Happy María

You know the postmodern idea that there's no truth and, even if there was, no way to access it? Well there's a subtlety and cunning to this philosophy that can be quite seductive. The best counter-argument I've heard comes from another place - good old common sense. And it goes like this - that's not how communication works.

We don't speak or write to another person - or, in more formal settings, an audience - expecting that they will take whatever they fancy from our words. We intend to convey something and we intend for it to be, more or less, understood by the other party. Certainly the success of this communication is made more difficult by distances of culture or time, but it's the same process.

This has come to mind again during my Spanish study. Sometimes there's no right or wrong grammatical form: the speaker just needs to decide what flavour they'd like to convey. So you choose "María está feliz" if you'd prefer to emphasise her current joy,  or "María es feliz" if you'd prefer to highlight her fundamentally happy nature (something that Google Translate doesn't understand). This is a fairly clear example, but there are times when the choice between the verbs "estar" and "ser" is a delicate matter (or so I imagine).

This sort of thing happens in every language, including the biblical ones, and with a bit of knowledge, we can work out what the authors wanted us to take away. Whether they were speaking true or recounting myth is a discussion for another day, but at least we can feel confident that we can understand each other.