Pronunciation of Latin

[Simon]

Quite so - and ne'er the twain shall meet.

Well, clearly you all went to the wrong type of school, then, innit.

I don't know how long this had being going on, but I suspect that if it wasn't generally the norm, it might have been something to do with the DoM and the Latin master being one and the same at some point, though that wasn't the case when I was there. He did dep occasionally though.

... And (as I've said on this board before) how differently composers might have set the ending of the Te Deum if the translator had got it right with "I shall never be confounded", instead of the wimpish "Let me never......."!

Wimpish? No! I take your points as regards the Latin - and also Jean's NOTE 3, which I didn't know about - but to me "Let me never" sounds much better - imagine Howells Coll Reg without it! - and if, as it appears from you two scholars, there is flexibility between NE and NON, both having subjunctive sense, then I too would have gone for that.

[Miles Coverdale]

In Psalm 121, the Hebrew is in the present tense, as is Luther's German 'Ich hebe meine Augen auf zu den Bergen.' The Coverdale Bible of 1535, which is heavily influenced by Luther in its psalm translations, also gives the present tense. It is not, I think, until the Great Bible of 1539 that it is turned into the future tense. Many of the changes in Coverdale's translation of 1539 were made with the aid of Sebastian Münster's Hebrew–Latin Bible of 1534/5. I don't have access to that, but that may be where the change derives from.

Note also the difference between:

'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help .'

and

'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills : from whence cometh my help ?'

[vinteuil]

If I remember aright Hebrew doesn't have a 'future' tense in the way Indo-European languages understand it. Whereas we are used to various present - past - future tenses, Hebrew like other Semitic languages only has two forms - a perfective (where the action has already occurred) and an imperfective (where the action has not been completed). Any translation from Hebrew into Latin or Greek has to convert those senses into our tenses, and there can be ambiguities.

I often think we don't quite understand the functioning of Biblical 'prophecies' because of this misunderstanding of tenses - for us the prophecy is necessarily put in a future tense, whereas in Hebrew it will be in an imperfective - functioning as a divine present tense (all things still being potential... )

[Miles Coverdale]

If I remember aright Hebrew doesn't have a 'future' tense in the way Indo-European languages understand it. Whereas we are used to various present - past - future tenses, Hebrew like other Semitic languages only has two forms - a perfective (where the action has already occurred) and an imperfective (where the action has not been completed). Any translation from Hebrew into Latin or Greek has to convert those senses into our tenses, and there can be ambiguities.

You are quite right about Hebrew's only having two tenses - I shoud have been more specific. The Hebrew is capable of being translated either as 'I lift up ...' or 'I will lift up ...'. Perhaps 'I lift up' has greater immediacy. It is notable that there are a great many changes of tense between Coverdale's translations of 1535 and 1539.

[decantor]

Well, clearly you all went to the wrong type of school, then, innit.

No, just different. My first Latin master was a cleric (and a fine musician and pianist). He was a stickler in class for the latest Latin pronunciation - V as W and the full vorks. Yet he happily stood up in Sunday Eucharist to intone "Gloria in egg-shells-eece Day-oh". Bilinguality was the norm - 'from one generation unto another'.

Wimpish? No! I take your points as regards the Latin - and also Jean's NOTE 3, which I didn't know about - but to me "Let me never" sounds much better - imagine Howells Coll Reg without it! - and if, as it appears from you two scholars, there is flexibility between NE and NON, both having subjunctive sense, then I too would have gone for that.

By all means let the music reign supreme - I think also of the little treble solo at the end of Britten's Festival Te Deum. But that is no reason to ignore the rules of Latin: jean's research came as a fascinating surprise, but in truth there is little flexibility over the negative of the hortatory subjunctive. Even so, "Let me never..." is now deeply entrenched, and all those canticle settings are safe.

[jean]

And St. Jerome definitely got it wrong.

Or did he?

There are three versions of the Psalms in the Vulgate, I have no idea why, or by whom the extra versions were made.

The first is given no heading, the second is Ps. iuxta Hebraeos, and the third Nova Ps. versio. The first two have levavi oculos here, the third attollo oculos.

[decantor]

You are quite right about Hebrew's only having two tenses - I shoud have been more specific. The Hebrew is capable of being translated either as 'I lift up ...' or 'I will lift up ...'. Perhaps 'I lift up' has greater immediacy. It is notable that there are a great many changes of tense between Coverdale's translations of 1535 and 1539.

My thanks to MC and vint for these revelations. It makes Jerome's choice of LEVAVI (perfect) even more interesting - he presumably intended a true perfect tense - "I have lifted mine eyes and they remain lifted". And the usual translation of Palestrina's invocation for Advent (starting "I lift mine eyes") also now slots better into context.

Would MC care to expound further on whether "from whence cometh my help" is question or relative? Are there clues? And what can we deduce (other than poetic licence) from the tautologous redundancy in "from whence"?

[Simon]

Yes, as you say, different, dec. I'm sure you know I was being irreverent. I'm just glad we didn't do that!

As regards the fascinating input of Vint and MC, I have no Hebrew and wish I did, but I understood it to have similarities with Arabic. In Arabic, although there are also only two tenses - perhaps moods - plus, if you like, an imperative, you can indicate a definite future by prefacing the present with another word, sa. So, adhabu = I go, sa adhabu = I will go. I'm still only a basic Arabist, but as far as I know this applies for every verb. Can you not do this also in Hebrew?

[jean]

Would MC care to expound further on whether "from whence cometh my help" is question or relative? Are there clues?

It's difficult to see how there could be, as the ancients didn't go in for punctuation much; but the three versions in the Vulgate that I referred to above go like this:

1. ...unde veniet auxilium mihi
2. ...unde veniet auxilium meum
3. ...unde veniet auxilium mihi?

The form of words found in the first and third versions seem more question-like, but Translator 1 didn't think so!

(And note the future tense.)

[Miles Coverdale]

Would MC care to expound further on whether "from whence cometh my help" is question or relative? Are there clues? And what can we deduce (other than poetic licence) from the tautologous redundancy in "from whence"?

I'm sure it's a question, which is duly answered in v. 2 'My help cometh even from the Lord ...' Luther, however, got it wrong, for he wrote 'Ich hebe meine Augen auf zu den Bergen, von welchen mir Hilfe kommt.'

As to the 'tautologous redundancy', it's probably poetic licence. Don't forget 'from thence he shall come' in the Apostles' Creed.

In answer to Jean's question, the history of the Latin Psalter is complicated. You could do a lot worse than read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Psalters.

It must be said that the Vulgate has some bizarre mistranslations, of which my favourite is probably Ps. 78(79), v. 1

'Deus, venerunt gentes in hæreditatem tuam; polluerunt templum sanctum tuum; posuerunt Jerusalem in pomorum custodiam.'

This is duly translated by Coverdale in his diglot Psalter of 1540 as 'O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance : they have polluted thy holy temple, they have made Jerusalem a custody of apples.'

'Deus venerunt gentes in hereditatem tuam; polluerunt templum sanctum tuum; posuerunt Hierusalem in acervis lapidum' gives the more usual 'heap of stones'.

A very good book on the subject is The Psalms by Artur Weiser. Not bedtime reading but a fascinating book.

[Simon]

1. I raise my eyes heavenwards; it is from there that my help comes.

2. My help comes from the Lord God (himself), who has made heaven and earth.

[David-G]

This discussion brings back happy memories. Once a week the school met for Latin Prayers. There were two psalms, which alternated week by week. I can still remember them. One was (forgive my somewhat crude attempt at phonetic spelling, here "ie" is pronounced as in "lie"):

Ad tee levayvie ocyulose mayose, quie habitas in seelis.
Ecce siecut ocyulie servorum in manibus dominorum suorum, ieter ocyulie nostrie ad Dominum Dayum nostrum, doenec miseriaytur nostrie.)

This is the traditional English pronounciation.

[Miles Coverdale]

1. I raise my eyes heavenwards; it is from there that my help comes.

2. My help comes from the Lord God (himself), who has made heaven and earth.

I agree that the Latin can be rendered as a statement (if that was what you were trying to show). However, the Vulgate is by no means an unerring translation of the Hebrew, and those versions which are closer to the Hebrew, including more recent ones with the benefit of modern scholarship in ancient Hebrew (by no means an easy language), seem all to render it as a question. The Weiser book I mentioned does, and so does Coverdale's translation of a paraphrase by Johannes Campensis, professor of Hebrew at Louvain in the 1530s.

Here is a link to a parallel Hebrew–English translation.

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt26c1.htm

[Simon]

I agree that the Latin can be rendered as a statement (if that was what you were trying to show). However, the Vulgate is by no means an unerring translation of the Hebrew, and those versions which are closer to the Hebrew, including more recent ones with the benefit of modern scholarship in ancient Hebrew (by no means an easy language), seem all to render it as a question. The Weiser book I mentioned does, and so does Coverdale's translation of a paraphrase by Johannes Campensis, professor of Hebrew at Louvain in the 1530s.

Here is a link to a parallel Hebrew–English translation.

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt26c1.htm

Thanks MC.

This sort of thread in this forum gets better - not only do we get scholarship from members such as you & Jean & Dec, you even manage to reply appropriately to posts that are not complete! For as you surmised, that was indeed what I was suggesting, but I omitted to explain the reason for the translation. It was late though...

Thanks for the link: I don't have Hebrew, so I can't attempt my own translation, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

My objection, pace Weiser and the other historical figures, is more of a "logical" nature: if the second half of v1 is inded a question, whence (!) the logic of it? It's a non sequitur. But if it is a statement, it's a perfectly natural thing with which to follow on.

[Edit. Which in turn makes my suggestion of "heavenwards" for the obvious metaphorical allusion "to the hills" even more reasonable, if far less poetic and pleasant. (I would suggest).]

[Simon]

This discussion brings back happy memories. Once a week the school met for Latin Prayers. There were two psalms, which alternated week by week. I can still remember them. One was (forgive my somewhat crude attempt at phonetic spelling, here "ie" is pronounced as in "lie"):

Ad tee levayvie ocyulose mayose, quie habitas in seelis.
Ecce siecut ocyulie servorum in manibus dominorum suorum, ieter ocyulie nostrie ad Dominum Dayum nostrum, doenec miseriaytur nostrie.)

This is the traditional English pronounciation.

Amazing. I'd never have dreamed of anything quite so different as this, especially the long i sound.

Here's (a rough phonetic version of) what we would have done for the first line, which is what I understood to be Church Latin:

Ad tay levarvi occulos meos, kwi habitas in chaylis.

Any more versions from around the country?