Made in America

This is a fascinating book I'm reading now: Made in America by Bill Bryson. I find it so compelling, I had to share some of it with you. You'll probably be bored with it, but if you're odd like me, enjoy.

First, this interesting lexical fact: Have you ever noticed the strange way we conjugate the verb "to be" in English? Specifically, the singular conjugation (past and present tense) of the verb is "is" and "was." That means, a pronoun that is singular will use the form "is" or "was" for this verb. "He is." "She was." "It is." The plural conjugation is "are" and "were." A subject that is plural uses these forms. "Y'all are." "They were." "She and I are." So you would expect that the conjugation of "to be" for the subject "you" (singular) would be "is/was." "You is." "You was." As you know, we use the plural conjugation for the "you" form, even when the subject is singular. "You are." "You were." Why do we do that?

Turns out, we once had another word for "you" which was singular, while "you" was itself strictly the plural form of the pronoun. The singular form was "ye." So the proper way to say "You are a goddess," was "Ye is a goddess." To pay the same compliment to a group of women, you'd say "You are goddesses." At some point, the word "ye" dropped out of usage and "you" became both singular and plural, but the habit of tying the plural form of the verb "to be" to the pronoun "you" stayed with us.

See what I mean? Is it quirky that I'm so turned on by information like this that I feel compelled to tell you about it? I know, I know, but maybe the rest of this will be of interest.

How America was born.

Between December 1606 and February 1625, Virginia received 7289 immigrants and buried 6040 of them. Of the 3500 immigrants who arrived during 1619-21, 3000 were dead at the end of that time period. To become a colonist in the New World was effectively to commit suicide.

For those who survived, starvation and terror was the lifestyle faced here on American soil. When the Indians discovered that the European colonists tended to repay the Indians' kindness with enslavement and hostile attacks on peaceful Indian villages, they grew rather surly. Being tomahawked in one's bed was a real fear the early Americans lived with. On Good Friday, 1622, an Indian chief sent delegates to some newly planted Virginia settlements, presented as a goodwill visit. Some of the Indians even sat down to breakfast with the colonists. Upon a given signal, the Indians seized whatever implements happened to come to hand and murdered every man, woman and child they could catch--350 in all, or about a third of Virginia's total population.

Twenty-two years later, in 1644, the same chief did the same thing, killing about the same number of people. By this time, the 350 deaths represented more a brutal annoyance than a bloody catastrophe, putting a mere dent in the colonists' population. What had changed in that twenty year span of time to assure our survival on this continent?

Tobacco.

It was a Spanish word, taken from the Arabic tabaq, signifying any euphoria-inducing herb. After a visit in 1565 to a French outpost in Florida, John Hawkins brought some tobacco back to England with him, where it caught on in a big way. Wonderful powers were ascribed to it. Smoking was believed to be both a potent aphrodisiac and a marvellously versatile medicine. Soon it was all the rage and people couldn't get enough. The barely surviving Virginia colonists began planting tobacco in the second decade of the seventeenth century, discovering to their joy that it grew abundantly. Suddenly, fortunes were being made in Virginia. That, combined with the persecution of the Puritans in England which drove them to settle in New England, secured the success and future of our nation.

Another lexical fact: the distinctive New England twang we hear in the accents of those from the northeast is said to be a descendant of the "Norfolk whine" of England, while the Southern drawl is attributed to the Sussex accent at its root.

And did you know there was a British war called the War of Jenkin's Ear which started when Spain cut off the ear of an English smuggler named Edward Jenkins?

Oh there's lots more cool stuff about the Revolutionary War, but I'll save it for another blog.