We were discussing whether it's by the grace of God that one never finds one's accent 'ugly'. My theological argument rested on the premise that it would make one's life miserable and God would not like that. Whereas criticising the accent of others doesn't really make others' lives miserable in the same sense. I thought this was a good argument for the necessity of believing in the grace of God. Geary coments: "Dunno." and then rambles in an interesting way: "I wonder what accent God had when he talked to Adam and Eve? Or to Moses? Or to Mohammed? Is God an omniaccentual being? Or does he sound hopelessly Yiddish? Or Arabic with all those gutturals? -- yikes!" Well, if you judge by the Old Tesament, he spoke Classical Hebrew. -- Classical Hebrew Studies are becoming quite _a la mode_ in Yale, which is predominantly Jewish anyway -- whereas I'm more of a Loeb-lover. Geary continues: "I generally don't tell people this, but God has spoken to me on occasion, but to no avail. I couldn't understand a single word He said. It sounded a little bit like Hindi -- there were several Indian fellows at Christian Brothers College -- they talked like they only had two seconds to get everything said. Jesus! Who'd have guessed so many syllables could fit into one sentence?" That's surprising. Sanskrit, from which HINDI derives, is Indo-European, or as Loeb prefers, Indo-Aryan, or Indo-Germanic (hence the "Indo-" prefix). But yes, they are fast (speakers). One reason is that the avoid caesura and go straight to the elision of what it's called "isomorphic allophones". So, "The airs are arrogant" (being mainly a combination of 'a' sound and 'r's) becomes "th'arsa gant" in Hindi. Most of Hindi discourse is understood _in context_ and I grant that in your case you probably did not have the context as to why God would talk to you anyway. Were you doing something _wrong_? That would give us a clue. "Anyway, every time God tries to talk to me, I tell Him: "English, damnit, English!" He leaves in a huff. I ain't got time to go learn his language. If it's so damn important that I [need to] know, then He'll just have to learn mine. Mike Geary speaker of Shakespeare in Memphis. Yes, I agree. Mind, we're not the only two. The 'queer' (I'm not using this derogatorily but in the mere descriptive sense that he was somewhat _odd_) King James V of Scotland (who became James I of England -- was that an under-rate) thought it would be a good idea to translate God's speech into English. His version is called, to this day, KJV -- King James Version. I find the monologues by God in it too "Shakespeare" for my taste, with a sprinkle of Alexander Pope and John Milton. I prefer Wycliff's God. He speaks with the roughness one expect from a Middle Eastern. In Buenos Aires, God speaks in Latin. This is not the 'panacea', but it's something otherwise illiterate and pretty rough pampas monks are somewhat familiar with. Geary was complaining in "Sunday Polemic" about rules. What I would like to have is the decalogue (ten commandments) in the Original God. I have them in KJV -- and Latin, but I would like to see if they are written as rules, orders, or what not. King James has them as "Thou shalt not..." for negative prohibitions, and "Thou shalt..." for positive, as in "Thou shalt Loeb your neighbour". But I'm less sure about Hebrew. "Thou" is informal second person (and it presupposes a distintion with formal second person and second person plural -- so if it's personal it's something addressed to EACH addressee, not to the Jews as a lot. Then there's the 'shalt'. This is an auxiliary. It has no meaning in itself. Only when followed by a verb. But the term for this, in English grammar, is "future intentional" (as opposed to 'wilt', future indicative). I have a lot of respect for the future intentional, because God is like relying the responsibility of the following of the command(ment) on the addressee himself or herself. What is not clear to me and I ascribe it to the wickedness of God in this area is that he does not specify the results of one's NOT abiding with the commands. I suppose there is an 'implicated' _apodosis_ to read, "If not, thou wilt rot in Hell" -- It cannot be 'thou shalt rot in Hell' because there's no agreement, or more importantly because if it's a matter of will, God would be too benevolent. Geary knows more about eschatology than I. Cheers, J. L. Speranza, Esq. Town: Calle Arenales 2021, Piso 5, St. 8, La Recoleta C1124AAE, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tel. 54 11 4824 4253 Fax 54 221 425 9205 Country: St. Michael Hall, Calle 58, No. 611, La Plata B1900 BPY Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tel. 54 221 425 7817 Fax 54 221 425 9205 http://www.stmichaels.com.ar jls@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx jlsperanza@xxxxxxx http://www.netverk/~jls.htm ************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com