Please?

A reader writes:

1.  Thank you very much for your blog.  I have learned so much from you.  Your commitment to the blog must require huge amounts of time – thank you, thank you, thank you.

My pleasure. Glad to be of service.

2.  My daughter has become involved with the Baptist church in Oklahoma City.  She has no computer and thus no e-mail.  I send her material that I develop on various subjects pertaining to the differences between Catholicism and Batptistism (?!).  Sometimes you have wonderful stuff and I would like to print it out and mail it to her.  OK with you?

Yeah, sure. No prob. That’s standard practice. Everybody assumes that folks will be printing off their stuff.

3.  Sometime if you have nothing else to write about and are so inclined, please explain why we never use please in our prayers – seems rude to me!

It does to me, too–when I stop to think about it–but there actually is a reason for this.

"Please" is what’s known as a particle of entreaty–that is, a short word that never changes its form and that is used to make requests (or commands) sound more polite.

If I’m not mistaken, "please" is ultimately derived from an earlier expression in English like "Be thou pleased" or somesuch.

But as a result, it’s an artifact of English. Not all languages have equivalents of please, or–if they do–they don’t use them as much.

Contemporary Aramaic, for example, does not have an equivalent of "please." Nor does Latin from what I can tell.

Hebrew did. It’s got the particle na, which shows up at the end of hosanna. That na on the end is a particle of entreaty to make the request for God to save us sound more polite.

But our English prayers don’t tend to be based on Hebrew prayers using na. They’re much more frequently based on prayers (in Hebrew, in Aramaic, in Greek, and especially in Latin) that don’t use particles of entreaty, and so that don’t get translated with "please" in them.

To people who speak languages without particles of entreaty–or which use them infrequently–it doesn’t sound rude to make a request without saying "please," but I know–it can drive us English speakers nuts, especially those who are well-mannered.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

8 thoughts on “Please?”

  2. Thanks for the explanation. I have often thought of that — and sometimes add the word please to my private prayers because it feels less like I’m telling God what to do. Now it makes sense.

  3. I think the root of the usage is “If it please you,” a phrase found in Shakespeare, etc. “If if be Thy will” would be, IMO, an equivalent phrase in prayer.

  5. Dear Fellow Reader:
    Hello! My name is JP Brown and I converted to Catholicism from the Southern Baptist faith in 2001.
    Feel free to read my conversion story here:
    From
    Southern Baptist to Catholic: JP Brown’s Conversion Story
    A small group of us Catholic young adults in the Oklahoma City Metro Area frequently get together to have a little Catholic study or “Theology on Tap”, as we call it, (catechesis, Scripture studies, open Q&As on random topics regarding the Catholic Faith, etc) on a near weekly basis. I know your daughter doesn’t have a computer/email, but she is always *more than welcome* to attend our events.
    Thus, feel free to email me at downtownjpbrown@gmail.com if you wanted to get more details on when/where our next event will be located at. (Generally we’ll either meet at a given parish, someone’s house or at a resturaunt). Or, if she ever wanted to give me a call, I’d more than happy to talk to her/answer questions to the best of my ability.
    As a former Southern Baptist myself, I’m sure I might be able to answer some questions that are probably running through her head. Hope that helps. Best of luck and God Bless!
    – JP Brown
    PS – Jimmy, since this post is pretty far down on your site now, if you wanted to email the reader back with this information, feel free! Thanks!

  7. If the anglophone insists on Latinizing “please”, then why not “placeat tibi” (Roman Missal) or “si vis” (Luke 5:12)?

  8. Advanced MP3 Catalog

    Download advanced mp3 catalog pro Advanced MP3 Catalog is designed for anyone …

Comments are closed.