OT: Way OT: Opinions wanted: person of vocatives

>For whose benefit is the recitation of prayers? If prayers are for
>the gods, they should be done in a manner, and therefore a language,
>that is pleasing to the gods.
Hmm, well, I guess I tend to anthropomorphize mine a bit, and mood would
play into it. A pure worship ritual might be okay, though I believe I'd be
saddened if those mouthing the words had no real feeling for what they were
saying.

But as you say, in your case, you try to ensure that everyone involved does
understand, and this can work with small manageable groups. Even amongst
those there may be differences in envisionment. For large masses of people?
But then, maybe that is part of the problem in some cases - worshipful
groups grown far too large for there to be a real feeling of unity/personal
participation?

>More precisely, when you are speaking to your god, are you presuming
>on a former relationship? Do you want to make to your god a show
>of continuity: "See, we are the people that have worshipped you all
>along. We're keeping the old covenant." If prayers are part of an
>agreement with your god, do you want to change them in mid-stream?
>Are you sure you're not changing your relationship thererby?
I'm sure that my relationship has changed since:
1. I was not reared as a Celtic Pagan.
2. I do not live in the pre-Christian Celtic world.

>Of course I think the doctrine, the Bible, needs to be available
>to every worshipper; and I agree that prayers not understood can
>easily turn into empty mouthings. But I thought it curious to see
>all this argument about how the prayers were all about the worshipper's
>needs, not the gods.
Far too deep into theology for this list, but I see people as being part of
the gods' needs.

>To try and ObConLang this, what do people think about creating
>neologisms in dead languages? If we need to mention cars or computers
>or airplanes, how would you suggest constructing vocabulary that
>is sensible in Attic to describe these?
Didn't Icelandic for a long time try to ensure that neologism were created
from existing vocabulary?

The Vatican does (did?) this with Latin. This can be tricky, and to my mind,
depends in part on the affixes and agglutination of words which are already
available in the language. I know I had difficulty with "AIDS" in ancient
Egyptian (long story, also not appropriate to this list), and ended up
describing what it is/does, then referencing it via "this disease".

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