20 February—In observance of No Politics Day, here’s an apolitical Latin lesson to demonstrate how much easier English is to write, speak, and understand.

The Latin word for god is deus. It’s an irregular masculine noun of the second declension. So we start to decline (because that’s what you do with declensions) with deus, the nominative singular. But that’s also the more common vocative singular. (Some cases of irregular nouns have one or two variants that are less frequently used.) Anyway, the dative and ablative singular of deus is deo. And of course the accusative singular is deum. Of course. What else could it be?

Moving on to plurals, then, the more popular genitive plural of deus is deorum. The most common dative plural is deis. The only accusative plural is deos. And the most common ablative plural is deis. Of course it’s confusing. And who really cares about datives and accusatives, let alone ablatives and vocatives?

Datives and accusatives are simply objects in English, dative indirect, accusative direct. Ablatives usually imply prepositions and are a pain in the ass. Nominatives and genitives, on the other hand, are worth knowing, even in English. Like subjects and objects. That’s yet another reason we should be grateful to the gods of linguistic evolution that English is . . .

Wait a minute. Amid all that declining, some cases of deus have gone missing. Let’s see. Genitive singular, most common nominative plural, and most common vocative plural should complete the declensional picture. Luckily, as it happens, all those cases of deus are the same word. What a cool language Latin is. That’s why it’s God’s favorite. But we’re still better off with good old English, in which declensions are much much much simpler.

Back to the versatile missing case of deus, then, it turns out to be dei. So in English dei translates to god’s (or of god), gods, and [sic], gods. The last one is the vocative plural. (The vocative case identifies the direct addressee of an utterance and in English is set off by commas. At least it should be. And Shakespeare punned on the vocative, by the way, calling it the focative in “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” Guess why.)

Dei is supposed to be pronounced day-ee but it’s more commonly mispronounced day. Except when it’s used as an initialism for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In that case it’s dee ee eye.

Oh damn. That’s politics, isn’t it? But as long as we’re no longer observing No Politics Day, what the hell. Donald Trump, who has made a big deal of denouncing and dumping DEI (with some justification, mind you), actually has his very own DEI. It’s Deceit, Evil, and Iniquity. And when you get right down to it, that’s precisely what his administration is all about . . .