标题: Present Subjunctive and Choice of Languages in a Religion [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 9-23-2016 11:09 标题: Present Subjunctive and Choice of Languages in a Religion Johnson | Talking in Tongues; Should religious language keep up with the times or stick closely to the original? Economist, Sept 10, 2016. http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... ly-original-talking
Note:
(a) "A RECENT Johnson column looked at the English past subjunctive [If I were you]. The present subjunctive gets much less attention. This appears after verbs like 'insist' and 'request' "
(i) subjunctive mood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood
(The subjunctive is a grammatical mood found in many languages. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred)
(ii) English subjunctive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_subjunctive
("The subjunctive in English is used to form sentences that do not describe known objective facts. These include statements about one's state of mind, such as opinion, belief, purpose, intention, or desire. It contrasts with the indicative mood, which is used for statements of fact, such as He speaks English")
(b) "Islam and Judaism both give exclusive status to one language, classical Arabic and Hebrew, regardless of the spoken languages of the worshippers. Arabs read, pray and hear sermons in a seventh-century language that is nearly as different from their spoken Arabic as Latin is from Italian. Young Jews around the world join the adult community by reciting a Torah passage in [classical] Hebrew."
(i) languages of Israel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Israel
(The main languages used for communication among Israeli citizens are Modern Hebrew [mainly among Jews] and Arabic [mainly among Israeli Arabs], while English, second language of the majority of the Israeli population, is used widely in official logos, road signs and product labels
(ii) Biblical Hebrew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Hebrew
(also called Classical Hebrew; Biblical Hebrew is attested from about the 10th century BCE, and persisted through and beyond the Second Temple period, which ended in the siege of Jerusalem (AD 70) )
is the language used in Old Testament (as well as Torah, which constitutes the first five books of Old Testament).
(c) "But the Greek accounts [New Testament] of Jesus were already translations: he and his followers spoke Aramaic. After Christianity won official status in the Roman empire in the fourth century, it jumped languages again: St Jerome's Latin Bible was official for Western Christianity. In 1546 the Council of Trent" (1545 - 1563) said
(i) St Jerome (c 347 – 420 [73 years old; born in Dalmatia and died in Bethlehem])
(ii) Jerome (given name) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_(given_name)
(from Greek "sacred name")
(iii)
(A) Vulgate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate
(work of St Jerome, who, in 382, was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise; The Catholic Church affirmed it as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent (1545–63))
(B) Latin-English dictionary:
* vulgātus (participle masculine; feminine: vulgata): "made common" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vulgatus
(d) "Nicholas Ostler [1952- ; British] explains in a masterly recent book, 'Passwords to Paradise' * * * Even defensible translation choices are meaningful. Mr Ostler skips over some well-known examples to tell the story of the fourth-century Goths, for example. Their leader, Wulfila, chose a translation for 'Lord,' frauja, that meant something like the head of a household. Other tribes chose a word more suitable for a military chieftain
(i) Nicholas Ostler, Passwords to Paradise; How languages have re-invented world religions. Bloomsbury, 2016.
(ii) Ulfinas https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ulfilas
(Gothic: Wulfina; c 311 - c 382 (died in Constantinople); "Christian bishop and missionary who evangelized the Goths, reputedly created the Gothic alphabet, and wrote the earliest translation of the Bible into a Germanic language")