On Tongues of Men and Angels

ON TONGUES OF MEN AND ANGELS

Esperanto, PIE in the Sky and Linguistic Devolution

By PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Et incirco vocatum est nomen ejus Babel, quia ibi confusum est labia universae terrae 

et inde dispersit eos Dominus super faciem cunctorum regionem. - Genesis 11:9

IN 1887, Dr L.L. Zamenhoff published Lingvo Internacia, which outlined the grammar and structure of a proposed universal language.  The artificial language was called by Zamenhoff's nom-de-plume, Esperanto - the word for "one who hopes" in the new language.  Appropriate, as Zamenhoff was a dreamer. 

He also tried to invent a universal religion based on the Golden Rule.  To date, the language has been more successful; but there are other dreamers out there working on a common denominator creed.

In his Etymologiae, St Isidore of Seville lists 72 languages, which he says came into being at Babel.  Of these, Latin, Greek and Hebrew are pre-eminent, sanctified, as it were, on the Cross.  This highly influential mediaeval work caused some embarrassment here: Irish was excluded in some version of the text.  But this became an opportunity to suggest that the common ancestor of the Gael, Fénnius Farsaid, took the finest elements of the 72 languages and concocted a new tongue which he named after his grandson, Góedel.  Gaelic.  There is a subtle hint that Irish is a reconstruction of the common language spoken from Creation to Babel.

Modern endeavour and mediaeval legend fly in the face of the reality of the diversity of tongues.  The Bible and the Church's tradition teach this to be a curse on man, even after the Fall.  Modern scientists and linguists see things differently.  Languages are held to be the products of millenia of evolution, from animal grunts to the sophisticated jargon we employ today.

 Becoming simpler

Observation does not bear this out.  Five thousand years of written records show that language is simplifying.  Anyone who has studied an ancient tongue, even very superficially, will tell you a dead language is more complex and exact than a living language.

In Europe, most languages appear to be interrelated. Scholars abandoned the notion that Sanskrit was the mother-language.  It is now believed our Indo-European ancestors spoke a common tongue which predates even Sanskrit.  So if you take Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Old Church Slavonic, Old Irish, Old Welsh, Old Lithuanian, Gothic and many others, you can work out how the first Caucasians spoke.  Thus you can reconstruct Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

These alleged Aryans occupied most of the lands between these islands and Central Asia.  The Old Irish rí and the Old Welsh rhi have the Gaulish suffix  -rix(e.g Vercingetorix) as their cousin.  The Latin rex is more distant and the Sanskrit ráj-á is even further removed.  These point to the PIE *rék-s (king).  Likewise, Old Irish fer (now fear) and Latin vir possibly derive for the PIE wiros.  So if we recall the word werewolf, we see an Old English equivalent frozen in Modern English.

Fruitless investment

It is not always so direct.  Our Irish antecedents had a difficulty with the sound "p".  So én(éan=bird) is *petnos in PIE.  This suggests the Latin penna (feather), which we see in English pen, Old Irish penn (peann).  Penna is the word for both pen and feather in Italian (like French plume, German feder and Russian перо). See what you get served if you order penne in an Italian restaurant.  Of course a pen is also a female swan.

The Latin palma, Greek παλαμη and Old English folm mean "palm".  The Old Irish lám (lámh) and Old Welsh llaw (hand) are similar enough to give *plhma (palm).  To find out what our forebears called their hands would involve going to Armenian and Hittite.  Much money is invested in the reconstruction of PIE, especially in Germany and Austria, in spite of the fact there will never be a shred of evidence anyone ever spoke it.

Courtesy of Attila

Not every European language is Indo-European.  Finnish, Estonian, Magyar and Turkish form a group on their own.  Their closest relatives are found in the Central Asian former Soviet republics (and also in Manchuria).  These were imported into Europe in the Dark Ages, courtesy of one Attila the Hun.

This leaves two unaccounted for: Basque and Georgian.  Recent research has suggested the two are distantly related and may be classified as Pre-Indo-European tongues.  There may well have been a common language across the continent, displaced by invaders from the Caucasus.  Perhaps the monuments of the pre-Celtic languages in Ireland might give us some direction as to language - as might the Pictish inscriptions in Scotland.  But where does that leave PIE?  And what did each language develop from?

Other coincidences exist which the scientific community ignore.  I know of a Basque who tried to buy onions at a market in the Himalayas..  He exhausted his range of major European languages, and the Nepalese vendor only knew what he meant when he used his native Basque.  Researchers into the Welsh tale of Prince Madoc reaching America in a coracle (before Columbus) stumbled upon similarities between Welsh and Pawnee.  A regular Brandsma Review reader told me much of the similarities between many words in Irish and Arabic.

I will not dwell on these suggested links between Basque and Nepalese, Welsh and Pawnee or Irish and Arabic.  But can the construction of PIE be beneficial?  Contrast PIE and Esperanto.  Both are artificial languages created from the existing vocabularies of "Indo-European" tongues - Esperanto from the living, to produce a simple language anyone could learn to speak; PIE from the dead, to arrive at a putative common ancestor.

In effect, PIE is an élitist Esperanto providing intellectual stimulation for etymologists.  Both experiments mock evolution, for if PIE is the alpha and Esperanot the omega, we would have a highly complex tongue devolving into a simple language.

Anarchy and dictatorship

It might be said language is being debased, that Gresham's Law applies to language as to money (or religion).  Let the doubtful listen to teenagers speaking among themselves.  It appears that television, inter alia, has speeded up the process of simplification.

Simultaneously, I can see two trends from the academic ivory towers.  One is towards linguistic anarchy - the neologism or Newspeak.  Write your own tongue as you go along, like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass.  Secondly we have the Thought Police, taking a leaf out of George Orwell's 1984.  It's called PC.  The intellectual Mandarin class have successfully imposed "gender" in place of "sex" (though I am waiting to hear charges of "genderism" levelled against those who used to be "male chauvinists").

Though it is now acceptable to use four-letter words and take the Holy Name in vain, there are a great many words which may no longer be used.  So much for freedom of expression.

In Gulliver's Travels, Swift describes a race of talking horses, the Houyhnhms.  These noble creatures ask how one could pervert such a magnificent gift as the spoken word by telling a lie.  One wonders what the Dean would make of those who use language games to bully the masses into accepting a political agenda, as Mussolini did in Fascist Italy.

Thus the Church chooses her time to venacularise the Mass.  It is no surprise that there is an analogue of Babel among Catholics.  We no longer understand each other as we used to.  Moreover, the abandonment of a sacral tongue for the secular has left the language of the Mass open to the petty political demands of the vocal few, and to the cultural swing to the banal which has no place in something so venerable and so sacred.

Whereas the original Pentecost was marked by and understanding of diverse tongues, the promised second Pentecost has brought the opposite.  It is time to sit down and meditate upon Babel and Pentecost.  Veni, Sancte Spiritus!

The Brandsma Review, Issue 37, June-July 1998

Engaging the National Patron

ENGAGING THE NATIONAL PATRON
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS
Vivo autem iam non ego vivit vero in me Christus.(Galatians 2, 20)

ONE EXERCISE I did in the New Year was a response to a challenge by Joe McCarroll was to return to the fundamental documents concerning Christianity in Ireland. I am referring to St Patrick’s Confessions and Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. I worked through Dr Ludwig Bieler’s Latin text, helpfully provided in Bishop William Philbin’s Mise Pádraig and Bishop Joseph Duffy’s Patrick in His Own Words. Both bishops provided their own translation, Mgr Philbin in Irish and Mgr Duffy in English.  The former Bishop of Clogher, though, provided a free translation and also used The Jerusalem Bible as a model for the numerous scriptural quotes, for which the saint used the pre-Vulgate Latin translations. In this, Mgr Duffy followed the trends in the 1970s which elevated readability over literal accuracy in scripture and liturgy alike. But let me state that the notes in the bishop’s text are also valuable and it is possible to consult the Latin text with the English translation. For those who read Irish, Mgr Philbin’s text is both accurate and elegant and he too provides an interesting commentary.

Irish history begins in 431. This is not to say nothing happened in Ireland before this; there is plenty of evidence that much did. What it does say is that an entry in the Prosper of Aquataine’s Chronicle for this year tells us that Pope Celestine IV sent Bishop Palladius to preach to the Irish believing in Christ.  This was the initial point of a continuum which marked the systematic recording of Irish history since then, which what I mean by the first statement. The sentence itself tells us that there were Irish Christians prior to this date. There are several reasons why this was the case. First of all, there was much commercial interaction between Ireland and what is now Wales. The languages of both were still mutually comprehendible. There was population movement and trade between the two countries. Ireland was a good place to go in periods of persecution when it was still an issue in the Roman Empire. There were conversions of native Irish. And of course, many Christians were brought to Ireland as slaves.

We do not know a lot about Palladius, but the little we know is quite interesting. He was associated with St Germanus of Auxerre. St Germanus was in Britain in 429 to deal with the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius himself was British and though the case is made that he was personally orthodox, he has left his name on a heresy. He met both Ss Augustine and Jerome and made an impression. St Jerome said he was bloated with Scottish (i.e. Irish) porridge (Scotorum pultibus proegravatus). Pelagianism rejects Original Sin and the Grace of God, so Pelagians believe they gain heaven by their own labour alone and Christ is an exemplar rather than a saviour. Palladius went from Britain to Ireland where his mission was probably more successful than we imagine. But he was only the precursor in the story.

Of Welsh, Cornish and Breton stock

Before I even begin on St Patrick, there is much controversy over both his date and place of birth. I have heard a lot of arguments locating Bannava Tabarniae in Scotland, England and France, but as none of the above were yet settled by Scots, Anglo- Saxons or Franks, the location is irrelevant to the saint’s nationality. St Patrick was a Roman citizen and ethnic Celt. His family were well off, had been Christian for a few generations and seemed to have had interests in both Britain and Gaul. Mgr Duffy argues the saint’s Latin had a Gaulish accent, but this may be a product of education rather than upbringing. There was a British colony in present day Scotland, but it seems very far from a Gaulish base. I am convinced by the argument that “Tabarniae” could be the genitive for “Sabarnia”, which could indicate somewhere around the mouth of the Severn (“t” can replace an initial “s” in Celtic genitives, with the pattern crossing into Celtic Latin). Calling the saint a Welshman is an anachronism, but he was certainly of the stock of the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons. The saint was born in the late fourth century at the earliest, but I am more persuaded for the theory that his mission began in the 450s rather than the traditional 432 which seems much too close to Palladius’ apostolate. In this regard, I would calculate that the saint was born in the early fifth century.

The young saint had no interest in Christianity. He tells us that before his abduction he was guilty of some sin or other which was sufficiently grave to cause him shame much later in life. It has been suggested by modern commentators that this sin was sexual, but this would not have had particular opprobrium attached among young men of his class in the late Roman Empire, so the suggestion it was murder is a bit more convincing. St Patrick believed his abduction was a punishment for this sin. He was taken to Ireland and sold into slavery, with members of his household and others. He was sold to a farmer to keep flocks and herds, in a place now believed to be Slemish in Co Antrim. The later biographers of St Patrick state he kept pigs, but present day farmers believe only sheep would survive on the higher slopes of Slemish and pigs and cattle would be confined to lower ground. It is possible the saint did a variety of work, but what is clear is that his Christianity came alive on Slemish. Here he prayed one hundred times a day and one hundred times a night. He was eventually guided by a dream to run two hundred miles away to find a ship to take him to Gaul, Mgr Philbin suggests around Killala Bay. Initially, he was not admitted as he refused to compromise his new found Christianity. The captain thought better of it and sent a sailor after him to bring him back. It turned out that his presence was useful.  The ship landed in Gaul and the crew wandered severa lweeks in the wilderness before asking Patrick topray. After which they came upon a herd of pigs. The devastation in Gaul testifies to the barbarian assaults as the Roman Empire was breaking down in the West.

Internalised the Scriptures

St Patrick was reunited with his family at the age of twenty-two. They wanted him to stay, but he knew he had to go elsewhere. He missed out on several valuable years’ in education, which is seen in his Latin, but he did study. If the Confession and the Letter to Coroticus show anything, it is how he internalised the scripture. This is evident after he returned to Ireland.  Though later writings give a developed narrative on St Patrick’s work in Ireland, the saint himself has little to say. A strong case can be made that Letter came before the Confession. The Confession appears to be a justification made afterward. In the Letter, the saint doesn’t mince his words about the raids on Ireland.  Many of his own converts were murdered or enslaved. He attempted to ransom the converts but was rebuffed. He excommunicated all the perpetrators.  This is where the bone of contention appears to have arisen: the Church in Britain were not prepared to recognise this and carried on as if nothing had happened.  At this stage, the saint produced his own apologia.

Unconventional

The Confession is not a conventional autobiography, but does give us most of the reliable biographical information we have about St Patrick. To a large extent it is a reaction against the charges made against him by the British Church. In this respect, he is very defensive. No one can doubt the man’s sincerity, but if there is a recurring theme again and again, it is his refrain that he did not carry out the work, but that God worked through him. This is an assertion of orthodox theology against Pelagianism. It happens too often not to be deliberate. The context of a British church riddled with Pelagianism while denigrating Patrick’s personal integrity occurs to one straight away. Issues such as his lack of polished Latin or the unknown sin of his youth came up at the time, and he justified himself. They also suggested he made money from the apostolate, when in fact he spent the little he had to work with.

Trials like Saint Paul’s

One imagines that St Patrick identified very closely with St Paul. He quotes him again and again. In recounting his own trials at the hands of some more hostile recipients, St Patrick’s list is very similar to that of St Paul. Though he was not martyred, he came close enough to it on a few occasions. In relation to his effect on those he preached to, one upper class lady came to him within days of receiving baptism seeking to take the veil. Though St Patrick’s own writing plays down the miraculous, one is impressed that the saint is living in the wake of the original Pentecost with all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost, nowhere more than in the response of the Irish to his preaching.

The Confessions may be termed a working autobiography or apologia, but it lacks finality. This is par for the course in such works. However, at the time of writing, the saint concluded that the substantive work of converting the Irish to Christianity was done. To a certain extent, he seems to have believed himself to be in the end times, because he states that the message of Christ was brought to the world’s edge. This was, and is, one of the conditions which must precede the last times. St Patrick lived through the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west. Though he was first taken from his privileged position as a Roman citizen, he later chose to forego it for the greater glory of God.  But he was aware that for a great many people just like him, there was little choice in the matter. In this way, the Confessions has a flavour of the Apocalypse as well as of the Acts. St Patrick did not completely obliterate heathendom in Ireland. It took several centuries after him before this was the case: evangelisation is a slow and drawn out process and our own day shows us it can never be taken for granted and frequently needs renewal. But what the mission of the national apostle ensured was that it would happen. The impression he made on the Irish, particularly on the nobility in the north of the country which had been least touched by pre-Patrician Christian incursions, put the chain of events in motion which would result in the nation embracing the faith in its entirity sooner rather than later.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 137, March-April 2014

A Personal Reflection on Translating the Mass

A PERSONAL REFLECTION ON TRANSLATING THE MASS

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

IN 1981, I went to Coláiste na bhFiann for the first time.  This was not in the Gaeltacht, but rather was an Irish-medium summer boarding school operated along modified military regulations.   Though it was not a Catholic institution, Catholic students had to attend daily Mass and rosary in Irish and to know all the Mass responses and mysteries of the rosary in Irish.

I quickly realised that there were differences between the Mass in Irish and in English.  As a 12 year old, I reasoned English was a major international language and Irish was a minority language even on its own turf, so the universal Church would ensure that English was correct, but Irish would probably fall under the radar.

One factor did strike me.  I read Scripture as a schoolboy.  Among my favourite Gospel stories was the healing of the centurion's servant (Matt. 8, 5-13).  I never made any connexion between this and "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed", but the correct Irish, A Thiarna, ní fiú mé go dtiocfá faoi mo dhíon, ach abairse an focal agus leigheasfar m'anam, automatically brought this into my mind.  Even non-goidelophones will probably identify m'anam with anima mea.

I learned Latin in school, but it was a very long time before I attended any Latin liturgy.  However, after school (1986-88), I spent two years in an Augustinian community where a Polish novice announced that the English rendering of the Mass was a poor translation.  Our confreres didn't see the issue, but I took a vinyl recording of a Mozart Mass which gave parallel texts of the ordinary form in Latin and several other languages in its sleeve cover.  I looked at English and French and could see that the French was closer to the Latin than the English and, as far as I could see, this was the case with Spanish and Italian.  My memory of Mass in Irish confirmed that I was mistaken as to which language gave a better translation.
Closer to the Latin
Two years later (1989), I went to Germany for the first time and began to learn German.  I lived in the cathedral parish in Stuttgart and attended Mass there several times a week (work permitting).  I saw that the German Mass was also much closer to the Latin proto-Mass than the English.  I returned to studies in Maynooth where I made the acquaintance of a retired New York businessman, originally from Clones, who had studied for the Pallottine society in Thurles 50 years before.  He frequently made the point that the English translation of the Mass was very poor. This man, now deceased, made many friends among the student body and was very generous towards the college's deacons.  I don't believe I was the only one who heard this argument.

From 1990 to 1991, I was publicity office of Maynooth Students' Uinon and my principal duty was the production of a student journal.  I followed the principle that this magazine was for all Maynooth students rather than just a few vocal, radicalised and promiscuous lay students in the Arts Faculty.  This meant having a religious affairs column.  The English translation of the Mass was one of the first targets in a moderately conservative opinion piece.  This can be seen in St Pat's Chat, Volume 3, No.1 in the John Paul II Library in Maynooth.  This was over 20 years before the emergence of the new English translation.

Over the next decade I became acquainted with the late Proinsias Ó Fionnagáin SJ, a Monaghan-born linguist and historian.  An tAthair Ó Fionnagáin told us that he studied the draft of the English Mass following its publication in 1971 and then wrote to his provincial to tell him that he was prepared to say Mass according to the 1969 Missal in Latin, in French and in Irish, but he was not prepared to do so in English as the translation departed too far from the Latin original.
Ambiguous phrase
At the same time, I did some work on assisting the translation of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom into Irish under the direction of the late Archimandrite Serge Keleher (for reference rather than liturgical use, though the Irish has been used from time to time).  Mgr Keleher insisted that the translation be as literal as possible in regard to the Greek and Old Church Slavonic typical editions.  Translations into English, French, German and Italian were looked at, but none was followed as a model.  The archimandrite's view of the English version of the Roman Mass was that it was a model of how not to do things.

Versions of the Mass in other languages are often far form perfect, but English has been particularly egregious in its departure from Latin.  This has been accentuated by the use of English rather than Latin as a template for new translations in mission territory.  But other versions have their problems.  For example, German renders pro multis as für alle, which is the same as the inaccurate English "for all"; für viele* would be correct.  The committee who drew up the Irish translation of the Mass wished to use ar son chách, which is "for all".  (Father Benedict** used ar son na sluaighte-"for  the hosts"-in the Latin-Irish missal in use before the liturgical changes.  This is ambiguous.***)

At the time the draft Irish missal was in circulation, the then Archbishop of Tuam, Mgr Joseph Cunnane announced he would not permit this version of the Mass to be said in his diocese.  Tuam has the largest Gaeltacht of any Irish diocese and Archbishop Cunnane held a masters of arts in Irish as well as an earned doctorate in divinity****.  The compromise formula was ar son an chine dhaonna which literally is an ambiguous "for the human race", which seems to follow the French pour la multitude.  French is the only major European language which does not translate pro multis as "for all".  One suspects it is more than a coincidence that several translation committees made the same deviation from the Latin.
Impoverished version
After four decades of discussion, the new missal in English is ready and is being rolled out in a piecemeal manner, which varies considerably from diocese to diocese.  In Meath, this has been more progressive than in Armagh or Dublin.  In Meath, one could remark on the similarity between the English and the German Masses at a very early stage.  The translation goes beyond mere accuracy.  The language of the new missal is more sacral and formal than previously.  It has also evoked the anger of an ageing generation of clerics who seem to think nobody wanted this.  I wrote this piece to illustrate how that has never been my experience.l

Anglophones are not renowned for learning other languages, but the monoglot nature of the opposition to the new translation astounds me, especially in a country where there are two vernacular languages, one of which is more faithful than the other to the ordinary form Latin Mass.  A cursory comparison between the Confiteor or Gloria in English with that in Latin or another language will show not only how inaccurate, but also how impoverished the current English version is.  It has been pointed out that the arguments against the new translation have been very patronising towards the majority of the faithful.  However the main issue seems to be the alleged exclusivity of the language.
Inclusive Turkish
This is a case of déjà vu.  Similar arguments were brought out in relation to the tardy English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church nearly 20 years ago.  But the arguments regarding exclusivity/inclusivity are themselves products of a monoglot mentality.  Most other languages have a marked tendency towards so-called exclusivity.  German is particularly "bad".  I am informed Turkish on the other hand is a model inclusive language.  How many people would entertain the argument (which no doubt has been made from time to time) that women in Turkey are in a better position that women in Germany or Austria?  The females among Germany's large Turkish community certainly have not said much about this.

In our own country, one of the most prestigious positions in the Irish public service is that of Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners.  The current Chairman is a woman and there are no deafening cries to call her "chairperson".  I also recall informal situations where females addressed mixed audiences as "guys" or "lads" with no objection, but although "men" was accepted formally in the same sense into the late twentieth century, this is no longer the case.  My own view is that this should not be an issue and the translators might have considered there was little point in allowing an argument to develop.

For all that, there are problems with the new English translation.  It is not one of the glories of the English language.  The proclamations "The Word of the Lord", "The Gospel of the Lord" and "The Mystery of Faith", though common for a long time in the United States, grate on this writer's ears, as the announcement seems to have little connexion with anything.  The flow of the words is not as natural as in the case of Irish or German.

The previous translation was hardly beautiful either, though I suspect that the older translators were more familiar with English literature, especially English poetry, than those who worked on the current version.  The trouble is that the original translators let the English-speaking world down badly.  Much was lost and  in an era where Catholics were allegedly being persuaded to turn more toward Scripture, many of the biblical allusions in the Mass were contorted beyond recognition-even the Anglican communion service was closer to the Latin than the English Mass.  One hopes this is now addressed.
Protestant experience
However, one must understand that it is not at all easy to render the Mass in the vernacular, especially in a language so widely spoken as English.  The more liturgically-focused Protestant denominations have plenty of experience of these problems.  Our experience shows that revising something temporary is not easy and one still hears people using the responses introduced in superseded translations.  It will take a long time to get used to this one.
FOOTNOTES
* This is the translation given in the Schott Missal.  Father Anselm Schott was a Benedictine monk who compiled the most popular German-Latin missal in use prior to the liturgical changes.  Pope Benedict traces his interest in liturgy to receiving his first Schott missal as a young boy.
** Father Benedict of the Mother of God OCD who compiled the Latin-Irish missal in 1958 for Irish-speaking Catholics.
***  The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom in Irish, a translation from Greek and Old Church Slavonic, uses ar son móráin, "for many".  This is the most accurate Irish version.  I have not seen any eastern Catholic liturgy of any linguistic origin using any formula other than "for many".
**** I am indebted to John Heneghan for this information.  He has done postgraduate research into the contribution of priests working in Maynooth to the Irish language, which includes the translation into Irish of the Missale Romanum and the Bible.  This was carried out in the years following the Second Vatican Council and merits an academic paper in its own right.  John was also able to tell me that the editor of the Bible translation, Rev Professor Pádraig Ó Fiannachta was dismissive of the Jerusalem Bible as a translation model.  This is typically used for readings at Mass in English in Ireland and Britain.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 117, November-December 2011.