From: ceci@lysator.liu.se (Cecilia Henningsson)
Subject: Re: Bible translations, or Does God Speak Latin?
Keywords: Catholic, Latin, Bible
Organization: Lysator ACC at Linkoping University
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 21:21:59 GMT

>>cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>>
>>>Are you nuts?  Where the hell is the beauty in hearing someone babble
>>>gibberish at you and sitting there bored for an hour while he does it,
>>>with his back turned to you all the time?  

The beauty is, you get to rest and let your mind wander for a full
hour without someone (or your conscience) telling you that you should
better hurry up with the milking when your fingers are blue from the
cold and the cow is using her tail to slap your face with admirable
precision. Believe me, you don't want to be a peasant woman of 1632.
It is also a full hour when you know that the French soldiers winter
camping in the neighboring village can't get to you. And you are
grateful that your husband isn't sitting with you in the women's
bench, because he likes to pinch you when you fall asleep. All you
have to worry about, is to keep the children relatively silent. That's
not hard because they know that they will get a severe beating from
their father if they don't shut up.

>>>How the hell am I supposed 
>>>to gain enlightenment if I can't understand what the hell is being
>>>said?

Who said you were? You shouldn't even want to, pesky peasant! This was
a time when "meak" was a compliment for common people.

>In article <C0B6oF.JC9.1@cs.cmu.edu> drake+@cs.cmu.edu (Drake) writes:
[about the beauty of some languages]

>I, too, think that Latin is quite melodious and rolling, but I still
>want to understand what's going on when I'm hearing about something that
>pertains to my daily life, or purports to.  Not doing dso makes it seem
>like spiritual spoonfeeding; I want to be a participant and contributor,
>damn it!  

But you are a twentieth century woman. You have been brought up to
think that what you think matters, and that the more knowledge you
gain, the better. It hasn't always been like that. And we haven't seen
the end of that evolution either. The children we bring up think that
if it's no fun, then why do it? Naturally, we will have to change a
lot of our current society to get janitors in future.

>I also like Gregorian chants as well.  I think that music theory is one
>of the few mental arts that actually benefitted from the ages of
>"faith."

>Believe me, I am getting a doctorate in linguistics; I adore language of
>any stripe.  I think I'm the only person I know who thinks that German
>and Russian are beautiful languages; most people go for the Romance
>languages -- which I also love.  

To me, what I think of a language, has a lot to do with what is said
in it. Some phrases, spoken with sincere emotion, are beautiful in any
language. To me, that is. My first language was German, my second
native language is Swedish, I can communicate fairly well in English
(in case you hadn't noticed :) and I have studied some other
languages, Roman aswell as Slavic. To state my bias: the most
beautiful things I have ever heard (though not understood) were in
Polish spoken by a native from Stettin (Szczecin). His looks didn't
subtract from the romantic impression. ;)

--Ceci
--
=====ceci@lysator.liu.se===========================================
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