Friday May 4, 2007
More on ‘till death do us part’
I’M NOT a Christian, but I hope I can still provide an adequate answer to the questions posed by reader Zexabyte and Fadzilah Amin regarding the archaic phrase “till death do us part” (April 25), which is to this day used in many Christian marriage cermonies.
Fadzilah was right to point out that the phrase, which looks and sounds incorrect now, was at one time grammatically correct. It’s an example of the subjunctive, which is not really a tense but a mood. That is, it deals with intent, among other things, whereas tense deals with time.
According to its entry in Wikipedia (http://en.wiki pedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood), the subjunctive mood “typically expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), emotion, possibility, judgement, necessity, and statements that are contrary to fact at present”.
The subjunctive is not as well known as the other two English moods: the indicative mood (which we use most of the time) and the imperative mood (used for giving commands).
Unlike in some other languages, notably Romance languages like French and Portuguese, the use of the subjunctive in English has declined over the years. However, it is still used in a wide variety of phrases, including “so be it”, “if I were you” and “God bless you”. These and several other examples can be found on the abovementioned Wikipedia page.
I hope this helps. – Jordan MacVay
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