Do You Pray the Rosary Mostly In English or in Latin?

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For those of us who travel or live in areas where our mother tongue is not spoken, this issue takes on new importance. Apparently there was a time when anyone from any country in the world could go anywhere else in the world and still participate in the mass in that same old familiar language that was used back in the home church: Latin.

The fact that it is a “dead” language means there is no danger of it evolving. What was said centuries ago will still have the same meaning today and in future generations. New vocabulary isn’t automatically added with the advent of every new video game, marketing gimmick, or pop cultural phenomenon. And I imagine old words are not eliminated from the dictionary just because they haven’t been popular for a few generations.

If I were regularly praying the Rosary in an international setting where the common universal language was Latin by default, I’d make the effort to learn Latin. I don’t know if such a situation still exists today. I mainly pray it alone or in a Japanese Church where it it prayed in Japanese. So I concentrate on Japanese…

One thing to be said in favor of praying, or reading Scripture in a foreign language, including Latin, is that it forces you to slow down and figure out what the words mean. At the end you won’t suddenly realize that you didn’t really hear a single word that came out of your mouth, as can easily happen in your native tongue.

The secular world has seen the usefulness of a universal language and has promoted Esperanto. I hear it’s actually popular in parts of the world, but apparently not in the United States where there is still resistance to all kinds of “foreign” ideas – including the metric system. 🙂
 
I’m an English speaker. Sometimes say some of the prayers in Latin. Sometimes some of them in Gaelic. Sometimes in French. I’m not fluent in any but English. I’m not sure why it appeals to me to do that at times.
 
I pray it in English. Once in a while I’ll say a prayer to two in German or Latin, but I don’t see the point in doing that on a regular basis.
 
I rarely pray the Rosary. Haven’t done so in years, but when I do it’s in French, my mother tongue. I do chant Lauds, Vespers and sometimes Compline in Latin though. But not for extra piety; mostly for aesthetic reasons and my love for Gregorian chant.

What really matters is that we pray. Not what language we pray in. God understands.
 
bearer said:
I pray it in English. Once in a while I’ll say a prayer to two in German or Latin, but I don’t see the point in doing that on a regular basis.
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Well, sometimes there might be. I do know that when i say the Our Father in Latin, I am immediately brought back, mentally, to my days of serving Mass. That does prompt additional thinking about, for instance, the faith of a child and how we ought to have such faith as adults.

Then, too, there is an old cemetery in my parish in which many Irish were buried long ago. Among the grave markers is one for “Baby________ (my last name)”. I was told by my parents that Baby_________ was my father’s older brother, or would have been had he not been stillborn. People used to do that. There is another, who would have been an Irish relative whose grave stone says “Infant_______”.

Anyway, my children and grandchildren visit that cemetery on Memorial Day, sometimes on other occasions, and I and they always say prayers in Gaelic at Baby ’s grave and at "Infant’s" grave.

Why? Well, because those stillborn children were Irish for one thing and, had they lived, they would have learned at least some Gaelic. More likely than not, some of the prayers said for them to begin with would have been in Gaelic. Also, it “erases time” for the children in a way. By using the (possible) language of the stillborn child, it increases the identification with the child as a “spiritual peer”, for whom time doesn’t count. Since I have taught my children and their parents have taught my grandchildren about the evil of abortion, it is, I think, valuable for the children to see a stillborn child as a “peer”. That, perhaps, helps clarify what abortion really is.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Why? Well, because those stillborn children were Irish for one thing and, had they lived, they would have learned at least some Gaelic. More likely than not, some of the prayers said for them to begin with would have been in Gaelic. Also, it “erases time” for the children in a way. By using the (possible) language of the stillborn child, it increases the identification with the child as a “spiritual peer”, for whom time doesn’t count. Since I have taught my children and their parents have taught my grandchildren about the evil of abortion, it is, I think, valuable for the children to see a stillborn child as a “peer”. That, perhaps, helps clarify what abortion really is.
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Such a beautiful practice!
 
I pray the Rosary in English but I would love to learn to pray it in Latin.
 
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