14 December 2009
A Fun Moment
So some Latin was on the board when I began teaching Catechism today. I asked the kids to translate it and they did. Then we did some of the Lord's Prayer, but they corrected me on my pronunciation of "caelis." They said: "Pastor, that's church Latin; we're learning classical Latin." Yeah, color me impressed with what our school is doing!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
16 comments:
Ah, but "ch-aelis" sounds better than "k-aelis", ihmo.
One of my patristics lecturers at university always insistently used ecclesiastical Latin. When queried, her reply: "If you want to speak like the pagans, feel free. I don't."
Just respond that it's all Greek to you anyway...
F.V.
Yeah, but isn't it those unwashed pagans we want to reach with our classical Latin? :)
Omnia lingua mihi graeca sunt.
Most churches if they have a children's service would have a real-dumbed down service (maybe even one with puppets).
I guess the children's mass at your parish would have to be a Latin service.
Um, not exactly. :) We do have a Children's Vespers Service on Christmas Eve, but there is actually no Latin in it. But we will be singing lots of great hymns, including "Oh, rejoice ye Christians loudly!"
What? Not Angels We Have heard on High (LSB 368) with the Gloria in excelsis Deo?
I'm afraid what Latin will be taught to my daughter will be church Latin. She's more likely to end up a chorister or soloist than an academic. We'll be be covering our bases, though, and also hitting at least a couple years of German, just in case she does end up going the academic route in the end!
Well, we'll see. She's an independent sort.
Hah. There is no such thing as "classical Latin". That is simply a modern attempt at reconstruction of how Latin was pronounced in the Roman Empire, but there is no way whatever of substiating that it is correct.
"Church Latin" OTOH is a living language and the pronunciation is there to be heard.
So you have your choice, learn of version of Latin that is indeed part of the history of the language, or a modern scholarly guess.
It seems to me that if one is using Latin tied to an idea of a reformed church but the same church, then one would use church Latin.
Hearing a Lutheran pastor speak a church text in Ciceronian (as it was called beforee "classical") pronunciation seems half-fast -- if you're going to use church Latin texts then speak in church Latin for jumping Judas' sake.
Which reminds me, in my Graduate Review Latin class I was the only one who spoke using church Latin (I suppose I should say ecclesiastical Latin to sound all educated and everything) and I used to joke with the others that when we get to heaven I won't be the one with an accent!
For once, I agree entirely with PE. Classical latin is one of those pious fictions in academia...
Not to mention of course that Salwe (I did have a wonderful latin teacher who insisted on pronouncing it that way) sounds ugly, and Kickero sounds like a Japanese gentleman.
The same debate of course rages over "Erasmian" and modern pronunciations of Greek.
Thanks Kiran. Drives me nuts to hear someone sing "Waynie waynie emmanuel" and think they're all connected to the ongoing church, in which it was never pronounced that way.
omnia gallia est divisa in partes tres.
And that's all I remember from two years of Latin in school. Now I know just enough to confuse myself and be dangerous to others. Kudos to your catechumens!
Rev. Keith Weise
STL
Actually, the text begins:
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
It is often misquoted as:
Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.
In high school Latin class, 1952 or 1953, in Pennsylvania, we were taught "Gallia omnia est divisa in partes tres."
Post a Comment