Category: Languages

A reader writes:

Is there a difference between using Blessed (Bless-Ed), or Blessed (Bles-t) outside of a grammatical preference or usage?

If I understand you correctly, the answer is that the adjective "blessed" originally had a single meaning  but that it has come to be pronounced differently in different situations. It also has related noun and verb forms. There isn’t much of a difference in meaning much of the time (besides the obvious shifts caused by using the word as a verb or a noun), but there are rules on how it is pronounced.

We say /bless-ed/ when:

1. We use it as a title (not an adjective), as in "Blessed John of Wherever."
2. We are using it as an adjective in front of a noun, as in "What a
   blessed fool you are!"
3. It comes immediately
   before the verb, as in "Blessed be the beasts and the children" or "Blessed are the peacemakers."

On the other hand, we say /blest/ when:

1. We use it as a past tense
   verb ("The pope blessed the people"), and
2. We use it
   as an adjective following the verb ("He felt very blessed").

At least that’s how it sounds to my English-speaking American Catholic ear.

Your mileage may vary.

And it may vary in particular if you are a member of a different religious community. The above are the way Catholics do it, I’ve heard converts who haven’t absorbed these usages yet do it differently.

A reader writes:

how is it determined in texts when to capitalize letters and when not to, particularly in languages that have no distinction between capital and lower-case, and also when the writer does not use a captial (for example, I have seen Aquinas write the latin equivalent to "Catholic" with a little "c")?

There’s not a universal rule on this, but I can tell you what the general practice is.

First, though, lemme clarify for folks who may not be familiar with the issue: English and other languages that use the Latin alphabet (and variants on it) have both UPPER CASE and lower case letters. This ain’t the way it was originally, though.

The first alphabets did not have a distinction between upper case ("majuscule") and lower case ("minuscule") letters. They were written entirely in upper case letters. This applied to (among other languages) Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

This means that the Bible–all of it–was originally written in capital letters. The lower case letters you see in a modern Greek Bible came later and were subbed in by scribes and printers. The original manuscripts were all majuscules.

Over time (around the A.D. 600s), Greek developed a lower case alphabet. So did Latin. Other languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic) did not and still use only one kind of letter, traditionally referred to as "upper case" or "capital" letters, though this term is anachronistic as there is no alternative to this kind of letter in these languages.

Folks using Greek and Latin-derived alphabets got in the habit of mixing upper and lower case letters, typically using upper case letters (since they’re bigger) for the more important words. The habit of capitalizing certain words fell out from this.

Now. . . . If you’re translating a text that was originally written in all capital letters then there is only one thing to do when rendering it for folks used to reading lower case texts with an occasional capitalized words: Follow the rules of the receptor language. In other words, if you’re translating, say, a Hebrew text into English, you follow English rules about capitalization. That means that you capitalize the first words of sentences, proper nouns, acronyms, and possibly a few additional words (mostly or religious origin), depending on the rules that the publisher goes by.

The reason that this is the only thing to do is that the original text doesn’t contain any capitalization information that you could go by. It’s all upper case letters, with no words capitalized distinctly. The only alternative would be to render EVERY LETTER OF YOUR TRANSLATION IN CAPITAL LETTERS, WHICH IS HARD ON THE EYES AFTER A WHILE AND WHICH IN SOME CONTEXTS IS TAKEN TO INDICATE SHOUTING.

But what if your source text is one that contains a mix of lower and upper case letters, with some words capitalized. What do you do then?

If the languages are close enough in the rules they follow then you might make the decision to capitalize a word wherever the source text does. You might get away with that, for example, translating an Italian text into English.

But this strategy gets problematic if the rules the other language uses for capitalization are too different from English. For instance, German (I am given to understand) capitalizes basically every noun in a sentence. That will really annoy Your typical English Speaker after a While, don’t You think? I mean, Nobody wants to see that many capital Letters in a single Sentence. It gets irritating to have to switch Your Mind back and forth between upper Case and lower Case Emphasis when You aren’t used to doing It.

So the rule defaults back to obeying the conventions of the language that you’re translating into (English in this case).

What those rules are can be complex in and of itself. For one thing, the rules change over time. A hundred years ago English speakers capitalized many more words than they do now (for example, pronouns that have God as their referent). Today, most publishers don’t do that, though there is still a mix of conventions that different publishers will follow.

This affects other languages, too. I’ve seen some Latin documents that had words like "Catholic" in lower-case, but other, later documents that had it upper case.

But that’s the thing about languge: It’s always changing.

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you would have any insight into the contradictory translations of Isaiah 63:9 in the RSV-CE and the NAB.

While taking a class on the theology of the Holy Spirit, I came across the fact that this verse is rendered differently in the two Catholic translations:

Isaiah 63:9 (RSV-CE)

In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Isaiah 63:9 (NAB)

in their every affliction.

It was not a messenger or an angel,

but he himself who saved them.

Because of his love and pity

he redeemed them himself,

Lifting them and carrying them

all the days of old.

In the RSV it was the angel that saved them; in the NAB is was not an angel.

A book used heavily in the class was The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition by Fr. George T. Montague.   Fr. Montague makes a passing reference (on page 54) to the verse:

"…depending on how the identical Hebrew letters are pointed, one can derive the [opposite] translation…"

I was wondering how Hebrew works, such that you can get an opposite translation from the same characters, differently "pointed."

Sure, no problem. First, take a look at this Hebrew word:

This is the word B’reshit, which is the Hebrew equivalent of "Genesis." It’s pronounced something like "bray-SHEET."

It’s the first word in the book of Genesis, and it’s customarily translated into English as "In the beginning."

Now, the thing about the Hebrew writing system is that it developed over time, and originally it didn’t have any vowels, just consonants.

In modern Hebrew script, the consonants are written in the large, black blocky letters that you see here. Originally, b’reshit would have simply been written B-R-SH-T (only in Hebrew letters). If you were an ancient Hebrew, you would have relied on your knowledge of Hebrew vocabulary and context to figure out what words you were looking at in the text from just the consonants.

KND F TH WY Y CN WTH THS TXT.

Only they didn’t have spaces between written words then, either, so it all would have run together.

Over time, the Hebrews noted something about writing their text this way with only consonants.

It sucked.

So they started coming up with different ways to indicate what vowels ought to go into words. One of the first attempts was to impress certain consonants into doing double duty, so sometimes they represented consonants and sometimes they represented vowel sounds. Kind of like our letter Y, which can be either a consonant or a vowel.

That happens in Hebrew, too. In b’reshit the next to last letter (starting from the right) is a yod, which can be either a Y or an I sound. Here, it’s an I, though it sounds like a long-E (as in "sheet’).

These double-duty consonants made it much easier to figure out how to read texts, and so they became known as "the mothers of reading" (Latin: matres lectionis). 

Unfortunately, there were only four maters, and they didn’t help enough, so the scribes set about coming up with real vowels.

Instead of coming up new blocky letters to put in the middle of words, they decided to rely on little dots, like the ones you see under several of the letters in b’reshit. (Arabic and Aramaic use similar systems of little marks above and below their consonants, too.)

For example, under the second letter (counting from the right) of b’reshit has a couple of dots under it that look like a colon laying on its side. That’s the mark for a long-A vowel sound. (The A-sound in "bray-SHEET.")

Over time, they also came up with spaces between words (as you’d see in a modern Hebrew Bible) and other marks to help the reader out. For example, in the first letter of b’reshit there is a dot right in the middle of the letter. This is because the letter can be pronounced either B or V, but the dot tells you to pronounce it B.

Similarly, there is a dot over the right hand side of the fourth letter, which looks kind of like a stylized W. This letter can be pronounced either S or SH. If you put a dot over its left side, it’s S, but if you put the dot over its right side (as here) then it’s SH.

The guys who came up with these marks were known as the Masoretes, and they didn’t finish their work until the Renaissance, giving us the fully-marked or Hebrew Bible called the "Masoretic Text." Since the marks are (mostly) dots, the process of adding to a Hebrew text is called "pointing" it.

Pointed texts are much easier to read, but they are harder to write, and so today in Israel newspapers, street signs, and books are commonly written in unpointed form. Texts where getting the exact reading correct–like the Bible–are written in pointed form to eliminate ambiguity.

As you can imagine, there can be considerable ambiguity without the vowels, spaces, and other marks. Sometimes the meaning of a sentence can change dramatically or even reverse itself without these to help us along.

Unfortunately, the Masoretes were not (despite some claims otherwise) divinely inspired in their readings, and so it is possible for them to have gotten things wrong, and a translator who doesn’t simply accept the reading they gave a word will have to make a choice about how it should be understood.

That’s what’s happening in the case of Isaiah 63:9.

As you can see, there is a disagreement with the RSV translators and the NAB translators. I haven’t looked it up, but my guess is that the RSV is going with the Masoretic reading and the NAB is going with an alternate reading.

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you would have any insight into the contradictory translations of Isaiah 63:9 in the RSV-CE and the NAB.

While taking a class on the theology of the Holy Spirit, I came across the fact that this verse is rendered differently in the two Catholic translations:

Isaiah 63:9 (RSV-CE)
In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Isaiah 63:9 (NAB)
in their every affliction.
It was not a messenger or an angel,
but he himself who saved them.
Because of his love and pity
he redeemed them himself,
Lifting them and carrying them
all the days of old.

In the RSV it was the angel that saved them; in the NAB is was not an angel.

A book used heavily in the class was The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition by Fr. George T. Montague.   Fr. Montague makes a passing reference (on page 54) to the verse:

"…depending on how the identical Hebrew letters are pointed, one can derive the [opposite] translation…"

I was wondering how Hebrew works, such that you can get an opposite translation from the same characters, differently "pointed."

Sure, no problem. First, take a look at this Hebrew word:

This is the word B’reshit, which is the Hebrew equivalent of "Genesis." It’s pronounced something like "bray-SHEET."

It’s the first word in the book of Genesis, and it’s customarily translated into English as "In the beginning."

Now, the thing about the Hebrew writing system is that it developed over time, and originally it didn’t have any vowels, just consonants.

In modern Hebrew script, the consonants are written in the large, black blocky letters that you see here. Originally, b’reshit would have simply been written B-R-SH-T (only in Hebrew letters). If you were an ancient Hebrew, you would have relied on your knowledge of Hebrew vocabulary and context to figure out what words you were looking at in the text from just the consonants.

KND F TH WY Y CN WTH THS TXT.

Only they didn’t have spaces between written words then, either, so it all would have run together.

Over time, the Hebrews noted something about writing their text this way with only consonants.

It sucked.

So they started coming up with different ways to indicate what vowels ought to go into words. One of the first attempts was to impress certain consonants into doing double duty, so sometimes they represented consonants and sometimes they represented vowel sounds. Kind of like our letter Y, which can be either a consonant or a vowel.

That happens in Hebrew, too. In b’reshit the next to last letter (starting from the right) is a yod, which can be either a Y or an I sound. Here, it’s an I, though it sounds like a long-E (as in "sheet’).

These double-duty consonants made it much easier to figure out how to read texts, and so they became known as "the mothers of reading" (Latin: matres lectionis). 

Unfortunately, there were only four maters, and they didn’t help enough, so the scribes set about coming up with real vowels.

Instead of coming up new blocky letters to put in the middle of words, they decided to rely on little dots, like the ones you see under several of the letters in b’reshit. (Arabic and Aramaic use similar systems of little marks above and below their consonants, too.)

For example, under the second letter (counting from the right) of b’reshit has a couple of dots under it that look like a colon laying on its side. That’s the mark for a long-A vowel sound. (The A-sound in "bray-SHEET.")

Over time, they also came up with spaces between words (as you’d see in a modern Hebrew Bible) and other marks to help the reader out. For example, in the first letter of b’reshit there is a dot right in the middle of the letter. This is because the letter can be pronounced either B or V, but the dot tells you to pronounce it B.

Similarly, there is a dot over the right hand side of the fourth letter, which looks kind of like a stylized W. This letter can be pronounced either S or SH. If you put a dot over its left side, it’s S, but if you put the dot over its right side (as here) then it’s SH.

The guys who came up with these marks were known as the Masoretes, and they didn’t finish their work until the Renaissance, giving us the fully-marked or Hebrew Bible called the "Masoretic Text." Since the marks are (mostly) dots, the process of adding to a Hebrew text is called "pointing" it.

Pointed texts are much easier to read, but they are harder to write, and so today in Israel newspapers, street signs, and books are commonly written in unpointed form. Texts where getting the exact reading correct–like the Bible–are written in pointed form to eliminate ambiguity.

As you can imagine, there can be considerable ambiguity without the vowels, spaces, and other marks. Sometimes the meaning of a sentence can change dramatically or even reverse itself without these to help us along.

Unfortunately, the Masoretes were not (despite some claims otherwise) divinely inspired in their readings, and so it is possible for them to have gotten things wrong, and a translator who doesn’t simply accept the reading they gave a word will have to make a choice about how it should be understood.

That’s what’s happening in the case of Isaiah 63:9.

As you can see, there is a disagreement with the RSV translators and the NAB translators. I haven’t looked it up, but my guess is that the RSV is going with the Masoretic reading and the NAB is going with an alternate reading.

So, you say you want to know how man’s best friend really feels? A South Korean cell-phone company will be trying to fill that void in your life:

"South Koreans hoping to communicate with man’s best friend could be getting help soon from their cell phones. KTF Corp., a South Korean mobile phone operator, said Thursday it will begin offering a service that will enable dog owners to know whether their pets are feeling happy or sad.

"The users must first connect to Internet with their cell phones, and then register information of their dogs such as the breed and age. The service will then record the dog’s bark.

"The owner will receive text messages telling them how their pet is feeling, such as ‘I am happy’ or ‘I am frustrated.’"

GET THE STORY.

You know, dogs are very capable of letting you know what they’re thinking. You really don’t need a novelty service to translate for you. The dog I had a few years ago would stand by the back door when he wanted to go out. If he was ill, he’d lay down and whine. If he was eager for a walk, and he always was, he’d yip and prance when a leash was produced. He would stare at me with wide, sad eyes when he was trying to beg a treat.

And that’s all I really needed to know about his inner dog, thank you very much.

So, you say you want to know how man’s best friend really feels? A South Korean cell-phone company will be trying to fill that void in your life:

"South Koreans hoping to communicate with man’s best friend could be getting help soon from their cell phones. KTF Corp., a South Korean mobile phone operator, said Thursday it will begin offering a service that will enable dog owners to know whether their pets are feeling happy or sad.

"The users must first connect to Internet with their cell phones, and then register information of their dogs such as the breed and age. The service will then record the dog’s bark.

"The owner will receive text messages telling them how their pet is feeling, such as ‘I am happy’ or ‘I am frustrated.’"

GET THE STORY.

You know, dogs are very capable of letting you know what they’re thinking. You really don’t need a novelty service to translate for you. The dog I had a few years ago would stand by the back door when he wanted to go out. If he was ill, he’d lay down and whine. If he was eager for a walk, and he always was, he’d yip and prance when a leash was produced. He would stare at me with wide, sad eyes when he was trying to beg a treat.

And that’s all I really needed to know about his inner dog, thank you very much.

A reader writes:

As a recent reader of your (extremely interesting and original) site, I’ve noticed that you have some knowledge of Aramaic.  Could you answer some questions I’ve had since viewing the movie "The Passion of the Christ"?

What would be the spoken and written Aramaic form of "Jesus of Nazareth"? In the movie it seemed it was pronounced with slight variations by different characters, such as "Yeshua n’Zaret", or "Yeshua an’Zaret" or "Yehsua m’Zaret" (I writing this phonetically from memory, so please forgive the mistakes).  I realize that spelling and pronounciation can change as to a word’s function and place in a sentence, but if one wanted to say or write simply, "Jesus of Nazareth" in Aramaic, seperate from any place in a spoken or written phrase, what would it be?

The phenomenon of actors pronouncing the name differently is caused by the fact that the actors in the movie weren’t native speakers of the language and, so I understand, didn’t even speak it as a second language. Thus their own accents tend to bleed through into their delivery of Aramaic.

I should also mention that there were no standardized dictionaries in the ancient world and folks tended to spell words more like they sounded to them, so you’ll get variant spellings from time to time.

As to how Jesus’ name is pronounced, that’s going to change over time and region. Just as we have different accents in English, they have different accents (pronunciation schemes) in Aramaic, and words can sound significantly different depending on where and when an accent was based.

In the first century, Galilee and Judea had different accents, as we know because Peter’s northern (Galilean) accent accent gave him down south in Jerusalem, when he was at the high priest’s house. ("Yew ain’t from aroun’ these here parts, are ya, sir?") Even villages not that far apart (by modern standards) probably had different accents, like the Aramaic-speaking communities in Iraq do today (a Mosul accent ain’t the same as a Zakho accent, though they’re both in northern Iraq).

The best I can do is show you how "Jesus of Nazareth" is spelled in the Pshitta and tell you how that would be pronounced by a speaker with an eastern (Iraqi) Aramaic accent (i.e., the kind of Aramaic I’m most familiar with pronouncing), so here goes.

First, "Jesus of Nazareth" gets written different ways. Here’s how it’s written in Acts 2:22:

This is literally something like "Jesus the Nazarite." I’d transliterate it Isho` Nassraya. Pronounced in an Eastern accent, it’d be something like ee-SHOW-ah* naas-RYE-yah, but it’s hard to get across the exact sound because English does’t have two of the sounds that are used. That final character on Isho` (read from right-to-left) isn Aeh, which isn’t really like an English "ah" sound, which is why I starred it in the pronunciation. It’s a harsh gutteral sound that, to tell you the truth, sounds like you’re being choked, the airflow through the throat is cut off so abruptly. Make a kind of gutteral grunt choking noise and you’re about as close as you can get without hearing someone say it.

The other sound is easier. It’s the second character in Nassraya–the one that looks line of like a backwards Y. This letter is Sadhe (SAH-thay), and it’s a "dark S" sound. I doubled it in the transliteration to convey the idea that it in’t an ordinary S sound. Pronounce an S at the very back of your mouth (instead of at the front) and you’ve got it.

I checked some other passages as well, and the closest I found to something that’s literally "Jesus of Nazareth" was in Acts 10:38, where we find this:

Hyper-literally, this would be "Jesus of-from Nazareth," but nobody would translate it that way. "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus from Nazareth" would be the correct translation.

I’d transliterate it like this: Ishoa dmen Nassrath, and it’d be pronounced ee-SHOW-ah* dmen NAAS-rath. It’s hard for an American to pronounce dmen if you haven’t practiced, but just say the D really, really fast on the front of the word "men." Don’t forget the dark S in Nassrath, either.

The reader then asks:

Second, what would the name "Mary" be in Aramaic?  I’ve heard it is "Miriam", but in the movie, Mary Magadaline calls out, "Marian".  Which is it, if either?  Also, isn’t the Blessed Mother also addressed as "Emi", "Mother" in the movie?

This one is easy. "Mary" in Aramaic is Maryam, but you pronounce the R as a tap or flap R, creating a false pseudo-syllable between the R and the Y, making it sound a little like MAR-(ee)-yaam. Strive not to pronounce it with three syllables. That tap or flap R in the middle doesn’t give rise to a full syllable.

Here’s what it looks like:

Oh, and about "Mother," what he’s saying is emmi (pronounced EM-mee), which is literally "my mother." The word for "mother" is emma and the –i suffix functions as "my."

Now the reader asks:

Third, and perhaps the most lengthy, what would be the names of all of the Apostles in Aramaic.  The movie only gives us "Kepha" and "Yohanan".

Owww! Perhaps the most lengthy?

Okay glutton for punishmentobliging soul that I am, here are the names of the twelve apostles (plus a couple extra words I’ve circled for reasons that will become clear) taken from Matthew 10:2-4:

I would bore everyone to tears for me to give detailed pronunciation instructions for these, but here’s the gist:

1. Simon (Shem`on, shem-*on [it’s got that harsh Aeh sound in it])
2. Kepha (KAY-pha, though folks today pronounce it KAY-pah)
3. Andrew (Andareos, ahn-da-RAY-oss)
4. James (Ya`qob, YAH*-qobb [note: the two words that follow this are bar Zabday or "son of Zebedee")
5. John (Yohannan, yoh-HAN-nan)
6. Phillip (Pilipos, pih-LIP-poss)
7. Bartholomew (Bar Tolmay, bar TOL-may)
8. Thomas (Toma, TOE-mah)
9. Matthew (Mattay, matt-TAI)
10. James son of Alphaeus (Ya`qob bar Halpay, YAH*-qobb bar haal-PAI)
11. Thaddeus (Tadday, tad-DAI)
12. Simon the Cananaean (Shem`on Qananaya, shem-*ON qah-nah-NAI-yah)
13. Judas (Yhuda, yuh-HOO-dah)
14. Iscariot (Skaryota, skar-YO-tah)

Hope that helps! ‘Bout the best I can do on the fly, though I’m sure I could refine it if I had more time.

Again, I’m writing this from memory and phonetically with no real knowledge of Aramaic, so please forgive my mistakes.  Thanks for your help.

No prob! And I’m impressed at how well you’ve done picking up stuff by ear from the movie!