Weighing up and qualifying

The twenty-fifth entry is seja como for, and the English phrase that answers it is a museum piece still in daily use. « Be that as it may » opens with a verb form the language has otherwise lost: not « is », not « was », but the bare « be », which is the old present subjunctive. Modern English has no working subjunctive left. What survives is a short list of fossils that speakers repeat whole and never build from — « come what may », « far be it from me », « suffice it to say », « so be it », « God save the King » — and every one of them is learnt as a lump, because anyone who tried to make new sentences on the pattern would produce something nobody says. That is the contrast worth holding on to. Seja como for is not a fossil at all: seja is a live present subjunctive and for a live future subjunctive, and a Portuguese speaker builds both fresh, from any verb, every day. One language is using its grammar here; the other is quoting a sentence it can no longer take apart.