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When God Spoke English.
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Monday, 21st February 2011
There's a good programme on Â鶹ԼÅÄ4 tonight at 9.00pm. It's called "When God Spoke English: the making of the King James Bible". The recent Radio4 programmes on the same subject were excellent, so hopefully this will be too.
The Radio Times comments that this translation's "enduring strength is all the more remarkable given the rolling political and religious landscape of the early 17th century and the translation's initial gigantic failure - a 1631 reprint even rendered one commandment as 'Thou shall commit adultery'! "
Apparently the programme delves into recently discovered manuscripts that reveal the translation process and asks why the result has had such a lasting legacy. Should be good.
I hate modern translations. A 2003 version of the Creation renders "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" as "God starts it all up and WHAP! Stuff everywhere."
The account of the Nativity is even worse "...she was found with child of the Holy Ghost" becomes "Mary fell pregnant."
I know I'm a snob, but I just can't *bear* it. -
Message 2
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Monday, 21st February 2011
Even if Tas seems to think that no-one starts any interesting threads but himself, I'll say that this is a fascinating subject Temp and I'm very interested to read any replies. It is a shame that I won't be able to see the programme.
And no, I don't think you are a snob to appreciate beautiful wording. -
Message 3
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Monday, 21st February 2011
Hi Temperance,
I am not a Christian, but the words of the St. James version are indeed very powerful and aesthetically pleasing. I have never seen a better translation.
I conjecture that your ancestors just spoke a more pleasing version of the English language. Just think of the best lines of Shakespeare. Instead of saying to lady Macbeth, "Shut up!" Shakespeare has him say "Prithee Peace!" a lot better than shut up. When Hamlet is speaking to his friends "This most excellent canopy the Earth, this brave over hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with a thousand fires...." Is there a better way to speak? or Macbeth's reaction on hearing about his wife's death, "Tomorrow and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!........"
They spoke far better language than we do and this is reflected in the St. James version. And they also used far fewer words than we do.
Tas -
Message 4
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Tuesday, 22nd February 2011
Tas,
They spoke far better language than we do and this is reflected in the St. James version.Ìý
I doubt that very much. The language in Shakespeare and the SJB was meant for public speaking. Rehearsed, carefully chosen words always sound better than common speech - which is what they're supposed to do, otherwise no one would listen. The same principle works with the images of movies or television or magazines - in those media everything looks better than in real life or else no one would bother to look.
And they also used far fewer words than we do.Ìý
Eh? -
Message 5
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 22nd February 2011
Gentlemen, *please* - it's the King - not Saint - James Bible!!
ID, the programme was excellent. It's on Â鶹ԼÅÄ IPlayer - do watch it if you get the chance.
Re "common speech" - I'm a bit surprised that Adam Nicolson did not say more about William Tyndale. The King James version actually was heavily dependent on the earlier translation: some scholars reckon more than half of the KJB was simply lifted from WT. And it is Tyndale's sublime simplicity of language - the common speech, in fact, of those "ploughboys" for whom he toiled - that makes the authorized version so memorable. But of course it's something more. Simplicity of a wonderfully rich, but very down-to-earth *English* vocabulary is delivered with the skill, grandeur and majesty of classical oratory. Street mets elite - utterly brilliant, and something the English have always been good at. But the ploughboy of course had also to be made fully aware of "the royalness of God and the godliness of kings" - James was quite insistent on that. And there were to be none of Tyndale's "pestilent glosses" that had so infuriated Henry VIII, and *certainly* none of those seditious, dangerous notations of the Geneva Bible, notations that had dared suggest that kings were tyrants.
I've been thinking a great deal this week about how political - and religious! - considerations can affect the translator's search for the mot juste. The arguments over that tricky little weasel word "ecclesia" is a good example of this. Does it mean church or congregation? I think Sir Thomas More and William Tyndale had had a slanging match over this seventy years before.
PS I was very shocked that James I told his bishops at one point that he "gave a t**d for their argument". What a rude man.
PSS When I tried to post a moment ago, my message was blocked. I'm afraid His Majesty's use of the "t" word shocked the Mods! I was told to "edit my message before trying to post again"! -
Message 6
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 22nd February 2011
Oops. I should have written "The arguments over that tricky little word ecclesia *are*..." not is! -
Message 7
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Tuesday, 22nd February 2011
You certainly can't beat the KJV for the beauty of its language, I'll grant you. The translators did a wonderful job in that respect.
However, given that it used a form of English that was archaic even at the time it was written you can hardly blame the Church for wanting more modern translations! Besides, some of the accuracy of the KJV translation is, I understand, decidedly dodgy.
I think you're being a little unfair in your choice of examples of modern translations. You quote from 'The Word on the Street' (initially published as 'The Street Bible') which makes no claims to be a literal translation or a replacement for more traditional translations (quite the reverse!), merely a paraphrasing of the most important passages in an "urban" style.
The KJV opens:
In the beginning God created the heaven and earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.Ìý
Compare this to the New International Version, one of the most popular of the more more editions, which begins:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.Ìý
Not so terrible, surely?
But I don't want this to become a thread better suited to the Religion and Ethics boards! Whatever you think of it, its history is fascinating. -
Message 8
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Tuesday, 22nd February 2011
I suppose that bit's all right, although I don't like "hovering" at all - "moved upon" is much more powerful, dramatic and mysterious.
But I know the argument is lost - the Church of England seems determined to abandon the BCP and the KJV. It's like abandoning Shakespeare and it *hurts*.
I don't like the modern hymns either: we had "Give Me Oil In My Lamp, Keep Me Burning" last week and I stood there mute with misery. They also had a lady waving flags about. What is this, I thought - the Nicene Creed in semaphore?
But enough of these uncharitable thoughts. You're quite right - let's keep it historical.
Besides, some of the accuracy of the KJV translation is, I understand, decidedly dodgy. Ìý
Is it? That's not the impression I got from Adam Nicolson and that chap from the University of Leicester. Is it just where the politics intruded - as with the translation of "ecclesia" which I mentioned above? -
Message 9
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Tuesday, 22nd February 2011
I'm not sure about the specifics of the issues, but I am assured that is the case by my sister, a Deacon (as of this July a Priest) in the C of E, who studied under some distinguished types at Oxford. If I remember I'll have to ask her for more details.
If I may deviate into a more general theme of translating the Bible into the vernacular, I remember reading some years ago that some of the earliest official translations of substantial passages (not the whole Bible) were made for the Templars. I believe the idea was that although they were for the most part ill-educated warriors (even the last Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, claimed to be illiterate although in the Middle Ages that could simply mean he didn't know Latin) as monks with only sporadic access to priests they needed to be familiar with the key points of scripture. Therefore the Church authorised some significant passages to be translated into their natives tongues.
Anyone know of more details, or even if it's true? -
Message 10
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 22nd February 2011
They spoke far better language than we do and this is reflected in the St. James version. And they also used far fewer words than we do.Ìý
Their official language was more alive than ours. Probably because this was the period when English had become the mixture we know today, and the blend was perfect for epistolary prose, lyric poetry and verse drama. It was not ready for the novel for another hundred years and more.
It was also the period before the explosion of imperial copmmerce degraded the language under a deluge of bureacracy, a process which continues with complications.
The best english is just as good, and the new infusions have enriched it.
English is invariably bad when it is used to impress or bully, which is the purpose of official prose and which becomes the necessary dialect of the business and media classes, and their imitators. -
Message 11
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Tuesday, 22nd February 2011
Temperance, this is for you!
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Message 12
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
They spoke far better language than we do and this is reflected in the St. James version. And they also used far fewer words than we do.
Ìý
I've often wondered why people in general think that the language of their forebears was better than their own - it is puzzling.
Even the King James Bible when it was written was written in a style that was no longer spoken by the English - even then if had an air of being from an earlier time and thus grander.
But even then, what's written on the page is not what is spoken by the populace. Whenver a piece is written, the spoken language varies greatly with a wide range of registers and formal styles. People looked up to certain individuals' way of speaking, and looked down on others' (often the young - even in the Middle Ages the young were being scapegoated for all sorts of things, including bad language!).
By the way Tas, Shakespeare's plays are not really how people really spoke - for starters it's usually in verse. But also, it's written for the stage and was written to grip and entertain - that is different from the everyday vernacular. -
Message 13
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
Just time for a quick reply.
Raundsgirl, I am well rebuked. Thank you for the link - it really did make me laugh. It has also made me think.
I may not wear awful hats and pearls (I don't! I don't!), but can it be that in my heart I am indeed a Hyacinth Bucket or a Mrs. Beamish? The horror of that thought absolutely overwhelms me. Is that really how you are perceived if you confess to loving the archaic language of the King James Bible, or dear old Archbishop Cranmer's beautiful, beautiful Book of Common Prayer? It is, isn't it? And can it really be true that I love these dusty old books more than I love my neighbour? Oh heck, I think I do, especially when my neighbour is a tambourine (and gay) bashing, Fundamentalist loony. But the irony of my own hypocrisy and of my lamentable lack of charity does not escape me - please believe me!
Perhaps I had better join the British Humanist Association after all - I really do like their little Darwin fish thing with legs - is it a crocodile? - and I suppose I could still read my King James Bible in secret, although, knowing me, I'd probably confess and they'd throw me out.
Sigh. There really is no place to run.
I tried to find a fish smiley to finish with, but there isn't one.
But let's get back to history - religion is so depressing at times, especially when it makes you look at yourself!
Regards,
A very subdued Temperance.
PS Ironically, Tyndale's translation of course was trendy and new and *hated* in its time. It horrified Thomas More - quite unhinged him, in fact. More ranted that Tyndale was "a hell-hound in the kennel of the devil...discharging a filthy foam of blasphemies out of his beastly, brutish mouth." And his work was as "full of errors as the sea is of waters", much of it "wilfully mistranslated...to deceive blind, unlearned people."
Yet according to Brian Moynahan, Tyndale's text was judged to be almost wholly accurate by the committee of divines appointed by James I to produce the Authorised Version.
Although he would not admit it, More's wrath was really about three *politically* charged words: Church or congregation, priest or elder, charity or love. Church was the really important one, because it was a word of particular importance to the Papacy. The only biblical justification for papal power over the church lies in the claim made in a single verse (eighteen) in Chapter 16 of Matthew's gospel. Tyndale translated Jesus in this crucial verse as saying: "And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter: and upon this rock I will build my *congregation*. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." To use "congregation" in place of "church" was to strip the papacy of its claim to have inherited the leadership of the Church from St. Peter. Revolutionary stuff. What I don't understand, though, is that the King James scholars put "Church" back! (They also put gates of Hades, which even I must admit is rather poor!)
But how I'm wittering and it's only 9.28am. Sorry. Will go and polish the silver now.
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Message 14
Posted by Patrick Wallace (U196685) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
They also had a lady waving flags about. What is this, I thought - the Nicene Creed in semaphore?Ìý
Perhaps she belonged to a silent order. -
Message 15
Posted by Mike Alexander (U1706714) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
Back on the subject of Shakespeare's English, one of its characteristics is that it is grammatically freer than what is considered good English today. Modern ideas of 'correct grammar' were mainly introduced in the Victorian era, and had these rigid forms been applied in Shakespeare's day, he would have had far fewer choices of word order and sentence structure, and his splendidly expressive language would have been the poorer for it.
As R.W. Burchfield frequently argued in his 3rd edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage, many of these constraints were the result of attempts by Victorian academics to artificially impose Latin forms on English, despite the fact that English has a quite different grammatical structure. -
Message 16
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
That process undertaken by the Victorians was underway by the 18th century, with Bishop Robert Lowth for example (mid-18th century Bishop of London) writing a grammar book that influenced the 19th century grammarians and which still has an influence today.
Through no good reason whatsoever, it is thanks to Lowth that people believe it is wrong to end sentences with prepositions, or to split infinitives. All very silly really when you think English grammar is moulded by the users of the language, and not set in stone by the speakers of a completely different language from a completely different part of Europe from 2,000 years ago.
Did any other European vernaculars have their grammar tinkered with so much by Latin-obsessed know-it-alls? -
Message 17
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
Did any other European vernaculars have their grammar timkered with so much by Latin-obsessed know-it-alls? Ìý
The history of the Academie Francaise is interesting. The original aim of this institution was "to labour with all the care and diligence possible to give exact rules to our language to render it capable of treating the arts and sciences."
Fair enough, but I wonder what ordinary French people thought/think of this august body? Perhaps they love it - I really don't know. I bet members of the Academie (who apparently have their own special uniform!) hate all those nasty franglais words which have sneaked into their language!
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Message 18
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
Temperance,
Gentlemen, *please* - it's the King - not Saint - James Bible!!Ìý
Oops.
Btw, I don't like these new emoticons. -
Message 19
Posted by Stoggler (U14387762) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
They have their own uniforms at the Academie Francaise...? How silly!
Like all such bodies, they were quite revolutionary at the outset, but have defended their proscriptions and prescriptions to the hilt ever since, rarely conceding any changes to the language.
At least with French, as a Latin-based language, I could understand scholars using Latin as a reason and basis for making changes to the language (wouldn't agree with it though).
I believe that the Academie does have official French words for a lot of computer-based terminology (for example), but often the English-derived versions are used in everyday language far more.
Agreed White Camry - the new emoticons are naff! -
Message 20
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
Hi Temperance,
Sorry for my infantile mistake: of course it is the King James bible. Perhaps in my subconscious mind I was thinking about the divine right of Kings , which was still in tact during James I.
How much influence, if any, do you think King James had on the creation of the translation that goes under his name?
I remember one of my teachers at school told me that the entire KJB comprises of a vocabulary of less than 1,000 words of the English language. Is this true? When we talk of the KJB does that also include the Old Testament?
Tas -
Message 21
Posted by Preacher (U2899850) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
Tas:
I remember one of my teachers at school told me that the entire KJB comprises of a vocabulary of less than 1,000 words of the English language. Is this true?Ìý According to a note someone scribbled in an old bible I bought for 5p at a car boot sale, there are 8674 different Hebrew words in the Bible, 5624 different. Greek words, and 12143 different English words in the King James Version.
When we talk of the KJB does that also include the Old Testament?Ìý Yes, the bible is made up of the Old ("Jewish") Testament and the New Testament. In the King James Version, there are 39 books of the OT and 27 of the NT. The Roman Catholics add some intertestamentary and deuterocanonical books, largely (one suspects) to differentiate their denomination from the protestant ones. -
Message 22
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
In reply to Stoggler:
By the way Tas, Shakespeare's plays are not really how people really spokeÌý Strangely enough, they are, even the aristocratic characters. Iambic is the natural rhythm of English still. Though it probably wasn't in Chaucer's day.
And the vernacular speech of the low characters is as authentic as we can know about.
So the generation of English which was used in The James Bible was a relatively new, and immensely powerful fusion of vocabularies and dialects with a strong basic rhythm. As in:
'The husband watched in horror as the concrete house of cards collapsed.'
Which I heard on the Â鶹ԼÅÄ news from Christchurch today. -
Message 23
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Wednesday, 23rd February 2011
Temperance, I thought Mrs Beamish might make you smile!
I have to agree with a friend of mine who said " I am not singing from any hymn book which has 'Fellowship' in the title!" What happened to reverence? -
Message 24
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Thursday, 24th February 2011
Hi Tas,
Sorry ... of course it is the King James bible. Ìý
And apologies from me, Tas and WhiteCamry, for my bad manners in pointing it out.
How much influence, if any, do you think King James had on the creation of the translation that goes under his name? Ìý
According to the programme, King James was very much involved. This new Bible was very much his baby! As I mentioned in an earlier post, James sometimes put his views across in rather an unkingly way. At what appears to have been a very rumbustious preliminary seminar at Hampton Court in 1604, James told the Puritan clergy there in no uncertain terms that "he gave a t**d" for their arguments!
I think I've been very unfair to James in the past. I've always seen him as a slobbering, uncouth idiot who was usually drunk - his father's son, in fact. And we've all perhaps been influenced by the famous oxymoron attributed to Henry IV of France (actually it was probaby Henry's chief minister, the Duc de Sully, who made the unkind remark) that James was "the wisest fool in Christendom".
James, however, was most definitely not a fool. He was a scholar (bit of a tedious swot, if the truth be known), but he was also a survivor. He'd learnt in a pretty hard school - Scotland - how to keep power-hungry, troublemaking factions under some sort of control. Now King of England (and Adam Nicolson in a lovely metaphor describes how James viewed his new realm as "a juicy peach"), this unusually canny Stuart, like his Tudor predecessors, Henry VIII and Elizabeth, was well aware of the enormous dangers posed by those lean and hungry Puritans. You had to keep 'em reasonably happy, true, but at the same time let them know who was boss. Would be revolutionaries had to be taught that ultimate power in England was a joint affair: God and King. The new Bible, with all its grandeur, dignity and majesty, was all part of the plan. Didn't work in the long run, of course. As Rudyard Kipling put it:
"He was the author of his line -
He wrote that witches should be burnt.
He wrote that monarchs are divine
And left a son that proved they weren't."
SST.
PS "Prithee, peace" doesn't really have the full force of "Shut up!", Tas. It's more, "Please, no more." When Shakespeare wanted to say shut up, he said shut up. Here's an *aristocrat* (the Duke of Albany) telling Lear's cow of a daughter, Goneril, to be quiet:
"Shut your mouth, dame, /Or with this paper shall I stopple it." ( King Lear Act V sc iii)
Now *that* could have come straight from the script of last night's "Eastenders"! -
Message 25
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Thursday, 24th February 2011
Falstaff to a laughing Nell Quickly: "Peace, good pint-pot; peace, good tickle-brain." - I Henry IV, II,iv.
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Message 26
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
Hi White Camry,
"And they also used far fewer words than we do."
smiley - yikesEh?Ìý
Considering how the English language is being bombarded by new terms, from America, India, Australia, France, Italy, etc. can you doubt that?
What did they call Pajamas in the time of King James? There are even two spellings for the Indian word: American 'Pajamas' and British 'Pyjamas'. Interestingly the American word is closer to the Indian word. Pajama means in Urdu 'Leg garment' and there are several varieties of Pajama in India, however, none is used for sleeping in.
What did they call a Bazaar in the 16th century? That is an Urdu word for a market.
The fact that English is a living language and so is constantly evolving and will continue to do so, to the extent that some Americans have difficulty in comprehending the English accent.
So it is clear that we have a lot bigger vocabulary than our forbears of the 17th century.
Tas -
Message 27
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
What did they call Pajamas in the time of King James?Ìý
They didn't - they wore nightshirts. -
Message 28
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
They didn't call it a Bazaar; it would have been either a market or a Fair. A bazaar, strictly speaking, is different, it's a kind of sale held as a fund-raiser where goods are either donated or sold commercially and a fee paid to the organisers.
Words are always coming and going into the English language. There are many words in Chaucer that we don't use any more, and the same with Shakespeare. 'Pyjamas' is only one of the Indian words that we use.There are so many that there is a dedicated dictionary (called Hobson-Jobson) for them.
I don't think you can really compare and contrast us with the Americans, Tas, I'm happy to agree with George Bernard Shaw who said we were divided by a common language. They have had influences on their vocabulary and pronunciation quite different from ours, and vice versa. Of course, being British, we know that we are immeasurably superior in every way, and leave it at that.
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Message 29
Posted by raundsgirl (U2992430) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
I meant to say that I have an Indian son-in-law. His father, when at home, would wear a form of pyjama made of a light cotton. Obviously, the British in India thought this was an ideal garment for sleeping in.
I think you are mistaken in calling it an Urdu word, it's much more widespread. My in-laws are Punjabi Hindus, but I worked with people from all over India and they all used the same word. -
Message 30
Posted by NormanRHood (U14656514) on Saturday, 26th February 2011
people talk like that in everyday life?
too much slang -
Message 31
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Hi Raundsgirl,
The Brits in India used most words largely from the Urdu language. They did use soem from other Indina languages like Bengali. The word 'Bungla,' Which is used evn in French as Buglow emantes from Bengali.
The greatest poet of 19th Century India is Ghalib, an Urdu poet, and he had a lot of British friends who learnt Urdu and in particular Urdu poetry from him. So Pajama is an entirely Urdu word, although it has been co-opted into other languages of India. 'Pa' is Persian for 'leg' and 'Jama' is Persian for 'garment' and Urdu uses a lot of words from Persian. In fact one of the great dialogues in Indian films is the Emperor Jehangir saying to a Rajput subject, "Sangram Singh, do not step out of your Jama (garment!)"
'Bazaar' in Urdu is just a 'market;' it does not have the added English connotation.
Like English, Urdu is also a largely hybrid language and borrows words from every source. In fact modern day Urdu speakers use a lot of English terms; however, there are words in it from Hindi, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, even French and probably a few from Punjabi, especially nowadays.
Punjabi is a regional language, some would call it a rural dialect. It borrows heavily from Urdu, however not from polished, elegant, classical Urdu.
I was just trying to point out to White Camry that I was correct in surmising that in 16th Century England the English language had many fewer words.
Tas -
Message 32
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Another Urdu word, used in English is Cummerbund. 'Cummer' in Urdu means 'waist' and 'bund' means a kind of chord or a strap. So in Urdu Cummerbund is the string by which the 'Pajama' is strapped to the waist.
See how interestingly words move from one language to another, keeping the main meaning still change the usage as for Bazaar and Bungalow.
Tas -
Message 33
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
If it is of any interest the word bazaar has also been adoped into the Greek language, pazari (no letter B in Greek) is used for an outdoor market. Even though Greek has a very good word, agora, which covers any market it is not used all that much these days. More often pazari will be used for an outdoor market or the English, supermarket, for the large modern sort of ones.
With language, the circle is ever turning. -
Message 34
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
"Shut your mouth Dame" I like it! Shakespeare is full of surprises. Just when you think he was so delicate as to say"Prithee Peace" to a lady, he comes up with "Shut your mouth dame!"
English has merged as a very polite language in the interim. My uncle, when he came to England from India in 1952, said one day," this is such a polite country, with all the 'Thank you's' and 'Please's' that if someone slapped me in a London, the first word from my mouth will be 'Thank you!'
Tas -
Message 35
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
Even though Greek has a very good word, agora, which covers any market... Ìý
And our word agoraphobia - literally fear of the marketpace - comes from that Greek word.
What thieves we English are - even much of our language is nicked from other nations. -
Message 36
Posted by islanddawn (U7379884) on Sunday, 27th February 2011
"And our word agoraphobia - literally fear of the marketpace - comes from that Greek word."
It certainly does Temp, and with the current price of food in Greece I, indeed, have developed a great fear of the marketplace, if not open spaces.
"What thieves we English are - even much of our language is nicked from other nations. "
Ah no, languages always borrow from each other. It is now Greek that is borrowing from others, particularly French and English for many modern words. I -
Message 37
This posting has been hidden during moderation because it broke the in some way.
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Message 38
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Tas,
So it is clear that we have a lot bigger vocabulary than our forbears of the 17th century.Ìý
Clearly, but I'd thought you'd meant the Shakespearean/KJB knack for using three florid words where one plain word would do. -
Message 39
Posted by Tas (U11050591) on Wednesday, 2nd March 2011
Hi White Camry,
I'd thought you'd meant the Shakespearean/KJB knack for using three florid words where one plain word would do.Ìý
I was told by a teacher in India, a Christian, that the KJB was very frugal in its vocabulary, that there were less than 1,000 distinct English words in the whole KJB. In this string, someone has corrected me on that. You "live and learn" so to speak.
À propos the languages that make up Urdu, I forgot about a very important language, 'Turkish.' In fact the word 'Urdu' itself is a Turkish word meaning a 'military camp,' probably because Urdu originally was the language of the military camps of the Mughal Armies, which contained people from many different backgrounds.
I was once in Istanbul and I could not understand the many Turkish signs except the odd word here or there. The it occurred to me that it is because Urdu and Turkish have some words in common.
Tas -
Message 40
Posted by OUNUPA (U2078829) on Thursday, 3rd March 2011
As for priests and the Old English. In 1977 was released the Sex Pistol's album-Never Mind The 'EGGS'
, Here's The Sex Pistols. Many musical shops put these posters in their windows advertising the record. One day the manager of one of them in Nottingham was arrested under the Indecent Advertisements Act of 1889. But the professor of linguistic of the Nottingham University proved that the word 'eggs' is a XVIII century nickname for priests. And then, because they generally seemed to speak such a lot of nonsense in their sermons, 'eggs' gradually came to mean 'rubbish'. -
Message 41
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Melvyn Bragg is presenting a documentary tonight (Â鶹ԼÅÄ2 8.00pm): "The Book That Changed the World".
In it he will argue that the King James Bible was "the seedbed of Western democracy, the activator of the abolition of the slave trade, the debating dynamite for brutal civil wars in Britain and America." Bragg also (according to this week's Radio Times) argues that the KJV helped inspire the American Declaration of Independence, the rise of scientific enquiry and the flowering of English Literature. Hurrah!
"We sense," says one reviewer of the programme rather unkindly, "that Bragg would ascribe almost anything good since 1611 to the King James Version."
Followed at 10.45pm by Superman (Henry Cavill), aka the Duke of Suffolk, being sent off to flatten the French.
A good evening on TV. -
Message 42
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Temperance
I suspected that it was you who brought this thread back to life in honour of this programme by another Melvyn.
Cass -
Message 43
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Hi Cass,
Well, the trouble is when you say you love the KJB (and Tyndale and Cranmer), people think you're just some mad old bat banging on about religion. It's about so much more - as I'm sure the excellent Melvyn will make very clear!
Kind Regards,
SST. -
Message 44
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 12th March 2011
Hi Temperance
As you know (I believe) I rate Thomas Cranmer as THE crucial man. Once he had crafted a liturgy that was truly Catholic (i.e. able to accommodate all Christians of goodwill) the Church in England was set on a course that made it possible for those who believed in English peace to keep it "while all about were losing their heads."
I have missed Melvyn now.. But I will catch up with him on iplayer.
I hope you have enjoyed it.. And will enjoy the "Tudor fix".
Why has Minette abandonned her Welsh thread? I wonder whether she has gone to Sheffield to join the disenchanted exLib-Demers.
Regards
Cass -
Message 45
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
It was a good programme, Cass - well worth watching.
I had no idea that the words engraved around the Liberty Bell were from the King James Bible (Leviticus 25:10) - "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof..."
I thought they were from Tom Paine!
Melvyn Bragg also acknowledged the huge debt the scholars working on the KJV owed to William Tyndale. MB also pointed out that the Geneva Bible - which had a huge influence on Shakespeare - was largely based on Tyndale's translation.
No sign of Cranmer in "The Tudors", I'm afraid. Our man mysteriously disappeared sometime back in Series Two. But Hugh Latimer made his debut last night, looking impossibly young, ardent and handsome for a fifty-six year old ex heretic-burner. They've made him Katherine Parr's chaplain (wait till Bishop Gardiner finds *that* out - he'll go ballistic) which is all wrong. Oh well, mustn't grumble I suppose because last night's episode wasn't quite as silly as usual - although I'm not sure whether the muskets used at the siege at Boulogne were correct. They all looked a bit Civil Warish to me, but then I know nothing of such things.
I expect Minette will return after a suitable interval. I was quite fearful for her at one stage - I thought folk were going to start pelting her with rock buns and fondant fancies. -
Message 46
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
I mean Catholic-burner! Latimer officiated at the particularly nasty slow roasting of poor Friar John Forest in 1538. -
Message 47
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
Temperance
Thanks for the recommendation.. I will try to catch up with it..
For my sins I have a long standing obsession with rugby- nb English.. And I find these Six Nations week-ends quite exhausting emotional roller coasters- It is a pity that I didn't just watch more of the English women beating Scotland 89-0.
The absence of Cranmer from "The Tudors" I have to say came as welcome news.. It rather suggests that his I believe important relationship with Henry VIII was really outside of the drama of courtly life- in a better and largely more private place. But I may just be pandering to long-standing prejudices.
Regards
Cass -
Message 48
Posted by NormanRHood (U14656514) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
did people speak like the kjv bible in 1611 or just the educated?
-
Message 49
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
NormaRHood
I think that very few people of any age speak the exactly the way that they put things down in writing..English teachers refer to the different "registers" of language, according to one Government Inspector who gave us a talk many years ago.
What we do know, however, is that people in courtly circles in Elizabethan times frequently liked to create and speak poetry- and a poem (and this is Temperance's field much more than mine) really is intended to be what one might call a jewelled necklace of sound and meaning. Something a bit special.
Walter Raleigh was perhaps more of a universal renaissance man than most, but the biography that I read about him asserted that composing verse was quite a regular- if not mundane thing- in his day. And courtiers, like guests at Victorian dinner parties , or even Jane Austen 'soirees' would be expected to be able to "do a turn" when most of the time people had to entertain themselves. Shakespeare of course used poem messages. Malvollio in Twelfth Night for example. Or R&J the balcony scene. And Shakespeare was a popular actor and writer in his time. As for "the educated", that whole idea had to wait until the book revolution that gathered force during the Eighteenth Century, and education really only became a requisite during the Nineteenth Century. That was when "required reading", apart from the Bible could be clearly defined for anyone to consider themselves "educated"- i.e.knowing something about everything, and everything about something.
I always recall some lines from a letter by Raleigh to I think Robert Cecil on the death of his wife, urging him not to grieve too long because- "Grief draws not back the dead to the living: but the living to the dead."
The Poetic Age lasted until the Age of Revolution when it was replaced by the Prosaic Age. So Georgian England, and in fact the Europe of the Enlightenment, was a period when people stored up "bons mots" that they could bring out often quoting the famous wits and savants. The Second Viscount Palmerston, who kept a 'joke book' most of his life, on his Grand Tour as a young man had the chance to visit Voltaire, and he wrote home in a letter that it would be hard to choose between the man and his books, but if forced to he would chose the man as more interesting. I wonder how many modern authors this would apply to.
As for the KVJ BIble, it was after all supposed to be or to convey the Word of The God of Creation.. I think that people have now settled for modern versions that convey a much smaller God, or seem more comfortable in our personal or pocket- congregation world.
Cass -
Message 50
Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Sunday, 13th March 2011
Good question, NormanRHood.
William Tyndale, to whom King James's divines owed so much, declared that it was his intention that his translation of the New Testament would "make a boy who driveth the plough know more of Scripture than the priest himself". Much of the vocabulary that WT used was therefore very much taken from the speech of ordinary people. Tyndale's language was simple, earthy, direct. The later translators recognised the genius of this, and the 1611 version wisely retained all the vigour and vitality of WT's homely vernacular.
But the the team working on the new Bible *were* indeed all highly educated men - they were masters of style, trained in the arts of rhetoric. It is from those University men that we get the grandeur and majesty of the KJV prose - the incredibly effective rhythmical patterns and rolling sentence structure that have resonated down the centuries. The 1611 men knew their version would be read aloud in churches throughout the land and they wanted it to have *impact*!
Ordinary folk were exposed to this week in, week out as they attended their parish services - it was a grounding in language - an education - second to none. Before you knew it the ploughboys (and girls!) were quoting - and imitating - the language of the University elite. You can recognise that influence for example in some of the dialogue of the rustics in Thomas Hardy's novels. Here's Joseph Poorgrass (local drunk!) holding forth in "Far From the Madding Crowd":
" 'He is a clever man, and 'tis a true comfort for us to have such a shepherd," murmured Joseph Poorgrass, in a soft cadence. " Let us feel full of thanksgiving that he is not a player of ba'dy songs...for 'twould have been just as easy for the Lord to have made the shepherd a loose low man - a man of iniquity, so to speak - as what he is. Yes, for our wives' and daughters' sakes let us feel real thanksgiving.'
' Yes,' added Joseph beginning to feel like a man in the Bible, ' for evil do thrive so in these times that ye may be as much deceived in the clanest (sic) shaved and whitest shirted man as in the raggedest tramp upon the turnpike.' "
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