Ahmen or Aymen?

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Nelka said:
A bit xenophobic isn’t it?

:winter:
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Not really. Everyone knows - deep down - that we English speak proper English.😃 If I had a pound for every American who told me what a lovely accent I have, I would be a millionaire!!😃
 
I definitely think that the use of “aymen” and “ahmen” is important in singing. I have never heard of a musical piece with “aymen”. Ahmen sounds better. I don’t know if it’s my Latin ears or is it that it just goes better with music.

The only time that I have heard aymen sung is when we respond at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, “Through him, . . . . etc” and the congregation sort of chants “Aymen” or “Ahmen”. That’s not really a hymn. But even there, the ahmen sounds better. Hymns usually have ahmen.

In the Romance languages you don’t have this difference, because they only have short vowels. Unlike English and German that have five different forms of the letter “a”.

If it’s going to be put to music, I prefer the “ahmen”. But that’s just my idiosyncratic ears. 😃

When it’s spoken, one is as good as the other to me.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
JReducation said:
I definitely think that the use of “aymen” and “ahmen” is important in singing. I have never heard of a musical piece with “aymen”. Ahmen sounds better. I don’t know if it’s my Latin ears or is it that it just goes better with music.

The only time that I have heard aymen sung is when we respond at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, “Through him, . . . . etc” and the congregation sort of chants “Aymen” or “Ahmen”. That’s not really a hymn. But even there, the ahmen sounds better. Hymns usually have ahmen.

In the Romance languages you don’t have this difference, because they only have short vowels. Unlike English and German that have five different forms of the letter “a”.

If it’s going to be put to music, I prefer the “ahmen”. But that’s just my idiosyncratic ears. 😃

When it’s spoken, one is as good as the other to me.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
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You’re definitely more lenient than I. I absolutely cannot stand it when people say “aymen”. The proper way is “Ahmen” and that’s that. Unfortunately, God knows this and he put me in a diocese where there’s literally nobody except me that says “Ahmen”. 😃

I’m actually not exaggerating, either. In my fifteen years of living in this diocese I have yet to meet one person that doesn’t say “Aymen”, and every Church I go to (And I travel a lot so I’ve been to just about every church in the diocese) the people say “Aymen” and not “Ahmen”. I believe it’s my turn to look up to the sky and say, “Lord, why have You forsaken me?” 😃
 
liturgyluver said:
Not really. Everyone knows - deep down - that we English speak proper English.😃 If I had a pound for every American who told me what a lovely accent I have, I would be a millionaire!!😃
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I envy you. I would kill to live in England or Scotland. Especially if I could have the accent. 😃
 
ATeutonicKnight said:
I envy you. I would kill to live in England or Scotland. Especially if I could have the accent. 😃
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I guess it’s preference. I used to have a British accent, having spent the first nine years of my life in London, but I became quite self-conscious about it and worked hard to get rid of it once in the States. It seems the Polish community too is not particularly fond of any English but especially not fond of the British accents. Midwest English is a lot more tolerable, IMO.
 
ATeutonicKnight said:
You’re definitely more lenient than I. I absolutely cannot stand it when people say “aymen”. The proper way is “Ahmen” and that’s that.
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LOL

Sure, if you’re a Roman or speak a Latin language. Outside of that, the sky’s the limit. You can’t change people’s linguistic registers. It is one thing to introduce “Ahmen” in music, because it flows and quite another to insist that a people who speak the same language, but come from different parts of the world, pronounce words the same way.

When I first moved out of my little Jewish-Irish home town and heard the different way that people said Amen, none of it sounded right to me. Back home, my Jewish relatives and friends said it almost like an eye-min. The Irish Catholics stretched the “a”. Well the other Christians around me in my new world spoke differently.

That’s life.

By the way, take it from me. As someone who has British relatives. The English accent is not uniform. To the American it may sound so, but once you live there for a while, you can hear the differences. I have in-laws from Bath and they sound like they have a banana in their mouth. I like the Scots and the South Africans better. It’s easier for me to understand once they pick up speed. 😃

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
ATeutonicKnight said:
I absolutely cannot stand it when people say “aymen”.
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What burns me up is when people say “Warshington” and “Warshing machine” and “Go warsh your dirty hands and face.”

And when people say Mondy, Tuesdy, Wednesdy, etc.

And when people say “ATM machine”. That would be an Automatic Teller Machine Machine? 🤷

And when people say the book is entitled rather than titled.

And when people say, “I could care less” instead of saying “I couldn’t care less.”

aymen sounds better when it is used as a question, as in, “Can I get an amen? Go ahead and clap your hands for Jesus!!! You at home, put your hands on the TV.” Maybe you were exposed to an Evangelical preacher when you were young and it gave you a subconcious aversion to aymen? 😃 Did your father maybe listen to the Right Reverend Dr. Billy Saul Harkas on the radio?

-Tim-
 
JReducation said:
LOL

Sure, if you’re a Roman or speak a Latin language. Outside of that, the sky’s the limit. You can’t change people’s linguistic registers. It is one thing to introduce “Ahmen” in music, because it flows and quite another to insist that a people who speak the same language, but come from different parts of the world, pronounce words the same way.

When I first moved out of my little Jewish-Irish home town and heard the different way that people said Amen, none of it sounded right to me. Back home, my Jewish relatives and friends said it almost like an eye-min. The Irish Catholics stretched the “a”. Well the other Christians around me in my new world spoke differently.

That’s life.

By the way, take it from me. As someone who has British relatives. The English accent is not uniform. To the American it may sound so, but once you live there for a while, you can hear the differences. I have in-laws from Bath and they sound like they have a banana in their mouth. I like the Scots and the South Africans better. It’s easier for me to understand once they pick up speed. 😃

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
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Well, if this is life, life is not the basket of fruit I thought it would be when I was five. 😃

I know. I prefer Scottish accents a lot more, actually. I would love to have an authentic Scottish accent more than my so-called “American accent”. I can pull off an okay Irish accent, but that’s probably because I’m a little Irish. I’ve been working on an Australian accent since that’s probably my second favorite accent, but that’s not going too well. 😃
 
TimothyH said:
What burns me up is when people say “Warshington” and “Warshing machine” and “Go warsh your dirty hands and face.”

And when people say Mondy, Tuesdy, Wednesdy, etc.

And when people say “ATM machine”. That would be an Automatic Teller Machine Machine? 🤷

And when people say the book is entitled rather than titled.

And when people say, “I could care less” instead of saying “I couldn’t care less.”

aymen sounds better when it is used as a question, as in, “Can I get an amen? Go ahead and clap your hands for Jesus!!! You at home, put your hands on the TV.” Maybe you were exposed to an Evangelical preacher when you were young and it gave you a subconcious aversion to aymen? 😃 Did your father maybe listen to the Right Reverend Dr. Billy Saul Harkas on the radio?

-Tim-
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I agree especially on the “I could care less” one. It really… grinds my gears. 😃

I haven’t been exposed to an Evangelical preacher, but I do know Tim Staples and I’ve seen him speak countless times. 😃
 
ProVobis said:
It seems the Polish community too is not particularly fond of any English but especially not fond of the British accents. Midwest English is a lot more tolerable, IMO.
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😃 Interesting, but I don’t know how accurate these generalisations are, or what difference they make. There are nearly half a million Poles in Britain now - I have many Polish friends and they tell me that they love English and the children hate learning French and Spanish at school. And I don’t think they are just being polite. Incidently, they also say that of all the Slavic languages, Croation (which I always think of a Serbo-Croat) sounds the nicest.
 
liturgyluver said:
😃 Interesting, but I don’t know how accurate these generalisations are, or what difference they make. There are nearly half a million Poles in Britain now - I have many Polish friends and they tell me that they love English and the children hate learning French and Spanish at school. And I don’t think they are just being polite. Incidently, they also say that of all the Slavic languages, Croation (which I always think of a Serbo-Croat) sounds the nicest.
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The Polish community which I’m a “descendent” of had members of the Polish military who were under British command during WWII. Almost all whom my dad knew left England, despite many having jobs and national health care there, to come to the U.S. and Canada; some waited till Poland was no longer under Communism and decided to move back there. Sons and daughter, of course, became better indoctrinated into the local culture so I would expect more acceptance of the local language. (Some even become better English scholars than most of the native-English crowd. 🙂 ) My younger brother has basically forgotten his Polish and his kids were never interested.

And I’m done with the thread.
 
ProVobis said:
The Polish community which I’m a “descendent” of had members of the Polish military who were under British command during WWII. Almost all whom my dad knew left England, despite many having jobs and national health care there, to come to the U.S. and Canada; some waited till Poland was no longer under Communism and decided to move back there. Sons and daughter, of course, became better indoctrinated into the local culture so I would expect more acceptance of the local language. (Some even become better English scholars than most of the native-English crowd. 🙂 ) My younger brother has basically forgotten his Polish and his kids were never interested.

And I’m done with the thread.
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Fair enough. Just for clarification purposes though, the Polish friends of which I spoke are part of the wave of new immigrants who came from Poland once accession to the EU was completed in 2004, after which the number of Poles in the UK increased from 60,000 to well over half a million today. We now have two lovely Polish delicatessens in my small suburb which are delightful.🙂
 
With regard to the original question, I don’t think it really makes a difference as to which pronunciation you use. They both are saying the same thing, and it is probably just a cultural difference as to which you use…kinda reminds me of that old song…, “You say Tomayto, I say Tomahto…Let’s call the whole thing OFF!”
:dancing:
LOL…
 
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