Re: OT: Opinions wanted: person of vocatives

--- Tristan <kesuari@...> wrote:

> > > Which idiot would be the responsible party
> > > here? :)
> >
> > Whoever decided it would be a Good Thing to
> > have a 'new' English version!
>
> Why is it a bad thing?
Some traditions simply shouldn't be messed with.

The English speaking world (i.e., the christian
English speaking world) have been saying "Our
Father which art in heaven" for a thousand years
or more. And in all that time, it's been more or
less unchanged - certainly unchanged since ME
times.

_Inside the Vatican_ this last month had a good
article on using Latin, which is not an unrelated
issue. The long and short of it is that Muslims,
Hindus and Jews of _every_ mother tongue on Earth
and throughout their whole history share a
'communion through time' with their spiritual
ancestors. While forms of worship may differ, a
Muslim from now and a Muslim from 1289 could at
least get together and recite prayers in the same
common language. Jews can do the same. Hindus can
do the same. Western Christians (the Catholic
variety) lost that ability in 1970 or so (others
lost it much earlier). We are _separated_ from
all the generations who lived their lives hearing
the mass and saying their prayers in Latin. Same
with the standard English version of the
paternoster - we have a connexion with all the
generations of our English speaking spiritual
ancestors who said those very words.

> 'Our father in heaven' is transparent.
And I will agree is better than the 'new' English
version. This being a direct translation of the
Greek (which has its own problems in the Western
tradition, since the Western language is Latin,
and the Western text is Vulgate).

> I doubt anyone's going to have trouble with
> that.
Which is totally beside the point. People of all
education levels get along wonderfully with the
elevated speech found in KJV (which is on par
with the standard English paternoster).

> But when I was in primary
> school, do you know how many people were
> praying 'Our father who aren't
> in heaven'?
None? We actually had teachers that taught us
what the words were and what we were saying.

> 'Our father who art in heaven'
> simply didn't make sense;
Well, neither do a lot of things unless someone
_tells_ us!

Would you prefer Yeats or Poe or Tolkien be
dumbed down to a first grade reading level, just
so it "makes sense" to the most people? Sad.

Padraic.


=====
beuyont alch geont la ciay la cina
mangeiont alch geont y faues la lima;
     pe' ne m' molestyont
     que faciont
doazque y facyont in rima.

.

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