Re: CHAT: Ave Maria

On Thu, 29 Jun 2000, Vasiliy Chernov wrote:

>On Wed, 28 Jun 2000 14:09:33 CDT, Danny Wier <dawier@...> wrote:
>
>>I assume Deigenetrix = Theotokos?
>
>I'll try to find out about the Greek word. In Church Slavonic,
>_Bogoroditsa_. The standard translation is Godmother, but the
>latter has a few more litteral back-translations.
God mother has connotations in English that "Mother of God"
doesn't: i.e., baptismal sponsor. Might make for a better
translation of Bogoroditsa / Theotokos.

>>What's the Slavonic prayer by the way?
>
>Bogoróditse, Dévo, rádujsia,
Thanks for this, Vasiliy. Now I know what language my
Orthodox prayer book is in. Apart from English. I should
be able to piece together the letters now.

>blagodátnaja Maríje, Gospód' s Tobóju,
>blagoslovénna Ty v zhenákh, i blagoslovén Plód chréva Tvojegò,
>jáko Spása rodilà jesì dúsh náshikh.
>
>More or less literally:
>
>'Godmother, Virgin, rejoice,
>[Full-of-(Divine)-Goodgiving] Mary, the Lord (is) with Thee,
>Blessed (art) Thou among women, and blessed (is) the Fruit of Thy womb,
>As to the Saviour (Thou) gavest birth // of our souls.'
>
>I hope my transcription isn't too messy... The intended encoding is
>ISO 8859-1, capitalization renders the abbreviated spellings.
>
>I could not find a good translation for _blagodatnaja_. Literally,
>it means 'full of _blagodat'_, and _blagodat'_ is literally
>'(Divine) Good-giving', the Good emanated by God. I don't think
>'Grace' would be the proper translation, linguistically (but
>I can't speak for theological uses).
Actually I think it's just the right translation.

>I think _blagodatnaja_ could be something like _eudotike_ in Greek,
>and _blagoslovennaja_ (which I translated as 'blessed') must be
>something like _eulogoumene_. The variety of Church Slavonic used
>in Russia since 17th century is in fact a bit conlangish: it was
>artificially designed to convey the Greek original very literally.
>
Padraic.

>
>Basilius
>