Shut Your Glorious Mouth

(Our choir is conducted by a very intelligent and capable person who responds well to questions. One day…)

Conductor: “[My Name], you looked concerned during rehearsal. Did you have a question?”

Me: “Oh, don’t mind me. It is nothing.”

Conductor: “Is it about the music?”

Me: “Yeah, actually. The score translates the Latin as ‘I will proclaim your glory.’ But the verb is third person singular in the future tense and refers to the word for mouth that is its antecedent. So there’s no way it means ‘I will proclaim your glory.’ It has to say ‘the mouth will proclaim your glory,’ referring back to ‘open my mouth, lord.’”

(After a flabbergasted moment in which the conductor seems to not know how to respond to my grammar obsession, another student pipes up.)

Student: “Don’t feel bad. She took three years of Latin.”