Daily Breakfast #267
Today: a report about the Orange County fires; the different versions of the Our Father; Aramaic and Latin; English Pronunciation: Brits, Yanks, Aussies, Kiwis and the Dutch; Dr. Who, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.
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Nice to hear that you are a Doctor Who fan! I have been a fan for about 20 years. The actor you were trying to think of was Tom Baker, one of my favorites as well
I don’t think I can pronounce Vonhögen, so take my critique lightly. However, Jimmy Akin’s name is not pronounced as the English word “akin” (meaning related), but rather like “achin’” (meaning sore, aching, without the final G sound: “Oh, my achin’ head!”
If this doesn’t make sense, just ask Greg to say it for you on iChat…
Hello Father,
I wanted to comment on the episode of Enterprise about cloning. It sounds very familiar to the movie “The Island” where people are cloned and when the need arises for the person has a body failure, the clone is ‘harvested’. Two of the clones escape the company and run in fear, not knowing what is going on.
thanks,
Louis in Vermont, USA
I will have to bow to Paul Wilson’s corrections of our American pronunciations for the most part. (After all, he speaks with a British accent and as he says - we still call it English.) I will, however, respond to his comment that he doesn’t know where we come up with “aluminum.” He drove me to the web, where I found this Q & A from a professor of linquistics at the Univ. of Michigan - http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/aluminum.html
The most pertinent paragraph: “I can’t tell you where it started, precisely, but the OED notes that
the discoverer of Al, Sir Humphry Davy, gave it the name ALUMINUM.
Later it was apparently changed (one wonders by whose authority) to
“harmonize best with other names of elements”. Apparently whoever
was given charge of this responsibility failed to execute it completely,
since the original form ALUMINUM is utterly standard in the USA.” Whole article is interesting, and here at least we can agree to disagree.
Blessings on your work and all your podcasts, Father.
Marty
The comments on English pronunciation and searching for the right word in a foreign tongue made me think of an incident that happened to me in the early 70’s. My late husband and I were taking care of a hotel in a 17th c. canal house in central Amsterdam for our Dutch friends who owned it. They went away for the weekend leaving us in charge of their business and their son, then around 8 or 9. Shortly after they left on Friday afternoon, the electricity blew on the top 2 floors of the hotel. No lights, no power, nothing! My husband went in search of someone to fix it and I was left to try to explain the situation to the guests arriving from Germany and the eastern part of Holland. My Dutch was pretty basic and I couldn’t think of the word for electricity. The best I could come up with was to say that there were no lights upstairs. Unfortunately, I kept saying Er is geen lucht boven (there is no air upstairs) instead of Er is geen licht boven (there is no light upstairs). They looked at me rather strangely - no doubt wondering why there was this strange American girl telling them that they wouldn’t be able to breathe upstairs. It just shows what a difference one letter can make.
By the way, I think Dutch is a lovely language. OK - not as musical as Italian but it does have a lilting character that is quite charming. And if I spoke Dutch as well as Father Roderick speaks English, I should be very pleased.
Regarding the english version of the Our Father: I learned from an Irish catholic priest that this translation was settled upon by King Henry VIII, because, in his time there were so many different translations around that people didn’t know which one to use, so he ordered a team to come up with an official royal translation and it gained precedence over all other translations, and indeed it has stuck!
What is curious is that this translation uses the ‘thou’ form to address the Father, whereas this has entirely disappeared from modern english. (Our Father, (thou) who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . . )
Father Roderick, maybe you could call for volunteers — since you have so many other projects going on so successfully! — to update the translation of this prayer to modern english, er, and american (and canadian and australian?)
God bless and thanks for the fascinating info on the aramaic version!