctive is pretty weak. It can be used in counterfactual situations, but it generally isn’t required. Because it’s optional and subtle (it looks just like the plural indicative forms of most verbs), it’s no surprise it’s disappearing.
Many grammarians wail and gnash teeth for this loss, and try to explain how important the subjunctive is.** Some explain that the subjunctive stresses the counterfactual nature of the situation, as though if you saw “if Alicia was president” in (1), you’d be thinking “I don’t know Alicia was president!”. Of course no one thinks this, because the counterfactuality is already established by the use of if.
What’s interesting to me, though, is that are some situations where the subjunctive is obligatory. And I say obligatory here meaning that I don’t get the right meaning out of the sentence if the subjunctive isn’t used. One occurred to me during a little monologue I was having in my head as I walked across campus the other day:
(2a) He’s obsessed with the idea that everybody admire him.
(2b) He’s obsessed with the idea that everybody admires him.
In (2a), with the subjunctive, our nameless character hopes that everybody admires him, suggesting a dearth of self-esteem. In (2b), with the indicative, our nameless character believes that everybody admires him, suggesting an overabundance of self-esteem.*** Here’s another one that just came to me, and here not using the subjunctive seems very awkward (although I’ve found examples of it in the corpus):
(3a) I require that it be done tomorrow
(3b) ?I require that it is done tomorrow
So, you might say, how can I idly declare the subjunctive on its way out while I also declare its necessity? Well, quite simply, if it disappears, we’ll do something else. In the case of (3b), it seems that this indicative form is gaining traction. As for (2a), by just changing the word idea to hope or desire, we get the same irrealis reading as (2a) without requiring the subjunctive. When language change happens, it doesn’t become impossible to say something. It just becomes impossible to say it the old way.
The worst case scenario is that the meanings of (2a) and (2b) get said the same way (with the indicative form admires), that they become a little bit ambiguous, and that we have to rely on context to tell them apart. Even that isn’t a bad situation, since we already do that with so many other things in language. The difference is critical in our current form of English, but it probably won’t be in future forms.
—
*: The subjunctive is properly called a mood, not a tense, because it exists across tenses; there are past, present, and future subjunctives. This Wikipedia article has some good info on this. The “standard” mood of English is known as the indicative, because it indicates what is really there.
**: I’m especially fond of the Academy of Contemporary English’s thoughts on the matter: “[Not using the subjunctive forms] is so common, in fact, that few people realise that they are using bad English when they mix them up. The difference is of the utmost importance […]”
NB: when only a few people notice a language distinction, it is not important, let alone of the utmost importance.
***: I won’t spoil the minor mystery by revealing which of the two I was actually thinking.
Motivated Grammar 
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February 15, 2012 at 12:59 pm
mike
For subjunctive use following a, um, “verb of influence” (thanks, Spanish 201!), the example I’ve always used is:
a) They insist that he is there.
b) They insist that he be there.
It’s hard to imagine interpreting (a) such that you get (b). Would these actually ever conflate to (a)?
Anyway, the whole “death of” discussion always makes me scratch my head a little, because for conditionals we’re talking here about the loss of a form only in the very few verbs that even make a distinction between singular and plural. Compare:
a) “If I [was|were] president” — ok, change in verbal form for counterfactuals. For _singular subjects_, whereas …
b) “If they were younger” — uh, is there some change here? Or for most other verbs ..,
c) “If I talked to him, I could convince him”
c’) “If I saw him, I’d recognize him”
c”) “If I had a million dollars, …”
Are we really ONLY talking about the Death of the Subjunctive for the conditional of “to be”?
As far as I can tell, the Death of the Subjunctive boils down to omg, in counterfactual conditionals, people now use “was” instead of “were” for singular subjects. Am I overlooking huge tracts of Verbland that otherwise show the death throes of yon subjunctive?
I suppose it’s worth noting that probably no one would say “Was I you, …” instead of “Were I you, …” (i.e., no “if”), not because the Death of the Subjunctive has reached this phrase, but because no one ever says that anyway.
February 15, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Thomas Voß
“Often you’ll see people using the regular present tense in these situations, writing in (1) ‘if Alicia was the President’.”
Wouldn’t that be the past tense? Also, can it really be said that the subjunctive is dying? Isn’t it so that its forms are simply merging with the ones of the past tense?
February 15, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Jonathon
The subjunctive has been in decline for millennia. A thousand years ago it was almost completely distinct from the indicative mood; today it only applies to be and third-person singular present verbs. When I took Old English, we came across a passage in class where the writer had used the indicative but where the subjunctive was very obviously called for. People aren’t using it precisely because it isn’t very useful.
Though interestingly, a classmate of mine last semester found that the mandative subjunctive (as in 3a) appears to be increasing.
But elsewhere the present subjunctive is on the decline. It was formerly used for future hypotheticals, as in “till death do us part” and Pippin’s oath in The Return of the King: “until my lord release me, or death take me, or the world end.” Now we just use the indicative there.
(Also, Gabe, I think there are a couple of errors after (1). You say “present tense” when I believe you mean “past tense.”)
February 15, 2012 at 3:59 pm
ASG
Alicia needs to become president stat. Her platform is of critical importance to me and indeed to the whole country.
February 15, 2012 at 4:32 pm
The Ridger
Indeed. The “if” is doing the heavy lifting. I only give credence to people bemoaning the death of the subjunctive if they front the verb as well conjugate it AND don’t use if. Otherwise, they’re contributing!
February 15, 2012 at 4:33 pm
John Cowan
The historic present and past subjunctives (no future subjunctive in any Germanic language I know of) have now become completely separated, and indeed CGEL applies the term “subjunctive” only to the historical present subjunctive, calling the historical past subjunctive the “conditional”. Similarly, German calls the two forms Konjunktiv I and Konjunctiv II, though in that language they can be marked for tense.
Adopting this terminology, the subjunctive is gone from BrE and related variants, which would use “They insist that he should be there” for Mike’s 1b. However, it’s still functional in AmE (I don’t know about CanE, but I expect it’s used there as well). Of course there are many set phrases that preserve the subjunctive, beginning with Long live the king! The subjunctive is always the plain form of the verb.
As for the conditional, the only remaining case is the use of were rather than was in conditions contrary to fact. This has become a usage shibboleth more than a live form, though people who need to master standard English still need to learn to use it correctly so as not to be hated on.
February 15, 2012 at 11:58 pm
dw
Adopting this terminology, the subjunctive is gone from BrE and related variants, which would use “They insist that he should be there”
I think this is somewhat overstated: the mandative/jussive subjunctive still hangs on in several relatively formal contexts in British English. I searched Google’s first page of results for for the string “demanded that” in three BrE news websites: the BBC, the Guardian newspaper, and the Telegraph newspaper. I then discarded those where
* the indicative and subjunctive forms were identical (including use of modals such as “should”, and contexts where it was not possible to be absolutely certain that plural agreement was not being used)
* the source was a press agency rather than the news organizations themselves.
Of the remainder, there were more subjunctive than indicative forms:
BBC:
* Mr Romney demanded that Mr Gingrich also RELEASE consulting contracts he struck with government-backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac. (Subjunctive)
Guardian:
* Foreign lenders have demanded that in addition to the €3.3bn cuts outlined in the package Greece also PROVIDES evidence of €325m in extra savings by next week. (Indicative)
* Arguing he had to protect the City of London, Cameron demanded that any transfer of power from national regulators to an EU regulator on financial services BE subject to a veto (Subjunctive)
* The UN security council has called for an immediate end to the violence in Libya and demanded that Muammar Gaddafi LIVE up to his responsibilities to protect his own people. (Subjunctive)
Telegraph:
* The Prime Minister of New Zealand, John Key, has demanded that he FINDS out the reasons for the oil slick as he announced two government inquiries into the spill (Indicative)
* A shareholder group has demanded that James Murdoch STAND down as chairman of BSkyB in a bid to clear up the “questionable governance practices” at the company. (Subjunctive)
* …Downing Street then demanded that it DID not appear on the same day as the newspaper’s editor apologised for hacking. (Indicative)
* Johann Lamont, the Labour leader, demanded that he APOLOGISE for writing that letter (Subjunctive)
I make that 5-3 in favor of subjunctives. The Telegraph, which has the reputation of being rather conservative, seems to have gone the furthest in substituting the indicative for the subjunctive.
* She … demanded that the application BE removed from its iTunes online store. (Subjunctive)
* the head of an influential Islamic seminary in Deoband had demanded that he BE refused entry. (Subjunctive)
February 16, 2012 at 2:23 pm
goofy
Thomas Voß: if it is identical to the past tense, why not call it the past tense.
February 17, 2012 at 4:14 pm
Thomas Voß
goofy: Because it doesn’t refer to something in the past. Duh!
February 17, 2012 at 6:13 pm
goofy
And the present tense doesn’t always refer to things in the present. imo it makes sense to say that the past tense has at least two uses: to refer to events in the past, and to refer to events that are distant in reality.
February 17, 2012 at 6:15 pm
goofy
Just like the present tense can refer to events in the present, and to events in the future (next year I go to Paris).
February 18, 2012 at 11:11 am
Warsaw Will
@goofy and Thomas Voß – in EFL, we refer to this use as the Unreal Past (embracing both indicative and subjunctive past). This might be a suitable solution for you both.
February 18, 2012 at 11:38 am
mike
Unreal Past?? Do you mean that my entire memory of what a cool guy I was in high school should all be in the subjunctive? Haha. :-)
February 20, 2012 at 9:21 pm
John Cowan
dw:
Thanks for doing the research. However, I was not comparing the subjunctive to the indicative, but the subjunctive to the semantically equivalent should + infinitive construction. The very fact that only five of your eight examples are subjunctives suggests that even in the most formal writing the British are losing control of the subjunctive; as an AmE speaker, I would automatically use subjunctives in all eight sentences, specifically provide evidence, he find out, it not appear.
In general, minimal pairs between the mandative subjunctive and the indicative are uncommon, as usually the verb semantics dictates which one to use, but insist can generate them. For example, I insist that Martha tell the truth about John is a strong command to Martha via a third party, but I insist that Martha tells the truth about John is a strong claim about Martha’s truthfulness in this respect.
February 20, 2012 at 11:15 pm
dw
@John Cowan:
Thanks for your reply.
I don’t think that anyone is denying that the subjunctive survives more robustly in AmE than in BrE, but to claim that it is “gone” from BrE is an exaggeration.
How would you classify the verb “should” in a BrE phrase such as “X demanded that Y should not smoke”? Is there any reason to deny that it too is a subjunctive (albeit a subjunctive that, like most, is not morphologically marked)? It it’s not a subjunctive, what is it?
February 21, 2012 at 7:14 pm
Lindsey
I learned about the subjunctive back in Spanish class, and now I get a little upset every time I type “I insist that he be” (or something similar) in Microsoft Word and get a red underline in response.
February 21, 2012 at 7:19 pm
Lindsey
…and of course I just typed that into Word and didn’t get an underline. But really, it’s happened before.
February 22, 2012 at 4:54 am
Link love: language (40) « Sentence first
[…] the subjunctive mood disappearing, and does it […]
February 22, 2012 at 9:15 am
John Cowan
Why, I would classify the verb should as a modal verb. :-)
Seriously, I (and most syntacticians, of which I am not one), use subjunctive as the name of a form, not the name of a meaning. We have a subjunctive when the plain form of the verb is used with all persons and numbers. Such a subjunctive can have many meanings, but the only meaning in which it is still in living use outside frozen phrases is the mandative. Mandatives can be expressed with or without the subjunctive, in the latter case by using the modal verb should followed (as modals are) by the plain form.
By the same token, I give John the book and I give the book to John mean the same thing, but only in the first sentence is John the indirect object of give. In the second sentence, a prepositional phrase is used with the same meaning as the indirect object, but that doesn’t make it an indirect object. One of the things that’s terribly wrong with conventional grammar books is their constant conflation of form and meaning.
As for the British subjunctive being dead and gone, one of the first signs of the death of a feature, even if people are still using it in formal writing, is that they can’t quite get it right by the old rules any more. In the King James Version, Ruth (of the Book of Ruth) is made to say Whither thou goest, I will go, a bit old-fashioned even for 1611. But in 2012 there are a number of Google hits for Whither thou goest, I goest and even Whither James goest, I goest, which show that the second person singular verb form is as dead as mutton, despite the hundreds of millions who say Our Father who art in Heaven every day. Sir Thomas More famously flamed William Tyndale for getting the distinctions between yes and yea, no and nay wrong in his 1524 Bible translation, showing that the distinction was then breaking down — but More actually explains the distinction backwards, showing that his own grip on it was none of the best.
February 22, 2012 at 10:36 pm
Parker Lewis
I took a whole year of Spanish in college and the last quarter was ALL about subjunctive and my instructor was totally crazy about it. Later I found out that as part of his PhD he was doing nothing but subjunctive, and this post totally reminded me of him… of how some people can become totally obsessed with a verbal form and their whole lives revolve around it.
That class was sick and the instructor insane.
February 23, 2012 at 2:34 am
Rilian
The word if doesn’t establish that it’s counterfactual. It could just be an unknown. “If I was there, then why don’t I remember it?” That’s not counterfactual, it’s allowing for the possibility that I was there. The subjunctive form of that would be “If I had been there, then I would remember it.” But I don’t, so therefore I wasn’t there.
February 23, 2012 at 10:34 am
John Cowan
Rilian: Indeed. There’s a story about a rabbi who got drunk on Purim (as is traditional) and was carried by his students out to the cemetery. They then watched to see what he’d say when he woke up, which was: “If I am dead, why do I feel like this? And if I am alive, what am I doing here?” The humor comes from the parody of Talmudic reasoning, but the grammatical point is the realis (that is, not-contrary-to-fact) nature of both of the two if-clauses, even though one of them actually is contrary to fact.
November 29, 2012 at 9:02 pm
Eahfu Baou
If Alicia was president, she would have prevented Fox from canceling Firefly. But I guess we know she wasn’t president when that momentous decision was made.
“If Alicia was president, she’d be living large” looks just plain wrong to me. I wonder what criteria are used when compiling a corpus for a descriptivist study. Edited and published writing might better reflect what is “successful” in terms of clarity and expressiveness, but would such a corpus undermine the goal of descriptivism? Certainly if the corpus samples writing with a more relaxed relationship to the rules of grammar, then we get an entirely different result. Someone always decides, and decisions are built upon ideologies. From my own biased perspective, I would say descriptivism wants to give a pass when a simple correction would advance the goal of preserving clarity and expressiveness. While the living language argument is democratizing, using it to kill the language seems counterproductive.
November 29, 2012 at 11:01 pm
Eahfu Baou
ha!
“If Alicia had been president, she would have prevented Fox from canceling Firefly.”
Even I, who would have everyone studying the subjunctive day and night, cannot get it right!
January 2, 2013 at 4:00 am
georg
In regards to the subjunctive mood, be it not correct to say “If Alicia be president, she’d strip and pole dance at Hooters.”?
February 25, 2013 at 9:29 pm
Charles Johnson
Myself, I find the subjunctive an indispensible part of everyday usage. Were it only that everyone else felt the same ! Many people fail to recognize that modern English modal verbs exist only in two apparent tenses (present and past), but that these are contiguous between their indicative and subjunctive moods. They don’t realize that saying, “I wished he could do so for me” represents the past subjunctive of can, and not the simple past. Why? Because the context is “counterfactual” or “unreal”: The implication is that “he did not, in fact, have the ability or opportunity to do (whatever) for me, despite my having wished otherwise.” If, on the other hand, I had then known that he did, in fact, have the power to do so for me and would, in fact, do so, if asked, I would have had to say (sic, past perfect subjunctive of “have to”, meaning “must”!), “I wished that he do so for me”: Here, the statement is merely a report of my prior state of mind, but not counterfactual at all. The present subjunctive of “do” is appropriate, as it signifies the continuing possibility of his taking the action I desired, but without indicating that he would then or ever thereafter actually take that action.
These issues are more clearly seen, when translated either into French or German. Voilà: “J’ai voulu, qu’il ait pu ainsi faire pour moi.” and ”J’ai voulu, qu’il fasse ainsi pour moi.” (Cf., “qu’il a pu ainsi faire” and “qu’il fait ainsi”, being the indicative past and present.) Und: “Ich mochte, daß er für mich so tun könnte.” and “Ich mochte, daß er für mich so tue.” (Cf., “tun konnte” and “so tut”, similarly.)
@Eahfu: The agreement of tenses when using the subjunctive is not quite so strict as it is with the indicative: “If Alicia were president, she would have ….” is just as good as “If Alicia had been president, …” We never see, anymore, such a thing as “If Alicia have been president, then ..” Although this is not grammatically incorrect, it is nonetheless an archaic use of the subjunctive. One rathers says, “If Alicia be (elected) president, then …”
@georg: Using the present subjunctive sets up a hypothetical present in order to distinguish an alternative future. There is no “future subjunctive” in English (unlike Spanish), rather, we prefer to use the simple future. “If Alicia be (elected) president, she will live in the White House.” Otherwise, we must say, “If Alicia were (elected) president, she would live in the White House.” (sic, past subjunctive of “will”). Some difficulty intervenes when we consider that the simple past of “will” is contiguous with the past subjunctive and sometimes used to mark the past repetitive of a verb: “When Alicia was president, she would live in the White House during the week, and at Camp David on the weekend.” (Cf, “When Alicia is president, she lives in the White House during the week and ….”) Nothing, here, is subjunctive.
March 25, 2013 at 6:35 pm
Greg
This is a very stimulating discussion. Mark me down in the column of Let it live. I don’t see the sense in warping meaning to avoid a mood. A change from “is obsessed with the idea” to “desires” or “hopes” is not an accurate paraphrase.
We should be very careful not to seem prescriptive about this or any other change in the language. The phrase “I won’t shed any tears” reads like ironic understatement for “I’ll dance on its grave.” That may not be your attitude, but it’s a short flight in most readers’ minds, and it’s all “users of English” we’re talking about, right? I’ve heard many of my fellow instructors take that attitude — trying to be modern, I guess. One of them is militant about abolishing “whom.” He would get red reading your second sentence, insisting you should re-phrase the whole thing to avoid it.
Doesn’t it seem likely that some instances of the subjunctive — the less useful ones — will die out, while the others stay around as long as people still want to be clear?
April 3, 2013 at 11:29 am
The subjunctive might be dying, if you ignore where it’s going strong | Motivated Grammar
[…] worry about the subjunctive ignores that the present subjunctive is going strong.*** I’ve written about sentences where the present subjunctive changes the meaning (though I wrote with a dimmer view of […]
November 4, 2014 at 2:08 am
Gram Matical
“Often you’ll see people using the regular present tense in these situations, writing in (1) “if Alicia was the President”.”
Correction:
Often you’ll see people using the imperfect form of the (regular) indicative mood in these situations, writing in (1) “if Alicia was the President”.
January 16, 2015 at 9:04 pm
rena
Hello, why is “be” used in these sentences?
– To you be your way and to me mine.
– Peace be on you.
– God be praised.
– Blessed be the Lord.
I need your help, please.
January 25, 2015 at 4:04 pm
Daniel
Rena: In each of the cases you provided, the sentence is not stating how things are, but expressing a wish for things to be a particular way. As such they take the subjunctive mode, where the word “be” is uninflected in the present tense.
February 4, 2015 at 8:06 pm
rena
Daniel, by using “be” in those sentences, then what is the desire of the speaker?
– To you be your way and to me mine.
– God be praised / Praise be to God. Is this the same?
February 6, 2015 at 8:07 pm
Daniel
Rena: Each sentence can be interpreted as expressing a desire that the sentence be true:
“To you be your way and to me mine” does not indicate that you are being allowed to follow your path and I am being allowed to follow mine, but rather it expresses the desire that you should be allowed to follow your path and I should be allowed to follow mine.
“Peace be on you” does not indicate that peace is on you, but rather expresses the desire for peace to be on you.
The ones involving God are a bit trickier to me, in part because I’m not religious so I can’t imagine much of any circumstance where I’d say such a phrase. “God be praised” is expressing the desire that God be praised, but of course the speaker could guarantee that God be praised by, oh I don’t know, praising God. I presume that the speaker here is suggesting that God should be praised by multiple people, particularly the listener.
As for “Blessed be the Lord”, I assume that “blessed” in this sentence is basically synonymous with “praised”; i.e., this sentence means the same thing as “God be praised”.
February 7, 2015 at 8:39 am
rena
Thanks Daniel. So, we can reverse “God be praised” to “praised be God” with there is no difference in meaning, right? Like “blessed be the Lord => the Lord be blessed.
I also often see the writer using “is” instead of “be”, where the sentence doesn’t involve the subjunctive again, but they involve a Verb-Subject order, like:
– Glorious is God.
– Blessed is whosever is in the fire.
Could you shed any light on this matter? Also, is there a grammatical term for this form?
February 12, 2015 at 2:04 pm
Daniel
Rena: Yes, “Praised be God” and “God be praised” would be identical in meaning.
Regarding the “Glorious is God” and “Blessed is whosoever is in the fire” examples. The term for this would be “copular inversion” (the inflected form of “to be” is the copula). A lot of the times these sound very formal (if not downright stilted) or archaic. This is particularly true when the subject is a simple noun as in the “Glorious is God” example. Such a construction is unlikely to be used in normal conversation except when invoking a rote expression such as “Blessed are the meek”.
However, the construction is still used constructively when the subject is complex, as in the “Blessed is whosoever is in the fire” example. In a copular sentence, the listener is being asked to keep two images in their head and equate them. Because this is easier to do if the simpler piece of information is presented first, it’s easier for a listener to follow “Blessed is whosoever is in the fire” than “Whosoever is in the fire is blessed”. That doesn’t mean that non-inverted examples don’t exist (an obvious non-inverted example would be “He who hesitates is lost”), but inverted ones do appear more commonly in this situation.
February 14, 2015 at 2:27 am
dwishiren
Could you let me know what is the difference between “all praise be to God” and “all praise is to God”? Thanks.
February 18, 2015 at 2:00 pm
Daniel
dwishiren: Does this question by any chance have anything to do with the gospel song “Every Praise is to Our God”? I ask for a specific reason. See, in general, I’d say the difference is what I said to Rena: “All praise be to God” is expressing a wish and therefore takes the subjunctive, whereas “All praise is to God” is a statement. However, when I look at the lyrics to that song, it seems to me that they are expressing a wish and thus it ought to use “be” instead of “is”. But not being the writer of the song, I can’t say for certain.
February 22, 2015 at 8:59 pm
dwishiren
Thanks. I would like to know what the statement is? By saying “all praise is to God” means the statement is all praise is always given to God every day. Am I correct? But my explanation seems to express a wish.
February 23, 2015 at 7:17 am
rena
Daniel, thanks. I have two questions, but these aren’t relating to the subjunctive.
1. I found a lot of examples using the word “whom” as in:
– To Whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever
– O sole God, beside Whom there is none. My question: does “whom” in the two sentences refer to God?
2. God is the Most Great, the Most High. I believe “the Most Great/High” aren’t a superlative form. If it is, it should “the Greatest/Highest”. But I have not idea what form this is. Could you please let me know?
February 28, 2015 at 8:45 pm
Daniel
The “beside Whom there is none” certainly refers to God. For the “To Whom be praise and dominion”, I’d have to see the surrounding context.
The “Most Great” and “Most High” are superlative. Normally in contemporary English one would use “-est” to form the superlative in one-syllable adjectives and some two-syllable adjectives, and “Most _____” in adjectives of at least three syllables and some two-syllable adjectives. The use of the “Most _____” construction with a one-syllable adjective has an archaic feel, but I’m not certain that it’s a genuinely archaic usage or just something that sounds archaic.
March 1, 2015 at 3:08 am
rena
Thanks, Daniel. So in conclusion, the use of “the most + one-syllable adjectives” is archaic one?
I have one last question that makes me confused, Daniel. The use of “the + adjective”.
– In the name of Allah (God), the Compassionate, the Merciful.
– God is the Forgiving, the Wise.
If the word “one” is added in the adjectives “compassionate”, “merciful”, “wise” and “forgiving”, it’s clear to me, Daniel. But the “one” isn’t added there. Or maybe if we want to describe attributes of God, “one” isn’t needed?
April 6, 2015 at 2:27 pm
Daniel
Yes, “the most” + one-syllable adjective is the archaic one.
As for the question about “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful”, and so forth, I’m not entirely certain what’s at play here. I will note that it isn’t necessarily restricted to God, though. Two similar constructions come to mind:
1. Use of adjectives to differentiate two well-known people with the same name: Pliny the Elder, Bruegel the Younger, etc. (In high school I had two professors who a) were married to each other and b) both had doctorates. It was a running joke that each of them would refer to themself as “Dr. Wilson the Greater” and the other as “Dr. Wilson the Lesser”.)
2. Use of adjectives to describe kings, even when there is another method is distinguishing them or no other king of the same name. Thus, in English history you will find Æthelred the Unready (the only King Æthelred in English history), Russia has Yekaterina Velikaya (“Catherine the Great”, who was Catherine II), and monarchs such as Charles III le simple, Louis VI le gros (fat), and Phillippe V le long (tall).
As the examples from Russia and France show, this construction isn’t limited to English. And the analogy isn’t perfect: Æthelred the Unready may have been the only Æthelred, but he wasn’t the only king; however, according to Islam and Christianity, Allah/God is the only god. But I’m afraid I’m not entirely certain how to explain this.
September 15, 2015 at 9:53 pm
sandara
Can you tell me why the “be” is used in the following sentences? What is the desire of the speaker?
Exalted be He (God)
Glorified be God.
September 16, 2015 at 5:31 am
mikepope
@sandara–that’s a use of the subjunctive to express a wish. You can think of it as having an implied “may”:
[May] He be exalted
[May] God be glorified
It also appears in expressions like “Long live the king!” or “Thanks be to God!”
If you happen to know Spanish, this is the same usage that produces something like “¡Viva México!” (usually translated as “Long live Mexico!”)–where “viva” is the subjunctive of “vivir,” meaning “to live.”
The last example was irresistible, since today (9/16) is Mexican Independence Day. :-)
September 17, 2015 at 9:54 am
sandara
Thank you, mikepope. However to me, it seems kind of strange to use “may”. I imagine that if using “may” as though God has not yet been exalted/glorified. We know that God is already glorified/exalted/blessed. Therefore, I think it would make more sense if the exaltness or glorifiedness is given to God, then Man glorifies/exalts Him to the highest degree.
Am I right? Please correct me if I’m mistaken.
September 17, 2015 at 11:01 pm
mikepope
it’s an idiomatic way to express a hope or desire. See “In exclamations that express a wish or hope” on this page: http://www.grammaring.com/present-subjunctive
September 17, 2015 at 10:00 am
sandara
Oh yeah, I forgot to ask this aslo. If using “be”, I would wonder what the desire of the speaker is?
December 26, 2015 at 7:50 am
Saint
Go ahead and toss your beer can out the window as if you was a Texas farmer. Or maybe you was a Texas farmer but ain’t no more?
January 6, 2017 at 3:17 pm
meganpatsmith
Interesting blog! Loved reading this
October 28, 2020 at 9:41 pm
Bru Zote
Time to revive this for my purpose. An heirarchy of languages needs to be designed by people who understand information density vs redundancy and frequency. These issues should consider the channel (mode) and criticality of the communication required. Grammar and vocabulary should support these considerations. Make the vocabulary flexible enough for adapting to new words.
Next, break down the language into how it would be coded in transmissions, typing, handwriting, oral, and sign language. Variations and options to modify for disability or problems in that channel should exist. Flexibility for future use in new channels should exist. The limitation of the human voice should not be the basis of the human language but it should be considered how we orally express that language. Finally, each channel’s vocabulary and possibly grammar should be designed how languages drift, particularly in pronunciation but also in other ways. Linguists would have their work cut out for them, trying to invent words that don’t change in ways like “got you” to “gotcha”. Still, it can be done.
I say because in a well-designed language, tenses and moods would derive from assigned words, not conjugation, the bane of communication in Western languages and maybe more. So, subjunctive would be out. As your article says, a word can be used to identify that. In the design phase of the language, words with that role would be selected for their ease of use and clear contrast with other words in both spelling and sound. Essentially, prefixes and suffixes could be used for the tenses and moods along with other essential bits of information.
Finally, there would be no he or she. That was one of the most overly complicating ideas in language history. If you want to identify gender, which is so biased for a pronoun, then use a prefix for each gender.