All of those -eth verb endings sound as strange to my ear as Castilian Spanish must sound to someone from Mexico City. As lovely as the language is, it is not my language. I do not think in it, dream in it, or speak it with my neighbors. If it is going to be a living language for me, then some translation must occur. In this little book, I want to focus on a small cluster of words that seem to be hard for many people to pronounce, especially in twenty-first century North America.
Sin heads the list, followed by damnation, repentance, penance and salvation.
The group also includes words that survive only in scripture, such as iniquity and transgression. When these words are pronounced out loud, many of them sound like language from an earlier age, when human relationship with God was laced with blame and threat. As old as the words are, they are still redolent with guilt. We may not know exactly what they mean, but we know that they judge us. The most obvious solution to the discomfort they provoke is to stop saying them altogether, which is what many of us have done.