Category: Languages

A reader writes:

Dear Jim:  I note that please is a word that never shows up in the mass nor in our prayers.  I know that Jesus gave us the words to the Our Father which does not include the word please.  There are a number of places in that prayer where I (as a wretch) would feel please is appropriate (please give us this day our daily bread, please forgive us etc).  Is it possible that please is not used because the language spoken by Jesus did not include such a word?

You’re on to something here, though the problem isn’t just confined to Aramaic, in which the Lord’s Prayer was originally given. It also affects Latin, which is determinative of Mass and most other standard prayers. Neither of these languages has a ready-made word for "please."

"Please" is so important in English politness that it boggles our minds how another langauge can make do without an equivalent to this word, just as our minds boggle that some languages (like Latin, Irish, and Mandarin) manage to make do without a word for "yes."

Thing is: Words like "please" and "yes" don’t really have meaning as such. They are "function words"–words used to perform specific functions. "Please" is a particle of entreaty and politeness, while "yes" is a particle of agreement or affirmation. (Particles are typically short words that never change their form and perform specific functions.)

But it isn’t the particles themselves that are important: It’s the functions they perform. Every language has a way to perform the functions of entreaty, politeness, agreement, and affirmation, they just don’t have handy particles to do it.

A common way in many languages to express entreaty, for example, is to use the imperative mood. That’s what’s going on in the Lord’s Prayer, for example. You look at it in Aramaic (or Greek or Latin), and the verbs in the petitions are in the imperative mood ("give us," "forgive us," "lead us not").

That’s where the problem comes in for us English speakers: The imperative mood does double-duty in languages like the ones just mentioned, where it can serve either to mark a request or a command, but in English since we’ve sloughed off the entreaty function to "please" and other constructions ("Can you . . . ?" "Would you . . . ?"), the imperative is much more associated with commands in English.

If you just bring over an Aramaic, Greek, or Latin imperative into English literally ("Give us this day our daily bread"), it can sound to us like we’re commanding God to do something, when to the speakers of the original languages, it would have been obvious that in these cases the imperative is being used to signal entreaty. (Nobody commands God around.)

The problem is significant enough that people who might be tempted into the Health & Wealth Gospel movement have to be warned about how not to interpret imperatives in the original languages. If you look in Bill Mounce’s book Basics of Biblical Greek, for example, he has a passage warning people against intepreting imperatives directed toward God as commands. All kinds of screwy Hagan-esque "Write your own ticket with God" theology can get started if you don’t recognize how to interpret imperatives toward God.

So you’re right: There ain’t an Aramaic word that is directly equivalent to "please." The language conveys requests and politeness in other ways. That leaves us (including me) as English-speakers wishing "please" was in our standard prayers, but it ain’t. The thing for us to do is to just relax and recognize that the function is being performed by the imperative mood and that we have to take this account when we’re saying our prayers.

 

A reader writes:

Dear Jim:  I note that please is a word that never shows up in the mass nor in our prayers.  I know that Jesus gave us the words to the Our Father which does not include the word please.  There are a number of places in that prayer where I (as a wretch) would feel please is appropriate (please give us this day our daily bread, please forgive us etc).  Is it possible that please is not used because the language spoken by Jesus did not include such a word?

You’re on to something here, though the problem isn’t just confined to Aramaic, in which the Lord’s Prayer was originally given. It also affects Latin, which is determinative of Mass and most other standard prayers. Neither of these languages has a ready-made word for "please."

"Please" is so important in English politness that it boggles our minds how another langauge can make do without an equivalent to this word, just as our minds boggle that some languages (like Latin, Irish, and Mandarin) manage to make do without a word for "yes."

Thing is: Words like "please" and "yes" don’t really have meaning as such. They are "function words"–words used to perform specific functions. "Please" is a particle of entreaty and politeness, while "yes" is a particle of agreement or affirmation. (Particles are typically short words that never change their form and perform specific functions.)

But it isn’t the particles themselves that are important: It’s the functions they perform. Every language has a way to perform the functions of entreaty, politeness, agreement, and affirmation, they just don’t have handy particles to do it.

A common way in many languages to express entreaty, for example, is to use the imperative mood. That’s what’s going on in the Lord’s Prayer, for example. You look at it in Aramaic (or Greek or Latin), and the verbs in the petitions are in the imperative mood ("give us," "forgive us," "lead us not").

That’s where the problem comes in for us English speakers: The imperative mood does double-duty in languages like the ones just mentioned, where it can serve either to mark a request or a command, but in English since we’ve sloughed off the entreaty function to "please" and other constructions ("Can you . . . ?" "Would you . . . ?"), the imperative is much more associated with commands in English.

If you just bring over an Aramaic, Greek, or Latin imperative into English literally ("Give us this day our daily bread"), it can sound to us like we’re commanding God to do something, when to the speakers of the original languages, it would have been obvious that in these cases the imperative is being used to signal entreaty. (Nobody commands God around.)

The problem is significant enough that people who might be tempted into the Health & Wealth Gospel movement have to be warned about how not to interpret imperatives in the original languages. If you look in Bill Mounce’s book Basics of Biblical Greek, for example, he has a passage warning people against intepreting imperatives directed toward God as commands. All kinds of screwy Hagan-esque "Write your own ticket with God" theology can get started if you don’t recognize how to interpret imperatives toward God.

So you’re right: There ain’t an Aramaic word that is directly equivalent to "please." The language conveys requests and politeness in other ways. That leaves us (including me) as English-speakers wishing "please" was in our standard prayers, but it ain’t. The thing for us to do is to just relax and recognize that the function is being performed by the imperative mood and that we have to take this account when we’re saying our prayers.

 

A piece back, someone was asking about what it means when Scripture says that God "hates" something.

One possibility that was raised was the idea that the term for "hate" may at times only mean "to prefer something else to," as when Jesus says that we can’t be his disciples unless we "hate" our family members.

In that passage, it’s clear that what Jesus means is that we can’t be his disciples if we prefer others to him, but it isn’t clear that that’s what the word means in this case. Jesus may be using hyperbole to make a shocking statement that is intended to provoke thought and encourage us to tease out his meaning (the way God often lets us figure things out for ourselves so that we will use the intellects he gave us and thus glorify him).

I said that I’d check with my Aramaic instructor, who is a native speaker of the langauge, and see what he had to say.

I did.

Unfortunatley, I failed to report back in a timely manner, so when I got together with him this week, it jogged my memory.

Here’s the deal:

He says that the relevant verb in Aramaic means what it does in English. "Hate" means "hate." It doesn’t mean "to prefer less than." Jesus is using the word in the shocking, hyperbolic way suggested above, and his original audience would have been as shocked and hyperboled (to make up a word) as we are when we hear the statement.

Of course, my instructor is a native speaker of contemporary Aramaic, not first century, but he does have a familiarity with classical Aramaic (which he also teaches), and my money is that he’s right on this. Jesus is being deliberately provocative with what he says (i.e., he’s trying to provoke thought).

Silent E is an interesting phenomenon in English orthography. It’s a letter, usually at the end of a word, that we don’t pronounce–as in the word "pronounce." That ends in an S-sound, not an E-sound.

Thing is, silent E didn’t used to be silent.

Our English-speaking forebears used to pronounce those Es, which is how they got into the words in the first place. Then, over time, they started droppin’ ’em (like I "drop" my Gs). But the letter in the written form of the word stayed, or "stay-ed" as our forebears would have said.

You can hear a reflection of this in the fact that converts often start by saying "Blessed art thou among women" and pronouncing "blessed" as "blesst" instead of "bless-ed."

So it seems that we can do without all those Es.

But can we do without the letter E altogether and still communicate meaningfully? It is, after all, the single most commonly-used letter in the English alphabet. just look at the number of times I’ve had to use it in this post to say what I wanted to say. Surely nobody could go on for, say, fifty-thousand words of meaningful text without using the letter E.

Oh, no?

CHECK OUT THIS NOVEL THAT IS TOTALLY E-FREE.

Would you expect to find languages using a form of the verb "to go" to express intention? . . . or a form of the verb "to have" to express obligation?

Well, English does. In fact, you just read a sentence (the title of this post) where forms of those words appear in those senses.

They’re somewhat strange senses. Consider:

1. I am going to Rome.
2. I am going to visit Rome.
3. I am going to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "go" has its normal, literal sense of moving from one place to another. In the last sentence it clearly has a metaphorical meaning. You may be sitting in the chair where you plan to study when you say it and may not be physically going anywhere at all. The middle sentence is actually using the same metaphorical sense as the last one, but you may not have noticed it since the topic under discussion was a visit, which would involve moving from one place to another.

Now consider:

1. I have a book
2. I have a headache.
3. I have to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "have" is in its original, literal meaning of possessing a physical object. In the last sentence it has a clearly metaphorical meaning that speaks of an obligation (to study now) as if it were a physical object that could be possessed. The middle sentence also involves a metaphorical sense since headaches are not physical objects that can be possessed, though this is somewhat masked since "a headache" is more obviously a noun phrase than "to study now" is (though, in actuality, "to study now" is a noun phrase since it is based on the infinitive "to study" and infinitives are verbal nouns).

Pretty weird, huh? There’s no necessary connection between the verb and the metaphor that is built out of it. That’s not to say that there is no logic in basing the metaphors on these verbs, it’s just that there is no necessity that the words be used in these metaphorical ways. We could not, for example, substitute synonyms for these verbs and have the resulting metaphors sound normal at all:

1. I am travelling to study now. (When you’re sitting in the chair where you intend to study)
2. I possess to study now.

Nor could you do the reverse:

1. I intend to Rome.
2. I am obligated a book.

With no requirement for "go" and "have" to bear the metaphorical meanings that English ascribes to them, most langauges (at least most languages I’ve studied) do not do this. To express intent and obligation they either use special words (their equivalents of "intend," "obligated," "must," etc.) or they may put the verb in a special mood. In any event, they don’t do what English does.

Imagine my surprise when I found a language that does.

Continue reading “I'm Going To Have To Figure This Out”

Would you expect to find languages using a form of the verb "to go" to express intention? . . . or a form of the verb "to have" to express obligation?

Well, English does. In fact, you just read a sentence (the title of this post) where forms of those words appear in those senses.

They’re somewhat strange senses. Consider:

1. I am going to Rome.
2. I am going to visit Rome.
3. I am going to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "go" has its normal, literal sense of moving from one place to another. In the last sentence it clearly has a metaphorical meaning. You may be sitting in the chair where you plan to study when you say it and may not be physically going anywhere at all. The middle sentence is actually using the same metaphorical sense as the last one, but you may not have noticed it since the topic under discussion was a visit, which would involve moving from one place to another.

Now consider:

1. I have a book
2. I have a headache.
3. I have to study now.

In the first sentence the verb "have" is in its original, literal meaning of possessing a physical object. In the last sentence it has a clearly metaphorical meaning that speaks of an obligation (to study now) as if it were a physical object that could be possessed. The middle sentence also involves a metaphorical sense since headaches are not physical objects that can be possessed, though this is somewhat masked since "a headache" is more obviously a noun phrase than "to study now" is (though, in actuality, "to study now" is a noun phrase since it is based on the infinitive "to study" and infinitives are verbal nouns).

Pretty weird, huh? There’s no necessary connection between the verb and the metaphor that is built out of it. That’s not to say that there is no logic in basing the metaphors on these verbs, it’s just that there is no necessity that the words be used in these metaphorical ways. We could not, for example, substitute synonyms for these verbs and have the resulting metaphors sound normal at all:

1. I am travelling to study now. (When you’re sitting in the chair where you intend to study)
2. I possess to study now.

Nor could you do the reverse:

1. I intend to Rome.
2. I am obligated a book.

With no requirement for "go" and "have" to bear the metaphorical meanings that English ascribes to them, most langauges (at least most languages I’ve studied) do not do this. To express intent and obligation they either use special words (their equivalents of "intend," "obligated," "must," etc.) or they may put the verb in a special mood. In any event, they don’t do what English does.

Imagine my surprise when I found a language that does.

Continue reading “I’m Going To Have To Figure This Out”

To the left is a screen capture of my weblog stats. Today, I met a goal that I’d had for a while: I wanted my "Average (hits) per day" to be 888 or more.

Unfortunately, despite its many excellent qualities, Typepad (my blog host) has really dinky stats that are much inferior to what other providers have. They’ve promised to improve these, but haven’t yet.

One of the problems is that "Average per day" isn’t your recent average (what you typically get on a given day recently) but an average based on all the time that has elapsed since you started the blog on Typepad. This means that those early days, when nobody was linking to you and you were first starting to build traffic, will forever pull down your "Average per day."

Thus you can see that I’m really getting a lot more than 888 hits per day. Above, for example, it says that I got 2980 hits "Today." But therein lies another problem: As Typepad reckons it "Today" is not the past twenty-four hours, it’s the period beginning yesterday at midnight, which means that "Today" is always 24-48 hours long, depending on what time of day you check. As you approach midnight, "Today" really includes the hits of two days.

I took this screen shot early in the day (when traffic is slowest), so I guess I got about 2700-2800 hits yesterday (including everything, such as people clicking into comment boxes), though one can never be sure, given the way this software works.

But why am I happy that the average is now 888? Because’s that’s the numerical value of the name of Jesus in Greek. Here’s how that works: In Greek "Jesus" is iEsous, and

Iota = 10
Eta = 8
Sigma = 200
Omicron = 70
Upsilon = 400
Sigma = 200

TOTAL = 888

SEE THE GREEK LETTER-TO-NUMBER EQUIVALENCES.

The reason that the Greeks (like Latin-, Hebrew-, and Aramaic-speakers) had numerical values for letters is that they didn’t have separate number symbols, so the letters did double duty. That’s why VIII is 8 in Roman numerals. In Latin, only a few letters have numerical values (I, V, X, L, C, D, M), so letters like B or R mean nothing. Originally Greek only used some of its letters for numbers, but by Jesus’ day they used all of them. This reduced the number of letters you had to use to write a number, so in Greek VIII was just the letter eta.

If you look at the table of Greek letter-to-number equivalences, you’ll note that the system has three letters you may never have heard of: digamma, qoppa, and sampi. These are letters that dropped out of the Greek alphabet. Digamma sounded like a w, qoppa like a back-of-the-mouth q (harder and darker than the k sound, like qoph in Hebrew, qop in Aramaic, or qaaf in Arabic). Sampi sounded like an extended s or like a ks combination.

If these letters hadn’t dropped out then, since sampi was the last letter, Jesus would be "Alpha and Sampi" instead of "Alpha and Omega" (or, as he is in Arabic translations of the New Testament, "Alif u-Hamza").

Down yonder, a commenter writes:

I remember that while living in Germany with some other America

students, we were speaking English as some of us were going out to see

a movie. I asked, "Are you coming with?" and the Texans giggled saying

"Your German is showing." That’s because in German, the phrase is

"Kommst du mit?" and in English it is "Are you coming with us/me?"

(mit=with) No dangling prepositions I guess.

In response, I looked at them strangely and told them that, and

everyone I knew in Illinois, routinely said, "Are you coming with?"

which seemed to flabbergast the Texans.

The linguist among us pondered for a bit and eventually decided that

the reason I spoke differently was that the massive number of German

immigrants to the Midwest affected the way people spoke English.

I had an English teacher once insist that it was not proper to end

sentences with prepositions and went into this discussion of Latin,

prepositions in Latin, grammar, and how it was impossible for

prepositions to not have nouns after it. I then mentioned that in

German, prepositions routinely ended sentences. He then informed me

wrily that that was German, not English. I then responded that since

English was a Germanic language, it made more sense for it to follow

German than to use a strict definition of a Latin word that describes

Latin grammar for a non-Romantic language. He did not seem pleased.

I have no beef against ending sentences with a preposition. That commonly happens in English. But I have to admit (as a Texan) that sentences like "Are you coming with?" sound incomplete to me.

I first encountered sentences of this sort on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which often has Minnesota/Wisconsin influence because of where it was filmed.

When I first heard Pearl Forrester (Mary Jo Pehl), as she was about to enter a black hole, tell Mike Nelson: "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You’re coming with!", I thought it was a cute phrase deliberately exaggerated for commedic effect.

Maybe not.