Tailor Made goes live on Tuesday, September 3rd, but it's already available for pre-order.
Snag your copy for just $2.99, and it'll download automatically to your Kindle!
It's the first in what will be a series set in 1800s Finland. Long-time readers may recognize it as a story I wrote for the now-defunct Kindle Worlds program, but it's bigger and different and better than ever!
Two people. An impossible Task. A traitor in their midst.
Sofi’s mother desperately needs medicine, and Sofi will do anything to get it—including a one-month stay at the Brunberg mansion in Helsinki, the capitol. There she’ll spend her days at the Kangas Tailor Shop, knitting silk stockings and other items from sunup to sundown for the biggest wedding of the decade. If she can do it, Sofi will have the ability to get the medicine her mother needs, with money to spare.
But Sofi’s safe world of knitting needles and thread is turned upside down when she finds herself in the middle of political intrigue. Antti, tailor and owner of the shop, Sofi uncover a plot to sabotage the Brunberg daughter’s wedding and threaten to bring Russia’s fist onto the Grand Duchy, removing the Finns’ self-governance, and possibly lead the countries into war.
As Sofi and Antti work together to save their country, she can’t help falling in love with the unassuming and attractive head tailor, though she knows she can’t have him. Her country and her family need her, and when her job is done, she’ll go home to Porvoo, never to see him again.
As they race to stop the traitor, the battle in her heart intensifies, and she fears that the victor won’t be love.
It's women's fiction and set during the little-known Winter War, a relatively short but amazing conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland.
The Winter War had big effects on the war, and I had relatives who fought and died in it.
I worked on this book for years and years. It's truly a labor a love, and I can't wait for my readers to get their hands on it!
Stay tuned for the back cover copy, pre-order, and release date, all coming soon!
~~~
New Releases You Won't Want to Miss
The Warning, by James Patterson and my awesome friend Robison Wells
About the book: Two roads lead to Mount Hope. None leads out. There's no place to run in a community that's been taken―and is being intentionally kept―off the grid.
A small southern town was evacuated after a freak power-plant accident. As the first anniversary of the mishap approaches, some residents are allowed to return past the national guard roadblocks.
Mount Hope natives Maggie and Jordan quickly discover that their hometown is not as it was before. Downed cellular networks fail to resume service. Animals savagely attack humans. And the damaged power plant, where Jordan's father is an engineer, is under military lock down.
As friends and family morph into terrifying strangers, the Maggie and Jordan increasingly turn to each other. Their determination to discover who―or what―has taken control of Mount Hope soon has them in the cross hairs of a presence more sinister than any they could have imagined.
The Marquess Meets His Match, by Julie Coulter Bellon
About the book:
Lord Christian Wolverton―known as Wolf in a covert group operating during the war against Napoleon―has been called home from his military duties. For the moment, his family responsibilities require him to suspend his more clandestine activities. But information falls into his hands that a traitor will soon try to tip the scales back into French favor and Christian doesn't have much time to stop it from happening.
Going to the one person who can help him, the powerful Duke of Huntingdon, Christian comes face to face with Lady Alice. She’s a beautiful member of the ton with a very big secret―she’s also a trained agent and already on the case. Forced to partner with her to lure the traitor out of hiding, Christian wants to quickly close the case himself, before Lady Alice is more closely involved. But Lady Alice has ideas of her own and she’s going to prove her theories correct―with or without him.
Danger is closer than they think, however, and it’s a race against time to expose the traitor’s identity before British lives are endangered. Both Christian and Alice have strong opinions on who he is, but which one will be proven right?
On a recent social media post, I shared some verses
from the Book of Mormon that struck me in Finnish more than they ever had in
English. I promised to explain, so this is a bit of that.
I think one of many reasons that the Finnish speaks to me in scripture is that while the text is, for the
most part, more formal Finnish than you’d hear in casual conversation, it is still
modern Finnish. Written Finnish is
relatively new, historically speaking, while the English of the Book of Mormon
is more like the King James Bible, which was published some 400 years ago, so
the language and sentence structure is more in line with what you’d find in a
Shakespeare play.
Add to that the fact of words’ meanings changing even in the last 200 years, and you’ve got a situation where
the English won’t necessarily be as clear or powerful to the 21st
century reader.
Finnish as a language tends to be direct and to the point. Some would call it blunt. Combine that clarity
with modern language, and for me, that equates greater understanding.
One small example: When I first began reading the Book of Mormon in Finnish, I was surprised at how often
a verse began with the word “katso” (“look”). Then I glanced at the English and realized that “behold” was in the English at those same spots.
And yes, “behold” does means “look,” but I’d never thought of it as an instruction. I’d seen the old-fashioned English
word so many times that it had become almost invisible, a transition word that really didn’t mean anything.
Now, “behold” means something different to me: that the writer wants the reader to pay attention, and they’re
saying something important. “Look!”
A caveat: I am not an expert in Finnish. While I attended public school in Helsinki for three years and became pretty fluent, that was over 30 years ago, and only in the last year or so have I really be studying to reclaim the language. The translations and notes below are my personal understanding. A native, or anyone with a better handle on the language, might disagree with my interpretations.
Moroni 7
The passage I quoted in the social media post is near the end of the Book of Mormon, written by Mormon’s son,
Moroni. Some of the wording mirrors what Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 13:4–10.
We’ll be looking at the English and Finnish of Moroni Chapter 7, verses 44–48.
Verse 44
In English:
If so, his faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable
before God, save the meek and lowly in heart; and if a man be meek and lowly in
heart, and confesses by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ,
he must needs have charity; for if he have not charity he is nothing; wherefore
he must needs have charity.
Breaking it down: English first, Finnish next, then my alternate translations/notes:
If so, his faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable
before God,
Muuten hänen uskonsa ja toivonsa on turhaa, sillä kukaan ei ole otollinen Jumalan edessä,
“None is” is translated as “kukaan ei ole” (“no one is”), which makes
perfect sense. Moroni is clearly talking about people, not things. To me, “no one” sounds more personal than “none is.”
“Acceptable” is translated at “otollinen,” which also means “favorable.”
Before God
Jumalan edessä
The Finnish feels like we’re talking about being physically in front of God, facing him on His throne—again,
it feels personal. Literally, it’s almost “in God’s front.” It implies a close physical proximity. The English certainly can mean the same thing, but the same English phrase could also refer to God’s view or opinion about someone.
To me, this section says that only those who are capable of withstanding God’s glory will be able to stand in
front of Him. If we aren’t found “favorable,” we won’t be there.
Up next, we learn the qualities of those who will be able to stand in front of God:
save the meek and lowly in heart;
paitsi sydämeltään sävyisät ja nöyrät;
(Except for those into whose hearts are mild/tame/even-tempered and meek/humble)
The Finnish flips the phrasing, putting the heart (sydän) first instead of last and conjugating the word
as roughly “into the heart,” specifically referring to a singular third person (he/she). Finnish has one third person pronoun, “hän,” and all singular third person endings are the same, so this could refer to any individual.
That gender-neutral pronoun, “hän,” is similar to “one” in English, except that it’s used in everyday conversation,
which, of course, “one” isn’t.
The verse so far says to me that those who can stand before God are those who bring into their hearts the
qualities of being mild, meek, and humble.
and if a man be meek and lowly in heart,
ja jos ihminen on sydämeltään sävyisä ja nöyrä
(And if a person takes into their hearts mildness and meekness)
No matter how often you remember that “man” in scripture refers to all human beings, it’s a nice reminder when it's translated as “a person” (“ihminen”).
Then we return to the third person singular individual: if a person has the qualities of mildness, meekness, and humility in their heart . . .
and confesses by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is
the Christ,
ja tunnustaa Pyhän Hengen voimasta, että Jeesus on Kristus,
(And acknowledges, with the Holy Spirit’s power, that Jesus is the Christ,)
The Finnish word for “confess” is “tunnustaa,” which, yes, does mean “confess.” But it can also mean “acknowledge” or “recognize.”
I suppose, “confess” can mean those things in English, too, but I hadn’t thought of the word in those terms. To me, “confess” has some baggage in English, making that statement feel forced or somehow shameful on the part of the person saying it.
“Tunnustaa” is also related to “tuntua,” which means “feel.” So individuals will not only be acknowledging Jesus, but they will also feel that He is their Christ.
Another element here is how English does a weird thing with the word “of.” So often, we lose the concept of ownership and instead just have two things that are closely related. In this case, “the power of the Holy Ghost” puts Spirit at a distance for me, as if the power is something out in the universe somewhere in an unknown nebula or something.
However, saying, as it does in Finnish, “the Holy Ghost’s power” suddenly makes me picture something new and different, something more, well, powerful. Many languages use the regular possessive in situations like this (for example, The Book of Mormon is translated as Mormon’s Book). In cases like this, I prefer that construction.
Let’s combine the two concepts (first, acknowledging Christ and second, doing so with Holy Ghost’s power): In Finnish,
I get the sense that acknowledging Christ is something that takes strength. Perhaps this means actually seeing Him, being in His presence, as we acknowledge that he is our personal Savior.
In that case, it would make sense that we’d need heavenly power, that from the Holy Ghost, to withstand Christ’s glory
to make such an acknowledgment.
he must needs have charity; for if he have not charity he is
nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity.
hänellä täytyy olla rakkautta, sillä ellei hänellä ole rakkautta, hän ei ole mitään; niinpä hänellä täytyy olla rakkautta.
(He must have love, for if he/she doesn’t have love, he/she is nothing; he/she needs to have love.)
The archaic English gets in the way here. Sure, we know that “he must needs have” means “he must have,” but having it stated so clearly in Finnish is a good reminder.
Also, remember that it’s not “he” in Finnish. It’s “hän” which can refer to any individual. We must all have charity.
The word “charity” in English, as we saw with “confess,” carries baggage that I don’t think was intended. In
Finnish, it’s translated simply as “love.” It’s the same word you’d use when talking about a parent or child or your best friend, so it means a lot more than doing a big service project for people in another country. It’s caring for those directly in your sphere and loving them all in word and deed.
I love how “wherefore” is translated. It could have been simply “niin,” but instead, it’s “niinpä.” Those
extra two letters (–pä) add urgency and emphasis to what comes next, almost saying, “No, really, you must have
love. It’s a requirement. That’s just the way it is.”
Verse 45
Here’s where we get into the direct parallels with 1 Corinthians: defining and describing charity. Again, in
Finnish, the word used is simply “love.”
And that fits for Latter-day Saints, because we believe that charity is the pure love of Christ—a definition
that comes from this passage in a bit. To me, swapping “charity” out and adding “love” helps emphasize that meaning.
Also note that each time something is listed as a characteristic that charity/love is not, the Finnish adds another emphasizing syllable. “Not” could be just “ei” here, but it’s “eikä,” making it
roughly “also not” and with a “really, it’s not” sense.
I’m going to break this verse down phrase by phrase, with the English on top, the Finnish beneath, and my
translation of the Finnish in parentheses after that, along with any other notes or thoughts.
And charity suffereth long
Ja rakkaus on pitkämielinen
(And love is long-minded)
and is kind
ja lempeä
(and kind/gentle)
and envieth not
eikä kadehdi
(doesn’t envy)
and is not puffed up
eikä pöyhkeile
(isn’t arrogant)
seeketh not her own
ei etsi omaansa
(doesn’t seek for his/her own)
This is another verse where the archaic English stands in the way of an otherwise clear meaning. The imagery of actively searching something out comes across clearer to me in the Finnish.
is not easily provoked
ei vihastu helposti
(doesn’t get angry easily)
thinketh no evil
ei ajattele pahaa
(doesn’t think bad things/of badness)
and rejoiceth not in iniquity
eikä iloitse vääryydestä
(doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness)
but rejoiceth in the truth
vaan iloitsee totuudesta
(only rejoices in the truth)
beareth all things
kaiken se kestää
(everything, it endures)
The word “kestää” doesn’t have a simple English translation. It definitely means “endure,” but it means much more than that. When you “kestää,” you are holding on. You have strength.
Inanimate things can “kestää” (or not), too. If you’re walking over icy snow, and then suddenly it breaks and
your boot goes through, the snow didn’t “kestää”under your weight. So “kestää” implies a strength and resilience that “endure” doesn’t.
believeth all things
kaiken se uskoo
(everything, it believes)
hopeth all things
kaiken se toivoo
(everything, it hopes for)
endureth all things
kaiken se kärsii
(everything, it endures/suffers)
“Kärsii” implies pain, so while it does mean “endure,” it’s a different kind of endurance than the kind implied by “bearing” all things.
Verse 46
Wherefore, my beloved brethren,
Jos siis, rakkaat veljeni
(If so, my beloved brothers)
if ye have not charity, ye are nothing,
teillä ei ole rakkautta, te ette ole mitään,
(you don’t have love, you are nothing)
for charity never faileth.
sillä rakkaus ei koskaan katoa.
(for love doesn’t ever vanish/disappear)
This is one of my favorite parts. The LDS women’s organization, Relief Society, has “Charity never
faileth” as its motto, which took on much greater meaning for me when I thought of it as “Love never vanishes/disappears.”
Wherefore, cleave unto charity,
Pitäkää sen vuoksi kiinni rakkaudesta,
(Hold on tight because of that to love)
which is the greatest of all,
joka on suurin kaikista,
(which is the greatest of all)
for all things must fail—
sillä kaiken täytyy kadota—
(for everything must vanish/disappear)
An interesting note: 1 Corinthians 13:8 in the King James Version of the Bible reads like this (emphasis mine):
Charity never faileth:
but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues,
they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
Where in English we have “faileth”and
“vanish away,” Finnish uses the same word: “katoa,” meaning “vanish away.”
Love from God will never leave you alone. It will never disappear.
Verse 47
But charity is the pure love of Christ,
mutta aito rakkaus on Kristuksen puhdasta rakkautta,
(but authentic love is Christ’s clean/unpolluted/innocent love)
How cool is this one? This is the one time that the English “charity” isn’t translated directly as “love.” I imagine that’s because the next needs to be more specific; it’s distinguishing types of love.
And real, genuine, authentic love is Christ’s love. Christ’s love is clean and pure and innocent.
and it endureth forever
ja se kestää ikuisesti
(and it endures/lasts/holds on with strength eternally)
Remember what I said about “kestää”? We see it again here, and it means so much more than enduring with gritted teeth.
and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day,
ja kenellä sitä havaitaan olevan viimeisenä päivänä,
(And whoever is detected to have it on the last day)
it shall be well with him.
hänen käy hyvin.
(He/she will be well/good/fine.)
Verse 48
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with
all the energy of heart,
Rukoilkaa siis, rakkaat veljeni, Isää koko sydämen voimalla,
(Pray then, my beloved brothers, to Father with your all of the heart’s power.)
Note that the -kaa added to the first word (“rukoila,” meaning “pray”) is another intensifier, making it an
important instruction.
that ye may be filled with this love,
että täyttyisitte tällä rakkaudella,
(that you may be filled with this love)
which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of
his Son, Jesus Christ;
jonka hän on suonut kaikille Poikansa Jeesuksen Kristuksen tosi seuraajille;
(which he has bestowed to all His Son’s, Jesus Christ’s, followers)
that ye may become the sons of God;
että teistä tulisi Jumalan lapsia;
(that you may become God’s children)
Again with the possessive “of.” For me, if a sentence is put into regular possessive, it’s more powerful. I can
become one of God’s children. Wow.
Also note that the Finnish says we may become God’s children.
Not just sons.
that when he shall appear we shall be like him,
että me hänen ilmestyessään olisimme hänen kaltaisiaan
(that we, when he appears/is revealed, may be what in his likeness)
WOW AGAIN. We can be like Him when He appears! The Finnish “ilmestyessään” is more active, and can also mean “when he is revealed” Much more powerful for me. than merely appearing.
for we shall see him as he is;
sillä me saamme nähdä hänet sellaisena kuin hän on;
(for we’ll be able to see him in the way that he is)
Hard to explain why the Finnish affects me so much on this one, but it does; the idea that we’ll be able to see God as He actually is amazing—and it’s a reminder that our tiny mortal brains have no clue what God is really like. That whatever mortal blinders we’ve lived with will be removed, and we’ll be able to see eternity and God as they really are.
that we may have this hope;
että meillä olisi tämä toivo;
(that we may have this hope)
that we may be purified even as he is pure.
että meidät puhdistettaisiin niin kuin hän on puhdas.
(That we may be cleansed as he is clean)
Amen.
Aamen.
~~~
Now for something rather vulnerable. (As if discussing my faith weren't already!) For anyone wanting to see the whole thing altogether, hear it, and/or follow along: Below is the full Finnish text of this passage as well as a recording of me reading the passage in Finnish.
44 Muuten hänen uskonsa ja toivonsa on turhaa, sillä kukaan ei ole otollinen Jumalan edessä, paitsi sydämeltään sävyisät ja nöyrät; ja jos ihminen on sydämeltään sävyisä ja nöyrä ja tunnustaa Pyhän Hengen voimasta, että Jeesus on Kristus, hänellä täytyy olla rakkautta, sillä ellei hänellä ole rakkautta, hän ei ole mitään;
niinpä hänellä täytyy olla rakkautta.
45 Ja rakkaus on pitkämielinen ja lempeä eikä kadehdi eikä pöyhkeile, ei etsi omaansa, ei vihastu helposti, ei ajattele pahaa eikä iloitse vääryydestä vaan iloitsee totuudesta, kaiken se kestää, kaiken se uskoo, kaiken se toivoo, kaiken se kärsii.
46 Jos siis, rakkaat veljeni, teillä ei ole rakkautta, te ette ole mitään, sillä rakkaus ei koskaan katoa. Pitäkää sen vuoksi kiinni rakkaudesta, joka on suurin kaikista, sillä kaiken täytyy kadota—
47 mutta aito rakkaus on Kristuksen puhdasta rakkautta, ja se kestää ikuisesti; ja kenellä sitä havaitaan olevan viimeisenä päivänä, hänen käy hyvin.
48 Rukoilkaa siis, rakkaat veljeni, Isää koko sydämen voimalla, että täyttyisitte tällä rakkaudella, jonka hän on suonut kaikille Poikansa Jeesuksen Kristuksen tosi seuraajille; että teistä tulisi Jumalan lapsia; että me hänen ilmestyessään olisimme hänen kaltaisiaan, sillä me saamme nähdä hänet sellaisena kuin hän on; että meillä olisi tämä toivo; että meidät
puhdistettaisiin niin kuin hän on puhdas. Aamen.
Friends and long-time readers know that I have a love of Scandinavia, and in particular, Finland. A big part of that is the fact that my mother was born and raised there. Another is that my father did church service there for 2 1/2 years as a young man.
And no, they didn't meet then. Five years after his mission, he returned to Finland on a Fulbright scholarship to do research for his dissertation. That is when they met and courted, and the following autumn, they married.
Dad is a retired linguist (again, something long-time readers will already know). In addition to speaking Finnish, he taught Finnish literature at the university where he served as a linguistics professor. Throughout my childhood, we regularly had Finnish visitors, heard stories about the country, and so on. Christmas in particular became a time for family traditions centered around Finland.
When I was 6, my family visited Finland for three months, each in a different city for the summer. While I have some wonderful memories of that time, my true passion for the country came to life a few years later, when we returned to live in Helsinki for 3 years. I attended public school and eventually learned the language. I still have several dear friends there (and some who have immigrated to the States). And my love for all things Finnish has only continued to grow.
It was only a matter of time before that love informed my writing.
The fall of 2008, I finally had the chance to return to Finland for the first time since 1987. WOW. I felt like I'd returned home! Leaving was harder than I anticipated; I cried at the airport. But as I flew back to the States with my husband, I already had a story idea percolating in the back of my mind. I didn't know the details yet, but I knew I wanted to write a retelling of one of the stories in the Finnish mythology, known as the Kalevala.
So I did. I read large sections of the Kalevala and spent a long time working on expanding the story of Aino into a full-length novel.
And I'm thrilled to say that after many delays (a lot of them professional obligations that pushed this project to the back burner, many others family things because, well, family trumps, as well it should), my retelling of the story, now titled Song Breaker, will be released this fall!
I don't have a final date yet, as a few variables still need to be worked out, but I hope to have it available for readers no later than the first week of October (hopefully sooner!).
In the meantime, here's the amazing cover, designed by the immensely talented Sarah Beard:
Isn't it gorgeous?!
If you want to be kept up to date on the release of Song Breaker, be sure to sign up for my newsletter (do that in the white box in the sidebar).
And in the meantime, take a peek at the reviews coming in for the Annette Lyon Collection from Timeless Romance Anthologies, featuring five stories that are fan favorites plus one all-new novella.
A reader recently called me out on using their as a singular generic pronoun. (I forget who right now; feel free to claim the comment as your own!)
The issue: What pronoun do you use in a situation where the gender of the person acting either isn't known or isn't relevant? For example:
When an employee arrives . . .
The rest of the sentence is about the employee, who must sign in. What pronoun do you use?
When an employee arrives, ____ must sign in.
At one time, writers simply used he as the generic pronoun:
When an employee arrives, he must sign in.
But eventually came the complaints of sexism. (What if the employee is female?) That's when we started seeing a lot of he or she, just to be sure we covered our bases:
When an employee arrives, he or she must sign in.
That's seriously clunky and awkward, but it's better than the other weird compromise, s/he.
Others have opted to use she instead of he. That's annoying to me as a reader, because a) it's reverse sexism and b) historically he has a far more neutral feel than she, which jumps out like a flashing red light.
(Good writing should move smoothly, without jolts or flashing red lights.)
To keep the gender thing fair, some writers alternate between he and she throughout a piece. Personally, I think that goes beyond annoying and enters the range of shoot me now.
I've seen magazines that alternate on an article level: this article uses he, and the next one uses she. Not a particularly elegant solution, but at least it doesn't have me wanting to hit something.
So the gender-neutral problem persists: English simply doesn't have a singular, gender-neutral pronoun.
Finnish does have a gender-neutral pronoun, and I have to say, it's really convenient when you see a baby but can't figure out the gender. You can totally compliment the kid without offending the parents. Too bad English doesn't have an equivalent of hän.
(Another side note: Finns often use se instead of hän . . . which means it, even when referring to people. Totally works in Finnish. Not so much in English. Can you imagine referring to your friend and saying you're going to lunch with it?)
Chicago and a lot of other style guides suggest avoiding the problem altogether. Either 1) reword the sentence so you don't need the pronoun, or 2) change the sentence so you can grammatically use the plural:
When employees arrive, they must sign in.
That works fine at times, but it's still not a solution. Sometimes a piece needs the singular, and making it plural or otherwise doing acrobatics to avoid their as singular sounds odd.
This is precisely why their is becoming increasingly accepted as the singular pronoun, at least in conversation and informal writing. I'm in the camp that accepts this usage already (obviously), although some people still foam at the mouth when they see their used this way. (Just as I foam at the mouth at infer used for imply and other losing usage battles.)
That said, if I'm writing for a professional journal or something similar, I avoid using their as a singular. You write to fit the register you want the piece to fit in. If something isn't accepted in that arena, don't use it, and no, their is not accepted as Standard English.
Yet.
I believe it's just a matter of time before their is considered correct and perfectly fine to use this way. People already do, often, sometimes by accident and other times absolutely on purpose (raising my hand here).
The new rule actually reaching style guides? That may take some time, but it'll happen.
Grammar Girl agrees with me and adds that "it takes a bold, confident, and possibly reckless person to use they with a singular antecedent today."
Sample Sunday is for authors to share a bit of their Kindle-published titles. I'll post a sample of Lost Without You sometime soon, but today I thought I'd put up a piece from my grammar book, There, Their, They're: A No-Tears Guide to Grammar from the Word Nerd, which is now on Kindle for all of 99 cents.
Below is the section that discusses splitting infinitives: what does it mean to split an infinitive, and is it wrong to do so?
(Check out the #SampleSunday hash tag on Twitter to read other samples from Kindle authors.)
Splitting Infinitives
At some point in history, grammarians and teachers decided that Latin, a dead language, should be our guide. Why it made any sense to use another language to prescribe English grammar, I’ll never know, but Latin is the basis for the argument that we shouldn’t split infinitives (and a bunch of other silly grammar “rules”).
Here’s the crux of the old argument: In most languages, the infinitive or base form of a verb is a single word.
Since I know Finnish best, I’ll use it as our example.
Finnish: olla
English: to be
You can’t take the Finnish olla and split it up. It’s one word. The same holds true for the French être and the Spanish ser. The infinitive is one word. Of course you can’t split it up and have it make any sense.
But English has two words for the infinitive: to be. So, heck, let’s throw something between them: to happily be
That’s what is called a split infinitive. Frankly, unless you’re writing a paper for cranky Mrs. Robinson from eighth grade who insists on her students abiding by antiquated rules, split infinitives to your heart’s content. Although you shouldn’t overuse any construction, splitting an infinitive isn’t wrong.
Consider how utterly flat the classic tagline from Star Trek would be if it held to this “rule”:
To go boldly where no man has gone before.
Sorry, Mrs. Robinson. That lacks punch. It’s lame. We really need to split that infinitive:
To boldly go where no man has gone before.
Whether you like Vulcans or avoid them like a bad rash, you have to agree that the original tagline is the superior one.
I'll be the first to admit that English is a conglomeration of funky ways to spell things. That's largely because so many languages have contributed to English. We have "rules" . . . and then a thousand exceptions to each one. It's almost a surprise that any of us ever learn to read.
Let's take a quick look at a language where spelling is a piece of cake: In Finnish, spelling is the ONE easy thing. The language has an insane number of cases, all of which I had to learn at one point in grammar class.
Bragging rights: I outscored my friend Marjo on one such test, and she was annoyed because I wasn't even a Finn . . . but I'd studied. Don't ask me to do it now. Totally couldn't.
But spelling? Piece of cake. It's nice that there's something not mind-numbingly difficult about Finnish.
See, everything is phonetic. If you learn what sound each letter makes, you can read anything in Finnish. (Caveat: a few letters make difficult sounds. Point still stands.)
Hence, my little sister, who was eight when we arrived in Finland, could read aloud in class flawlessly . . . without a clue as to what any of it meant.
English, however . . . yeah, well, there's a reason spelling bees exist in the States.
And it turns out that some people don't like English having odd rules. More, they don't get that language is a living thing and that you cannot force change onto it.
(That should totally be a Word Nerd post of its own. Taking mental notes . . . although I kind of talked about it in this post.)
As a result of our funky English non-rules, we have spelling bee protesters. Seriously.
This Yahoo! article describes how protesters came to a national spelling bee in D. C. (some even dressed in BLACK AND YELLOW. Bees, get it? Haha.) to protest that English should change its spelling.
Their posters sported the following:
Enuf is enuf. Enough is too much.
Cute.
They claim that "heifer" (as in the cow) should be written as "hefer."
When I saw that, my brain went back to my childhood days of watching The Electric Company (totally dating myself) where I learned that double consonants make the vowel short, while single consonants make the vowel long.
To show the concept, they had this great skit with SUPPER MAN, who needed a P taken off his name so he could be a true super hero, a SUPER MAN. They showed the same rule applying with dinner/diner and other word pairs, adding and subtracting consonants.
(Obviously, the rule has stuck with me more than three decades later, so the show did something right. Yay for educational television! Kids, go watch more TV!)
Based on that simple idea, if we're changing the cow's name and trying to use standard, easy-to-remember rules, shouldn't the spelling protesters have suggested HEFFER?
Because yo, protesters, how do you propose we get long vowels? What if we wanted hieferto be pronounced as HEE-fer? How would you spell that?
Then you get the Spelling Society of London, founded in 1908. I'm with them on promoting literacy and getting word out about the crazy rules, but a quick look at their site didn't clarify whether they're trying to change things. (If so, good luck, folks. 100 years hasn't done much for ya.)
Now, just for laughs (but also something that will just encourage spelling protesters, alas), something that shows just how crazy English can be.
Here is a proposed spelling of the word FISH (naturally, courtesy Dr. Oaks and his awesome teachingness):
GHOTI
How could that be, you ask?
Take these words:
ENOUGH
WOMEN
EMOTION
GH in ENOUGH creates the F sound.
The O in WOMEN is often pronounced like a short I. (Really, no one really says women with a short O. Say it aloud. No O, right? It's closer to a short I, although some dialects could argue an "oo" as in BOOK sound.)
And finally, we get SH from the TI in EMOTION.
Put them together, and those spelling protesters could argue that, based on the "rules,"GHOTI is a reasonable way of spelling FISH.
Spelling has always been my weakest area of language, but I'm not about to bend to black-and-yellow costumed protesters.
English is also a beautiful language with a rich history. And like I said before, it's alive. Hence, by extrapolation, it's, oh, not dead. Therefore, you can't prescribe this or that to suddenly change it.
Whine all you want, but speakers will still speak and write the language like they have for years. Changes will happen, but they take time, and you can't insist on what they'll be.
English will continue evolve on its own, just as it has for centuries.
I just hope that texting language doesn't win out in the end. 'Cause that would be gr8.
