I was watching “Would I lie to you” and I noticed something odd. There are two options:
“It is True” or “It is a Lie”
“It is a True” does not work, neither does “It is lie” – but we could say “It is untrue”.
Perhaps we could say “It is a lie” and “It is the truth”.
You can “lie” but you can’t “true” and something can “be true” but can’t “be lie”.
Lie is a verb and true is an adjective.
No wonder English is a difficult language to get right.
There was another saying I heard “Nobody should live to see their children die”. Once you have researched your ancestry you realise how much of a modern statement this is. Really this has just been a norm for less than 100 years. And in many countries in the world it is common for some children to die before parents.
We sometimes forget just how amazing a life we live.
- Around 100 years ago there were about 80 infant deaths for every 1000 live births in the UK
- When the NHS was created in the late 1940s this had dropped to about 40
- Today it is about 4.
Even in this pandemic I think it is worth remembering how good our lives have become. Our horrible year is a lot better than the normal year 100 years ago.