Re: CHAT: Lord's Prayer

On Fri, 12 Nov 1999, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> Good point:  why *would* you want it to be just "everyday" English?
Generally, one wouldn't.

> Sure, it needs to reflect the language of the moderner, but that doesn't
> mean you need to dip into the street talk and colloquialisms that we all
> use -- afterall, there *are* legitimate upper level registers which no one
> would find offensive.
And that was the practice of the old Liturgists, too.  They would use
language intelligible and not archaic, but still "upper level register",
as you say.

The problem is that the Liturgical language can then become ossified.
Language changes slowly.  A similar situation is developing in Russia.
There is controversy over whether or not the Orthodox Church there should
drop Old Slavonic for public Liturgy or even permit the use of modern
Russian at all.  Some parishes are modern Russian, some are Old
Slavonic.  There was a Raskolniki parish in Ohio(?) that only switched to
English from Old Slavonic a mere decade or so ago.