Re: OT: Opinions wanted: person of vocatives

On Wednesday 02 July 2003 03:06 pm, Costentin Cornomorus wrote:
> --- 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.
>
> ..
>
>
For what it's worth ... I was raised Catholic and can remember having to
say the Our Father out loud in (US, public) grade school.

"Our Father which art in heaven" MAY have been the Protestant version.
(I mostly remember the difference at the end where all the Catholics
dropped out and the Protesteants went on with "for thine... etc.) The
version our parents and the nuns at Catechism class taught us was
definitely "Our Father who art in heaven...."

I turned 49 today, so I can remember all of the phases of the transition
away from the Latin mass, which was mostly complete well before 1970.
--
Elyse Grasso

The World of Cherani Station
www.data-raptors.com/cherani/index.html
Cherani Tradespeech
www.data-raptors.com/cherani/tradespeech.html

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