Two nations divisible

July 2, 2025 @ 6:12 am · Filed by under Language and politics, Language and the law

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[This is a guest post by Barbara Phillips Long]

There is an interesting sidelight in commentary about an article in the New York Review of Books, which posits that the U.S. is two nations under one government, where the two entities exchange political power. The link to the NYRB (paywalled) article is here.

The Language Log topic comes from the commentary at the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog, which wonders aloud about how the Greek word/concept "polis" gets translated in various languages:

The concept of two nations doesn’t really track with the concept of political power remaining in “the people’s hands,” since the basically mystical concept of “the” people is usually thought, as a matter of political legitimation at least, to be more or less synonymous with the idea of “the” — as in one — nation.

This I think is somewhat obscured by the usages of the English language in regard to the underlying concept. Here’s the official government translation of the Constitution’s preamble into Spanish:

Nosotros, el pueblo de los Estados Unidos, con el fin de formar una Unión más perfecta, establecer la justicia, garantizar la tranquilidad nacional, atender a la defensa común, fomentar el bienestar general y asegurar los beneficios de la libertad para nosotros mismos y para nuestraposteridad, por la presente promulgamos y establecemos esta Constitución para los Estados Unidos de América.

“El pueblo” — literally “the town” — conjures up a more concrete and less metaphysically vague concept than “We the People.” Someone more learned in such matters can no doubt explain how the Greek word “polis” ended up being translated so much more literally in some languages than others, but I think this historical accident, if that’s what it is, could have considerable psychological/practical significance.

(source)

I thought Paul Campos made a good point about how "We, the people" does not convey the same rhetorical flourish in every language. Language Log readers are likely all aware of the pitfalls — and illuminations — of translation, but I confess I am curious about how many and different ways the Preamble and the concept of "polis" are expressed.

 

Selected readings

July 2, 2025 @ 6:12 am · Filed by under Language and politics, Language and the law


15 Comments »

  1. Keith said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 7:20 am

    I see no problem with using the word "el pueblo" for "the people"; it literally means "people" and etymologically comes from the Latin "populus", like En "people", Fr "peuple"…

    By extension it can also mean "village", "town" or "city" (although there is a more administrative term "ciudad"), but to use it in the sense of "people" seems perfectly cromulent. The alternatives might be either less PC ("los hombres") or less familiar ("la gente").

  2. Cervantes said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 9:50 am

    Well of course the unit of political organization in Greek antiquity was the city, but as a political entity the polis meant free (non-enslaved) men, as it did to the writers of the U.S. constitution. So they weren't talking about the same concept most of us refer to nowadays, although notice I said "most."

    Another alternative in Spanish could be "las personas," but it's rather stilted (just as "persons" is in English). La gente is common and has the collective meaning we're looking for, but pueblo does have more of a political connotation so I think that's the right translation.

  3. Rodger C said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 9:51 am

    Reminds me of when I was in grad school and was told that many Latin American folklorists denied the possibility of urban folklore, because "folklore" means the lore "del pueblo."

  4. Coby said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 10:34 am

    I don't think any Spanish-speaker would take the word pueblo in Nosotros el pueblo… — any more than in the slogan el pueblo unido jamás será vencido — as meaning 'village', let alone as an equivalent of polis. In the Spanish Wikipedia page on polispueblo appears only as a translation of demos.

    But in Spanish el pueblole peuple in French) the additional meaning of 'the common people' or 'the lower classes'.

  5. Chas Belov said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 2:13 pm

    Was thinking "la raza" but that's ethnically specific.

    And looking up "gente" in Wiktionary exposed me to Chavacano, a Spanish Philippine creole, which led to a rabbit hole of obscure (to me) languages that I tried to track down music in, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

  6. J.W. Brewer said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 3:02 pm

    Here's the preamble to the Argentine one (from 1853): "Nos los representantes del pueblo de la Nación Argentina, reunidos en Congreso General Constituyente por voluntad y elección de las provincias que la componen, en cumplimiento de pactos preexistentes, con el objeto de constituir la unión nacional, afianzar la justicia, consolidar la paz interior, proveer a la defensa común, promover el bienestar general, y asegurar los beneficios de la libertad, para nosotros, para nuestra posteridad, y para todos los hombres del mundo que quieran habitar en el suelo argentino: invocando la protección de Dios, fuente de toda razón y justicia: ordenamos, decretamos y establecemos esta Constitución, para la Nación Argentina."

    This sort of seems like the implied mystic numinosity attaches to la Nación, rather than el pueblo thereof, but I don't know Spanish and may be misinterpreting.

  7. J.W. Brewer said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 3:07 pm

    To the meaning of πόλις, I think if you look at a bunch of different English translations of e.g. Aristotle's _Politics_ (Πολιτικά), the word will be rendered by some translators literally as "city" and by others as "society" or "community" or whatnot in a given context, and I expect some translators English it differently as used in different passages in order to create a more idiomatic output.

  8. Victor Mair said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 3:32 pm

    Cognate with the "pore" of Singapore and many Indic derived toponyms in other languages.

    polis

    From Proto-Hellenic *ptólis, from Proto-Indo-European *tpólHis, from *tpelH- (“fortification, city”). The early form πτόλις (ptólis) shows metathesis tp > pt because Ancient Greek stop clusters always end in a coronal. Cognate with Sanskrit पुर (pura, “fortress, city, dwelling”) and Lithuanian pilis (“stronghold”). Irregular accent on genitive πόλεως (póleōs) is due to a quantitative metathesis from older πόληος (pólēos); genitive plural imitates genitive singular.

    (Wiktionary)

    "ancient Greek city-state," 1894, from Greek polis, ptolis "citadel, fort, city, one's city; the state, community, citizens," from PIE *tpolh- "citadel; enclosed space, often on high ground; hilltop" (source also of Sanskrit pur, puram, genitive purah "city, citadel," Lithuanian pilis "fortress").

    (eymonline)

    American Heritage Dictionary of IE roots:

    pelə-3

    Citadel, fortified high place.
    Oldest form perhaps *pelh3- (but exact laryngeal uncertain). Zero-grade form *pl̥h3-.
    1. police, policy1, polis, politic, polity; acropolis, cosmopolis, cosmopolite, megalopolis, metropolis, necropolis, policlinic, propolis from Greek polis, city (phonological development unclear).
    2. gopuram from Sanskrit pūr, pur-, fortress.

    [In Pokorny 1. pel- 798.]

    American Heritage Dictionary

    pueblo

    Word History: The word pueblo ultimately comes from the Latin word meaning "people," populus, also the source of other English words like population and even people itself, by way of Old French pueple. As the spoken Latin of Spain developed into the Spanish language, Latin populus became Spanish pueblo, meaning "town, village," as well as "nation, people." The 16th-century Spanish explorers who visited the area naturally used this word to refer to the distinctive adobe and stone villages of the Pueblo peoples, in which some buildings rose as high as five stories. Pueblo first appears in English as a word for the distinctive villages of the Pueblo peoples, and it later came to be used to refer to the peoples living in the villages.

  9. TR said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 7:03 pm

    The quoted blog seems to be implying that "people" and "pueblo" in the Preamble are somehow translations of πόλις, which is an odd thing to say. In any case the more directly relevant Greek word, and the one used in similar context by the Greeks, is not πόλις but δῆμος.

  10. cameron said,

    July 2, 2025 @ 9:13 pm

    the preamble to the Constitution is not translated from an original Greek text. there's no reason to assume that the "people" in "we the people" corresponds to Greek polis. it could just as well correspond to Greek demos.

    either way "pueblo" is a perfect Spanish translation of the English "people".

  11. J.W. Brewer said,

    July 3, 2025 @ 9:34 am

    The (current) constitution of the Republic of Greece doesn't appear to use _demos_ in the relevant sense. There's no preamble (other than an invocation of the Holy and Consubstantial and Indivisible Trinity), but the key section for this purpose is maybe 1.3, which reads Όλες οι εξουσίες πηγάζουν από το Λαό, υπάρχουν υπέρ αυτού και του Έθνους και ασκούνται όπως ορίζει το Σύνταγμα, which is translated into English as "All powers derive from the People and exist for the People and the Nation; they shall be exercised as specified by the Constitution." So _laos_ (to give the lemma form) is "People" and _ethnos_ is "Nation." After passing through Latin and Norman French, English got _laos_ as "laity."

  12. Chris Button said,

    July 3, 2025 @ 12:50 pm

    And "pueblo" is after all coming from Latin "populus". "Senatus populusque romanus" (SPQR) is usually translated as "the senate and the people of Rome", but it's clearly referring to a nation, so might as well be "the senate and the nation of Rome".

  13. Brett said,

    July 5, 2025 @ 12:50 pm

    @Cervantes: The political unit in ancient Greece was not always the city—and the larger state units were actually very, very important. There was a long-running friction between individual cities (including their hinterlands) and larger leagues. The Athenian Empire famously started as the Delian League, but that was not a equitable arrangement; the empire was governed for the benefit of the citizens of Attica, not for the general welfare. (And was effectively Attica the same as Athens? Even in the golden age of Pericles, people disagreed about this question. The inhabitants of Piraeus might or might not, in a given year, be considered part of the "true" polis.) More significant leagues, which functioned as genuine commonwealths, came a bit later. In 371, Epaminondas and Pelopidas insisted that if Spartan representatives at a peace conference were allowed to sign as representatives of all of Laconia, they should be allowed to sign on behalf of all of Boeotia. The Spartans refused, and the Boeotians launched the series of campaigns that finally brought the Spartans' terroristic reign over southern Greece to an end. As part of their strategy, the Boeotians organized the northern and western Peloponnesian groups into larger leagues, rather than individual poleis that could be easy prey to the Spartans. Besides the Arcadians and Achaeans, the most important of these groups was the Messenian League, for which it was necessary to build whole new cities (most importantly, the meaningfully named Megalopolis), since the Messenian helots had been enslaved by the Spartans for more than two centuries. (So it was that Plutarch said that Herakles was the greatest and best known mythological Greek hero, but Epaminondas was the true "first man of Greece"—greater than any of the mythic figures, greater than Alexander—because he had freed the Messenians from slavery.)

  14. Philip Taylor said,

    July 5, 2025 @ 2:39 pm

    "The link to the NYRB article (pay-walled) is here" — maybe I was just lucky, but despite not being a subscriber I was able to retrieve the following :

    A well-planned occupation seizes the heights of the defeated civilization, so that the people will see their leaders ousted or humiliated and made docile. It will likewise discredit and weaken those features of the culture in which its people placed confidence and pride. If this model were applied to our situation, we might expect to see the Supreme Court diminished, the Congress disempowered, and the Constitution desacralized by indifference or contempt. The press would come under attack. Our incomparable universities and research institutions would lose autonomy and resources. The mighty dollar would be weakened. Bonds with allies would be breached, and the occupied country would be held in contempt for the damage its default had done to the world order, and to democracy, having put aside its responsibility for demonstrating the viability of popular government.

    Examples of the seizing of cultural heights abound. In 70 AD the Romans utterly razed the Temple at Jerusalem and Jerusalem itself in order to deal with the Jewish population’s resistance to their oppression. In 1814 the British, still wanting to break the back of the Revolution, burned the American Capitol Building, destroying the Library of Congress. Someone among the insurrectionists of 2021 might have read a book on imperialism and realized how easily the same results could be achieved if the occupiers were not an alien force, but merely partisans hostile to what the idea of democracy had made of the country over the decades and centuries of its flourishing.

    Historically, in America, two contending factions have had enough in common with each other to maintain a basic coherency in government. Then in the late twentieth century their differences became inflamed. The competition became both brutal and unserious. On the right, real interest in the general welfare became secondary to a crusade bent on unconditional and permanent victory. An entanglement with something resembling religion gave it claims to a special righteousness that owed nothing to fact or reason or to the conventions of civilized politics.

    Homegrown insurrectionists would have special knowledge of a culture’s vulnerabilities and sensitivities. They would know how to induce corrosive shame, for example. They might have resentments specific to the culture’s measures of status and accomplishment, which would add piquancy to the neutering of centers of influence. None of this is normal, though it has consolidated itself under cover of the customary transfer of power. It claims a mandate to transform the country fundamentally, to return it to its competitors, if there should be another election, irreversibly changed and damaged.

    I am proposing, of course, that America actually is, at present, an occupied country. I will call the occupiers Red and the occupied Blue, since these colors are in general use for distinctions of this kind and seemingly cause no offense. To the extent that this statement is complicated by the fact that those in power were elected, their conduct in office seems not to be what many of their voters were led to expect or would have chosen. So the polls tell us. Elections do indeed have consequences, and should have them. The sovereignty of the people must be honored even as they begin to repent of their choices. This is among the many crucial norms that depend altogether on respect. It cannot mean only that the electorate must be deferred to, even when it is misinformed or aroused to unhealthy excitements.

  15. David Marjanović said,

    July 11, 2025 @ 10:01 am

    Cognate with Sanskrit पुर (pura, “fortress, city, dwelling”) and Lithuanian pilis (“stronghold”).

    Semantically, that works of course, but I can't see how to get Sanskrit u, Lithuanian i and Greek o from a common ancestor.

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