Learning to Pray in Latin

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HeDa said:
Latin is a good way to start if you are interested in learning other languages like French, Spanish and Italian.
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Latin is a good language to know if you want to understand English as well.

Latin was a very popular language , not just with Catholics. A lot of medicine and law is filled with Latin terms, more than half the state’s mottos are in Latin as well as slogans on our money. Pall Mall cigarettes actually have 2 Latin Mottos.
 
If you do it just every now and then, you’ll probably forget it and stop altogether. Daily exercises are best.
 
Latin is one of the Holy languages that is used to worship God.

The others would be Greek and Hebrew
 
Just because you were not taught well in your experience as a 10 year old, it doesn’t mean there is no good in praying in Latin. If they did not do so, they should’ve taught you what the words mean. Have you ever prayed the “Pater Noster” with a group of people that don’t speak your primary language? I have, at a diverse parish with Spanish speakers and Polish speakers. Praying the Our Father in ecclesiastical Latin is a great way to show unity among Christians of all cultures.

As for tips, I struggle with this too. You pretty much have to do it every day, and it really does help having a side by side translation, as many hand missals have. The chanting or singing helps greatly too.
 
ProVobis said:
If you do it just every now and then, you’ll probably forget it and stop altogether. Daily exercises are best.
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I pray Lauds and Vespers in Latin daily, in Gregorian chant, from our abbey’s monastic breviary. When I use the much lighter Liturgy of the Hours, I do the whole thing in Latin. I agree daily is best in as far as it is possible.

For those learning through chant, chanting itself can be a challenge especially psalmody, until you figure out the system of accents and preparation syllables and the rules around those. For beginners, I suggest recto-tono or “in directum”, both simple to learn and the latter will introduce you to the simplest system of highlighting the accents.
 
Actually, their slogans are “Per aspera ad astra”, and “in hoc signo vinces”.

Smoking used to be considered a very classy habit and the people at Pell Mell wanted to corner the classiest market segment.
 
Brucejlb said:
You do realize that God understands english and a prayer in an antiquated language doesn’t make it anymore sincere or acceptable to God.
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Of course God understands, but sometimes there are words that just don’t quite translate the same into English and lose some of their depth. Rather than adding multiple sentences in English to try to explain the concept behind a particular word from an antiquated language, sometimes it can be beneficial for the person praying to use the antiquated words.

For example, the Kyrie Eleison:

aleteia.org

Meaning of Kyrie elesion at Mass --Aleteia

The Greek words weren't translated into Latin because they would have lost their original meaning.
aleteia.org
“The word mercy in English is the translation of the Greek word eleos. This word has the same ultimate root as the old Greek word for oil, or more precisely, olive oil; a substance which was used extensively as a soothing agent for bruises and minor wounds. The oil was poured onto the wound and gently massaged in, thus soothing, comforting and making whole the injured part. The Hebrew word which is also translated as eleos and mercy is hesed, and means steadfast love. The Greek words for ‘Lord, have mercy,’ are ‘Kyrie, eleison’ that is to say, ‘Lord, soothe me, comfort me, take away my pain, show me your steadfast love.’ Thus mercy does not refer so much to justice or acquittal a very Western interpretation but to the infinite loving-kindness of God, and his compassion for his suffering children! It is in this sense that we pray ‘Lord, have mercy,’ with great frequency throughout the Divine Liturgy.”
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Different languages each have their own unique beauty and poetry. Why fault someone for wanting to use a language or phrase that they find particularly beautiful or meaningful when praying to God, our loving Father and Creator?
 
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Did I not already answer this question. Of course he understands. I guess you’d like me to apologize for trying to better myself in multiple areas? If you don’t like what I’m doing, then ignore it and move on
 
Brucejlb said:
Do you not think God is smart enough to understand your prayer ?
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Of course God understands. He also recognizes when we deliberately choose our words carefully, reflect on their true meanings, and use them with sincerity.

Like in the above example of the Kyrie Eleison, using the Greek is not for God’s benefit, as He needs nothing from us. It is for our benefit, so that we may better come to understand His nature and to praise it worthily.

Depth of meaning can be lost in translation and over the course of time, so when someone says “Lord have mercy” in the Mass now, they may not fully understand the origin of the phrase or the full spectrum of what is trying to be conveyed. God does not benefit any more or less, as there is no change in Him. Rather, it is us who are changed when we seek to worship Him to the fullest extent possible.

Using ancient languages like Latin or Greek to pray helps to unite us with our ancient faith. It is an honorable endeavor to seek to learn and understand the languages of our faith and the love they can convey.

Seeking to understanding Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, etc… also helps us in our reading of scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. Can’t we just use English translations? Sure… but why would you want to limit yourself to only these and skip over or miss some of the linguistic treasures hidden within these ancient words?

Without understanding some of these words and languages, we become unable to defend some of our beliefs, like Peter as the “Rock” in Matthew 16 (and the difference between the Aramaic כיפא (kepha) and Greek πέτρος (petros) and πέτρα (petra)"), or Mary being completely transformed (κεχαριτωμένη) by grace. What about Jesus’ “brothers” and Mary’s perpetual virginity? Without understanding the broad scope of the word ἀδελφοὶ, we would have a contradiction.

Words matter, and seeking to understand and use them well is a worthy endeavor.
 
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If it is the official language of the church, then why does the church print Bibles in English and other languages ?
 
So that people who speak foreign languages who can’t speak or read Latin can read Sacred Scripture. And just because a bible isn’t printed in Latin doesn’t mean the language of the Roman Catholic Church.
 
There are over 100 English Bibles. Which one of these is the true Bible as defined by the Council of Trent? None.
 
ajg said:
I’m attempting to learn some of the basic prayers, such as Hail Mary, Our Father, and Glory Be, in Latin and am struggling. Does anyone have any advice?
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You may have to perform some Google-fu to resurrect the dead links, but it shouldn’t be hard.
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LATIN: Language Study Resources Traditional Catholicism
A few weeks ago I posted a [post=1603994]list of my favorite self-study resources for Latin[/post], and though I bookmarked it for future reference, I got to thinking it might be more useful as a devoted thread (especially for people who come to the forum looking for such). So: This is a thread for people to contribute resources to aid in the study of Latin. (Hopefully, if it is useful enough, it will be tagged sticky
wink
) My first advice to those who would study Latin is: Make sure you kn…
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I suspect that some of the responses are suggesting that learning Latin is a bit different from learning to parrot a prayer in Latin.

I applaud you for wanting to learn Latin; but I would suggest that you take the former approach, rather than the latter; that is, that you actually learn Latin. Memorizing prayers in Latin while studying the language certainly can move this forward.

And to that point, I pulled up Amazon. On their first page (my search was “Latin for Dummies”) I found 6 separate books, all for beginners in Latin. They are not particularly expensive, but certainly can assist you in actually learning the language.
 
The Church does not print them; it does not run a printing press publishing bibles. People who own printing presses print them. And biblical scholars have been involved in translating the various bibles; using Latin, as well as manuscripts in Greek and Hebrew.

I have the New American Bible; it is not authorized by the Church (meaning Rome) but is authorized by the National conference of Catholic Bishops and by the U.S. Catholic Conference. It is published (printed) by Catholic Book Publishing, a company in New York.

I also have the Jerusalem Bible, printed by Doubleday and Company, a secular book publisher; it has the Nihil Obstat by Lionel Swain and the imprimatur by John Cardinal Heenan.
 
Kei said:
Not to mention most older works are written in Latin,
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???

I think you misspelled “greek”
it was the language supposed to bring unity to the Church, etc.
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Again, ???

The church in Rome switched to the vernacular in the third and fourth centuries: to Latin, because the people didn’t understand greek!
Crusader30 said:
Latin is one of the Holy languages that is used to worship God.
The others would be Greek and Hebrew
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Uhm, wow.

Then there’s Aramaic, which is what Jesus spoke, and is used by the Maronites to this day for the anaphora, even when the liturgy is in the vernacular. And at least one other church uses it liturgically (but I forget which one).

And then there’s Church Slavonic/Old Slavonic, which was actually created for liturgy by SS Cyrkl & Methodius, and specifically designed to be intelligible to the various slavonic tongues (which had varying degrees of mutual intelligibility).

And Arabic, used by the church of that minor little place where Christians were first called by that name.

And every single vernacular for the various saturn churches, as Eastern liturgy has been in the language understood by the locals since the first century.

hawk
 
Saturn churches?

Most people learn languages one at a time. Even if you’re a linguistic super-genius like Heinrich Schliemann, I’m pretty sure that you still learn them one at a time.

If someone wants to learn Latin, Latin’s a great language to have in your pocket. It’s flexible; you run into it all kinds of places; there’s more stuff written in Latin than we’ve bothered translating; you don’t have to learn a new alphabet; etc, etc, etc. It teaches you about your own language, and stuff you take for granted, and makes you pay attention to sentence structure and tenses that you deal with automatically in your native tongue.

Greek is cool, too. It was the language of merchants and business, which was why it was so widespread in the early Church. We’ve got more stuff in Greek than we’ve bothered translating, as well. But if you-as-a-linguist have trouble grasping Latin, you probably aren’t going to magically connect with Greek. Or Aramaic. Or Old Slavonic. Or whatever.

If someone wants to connect with history through language, that’s cool. If someone has a personal preference for Old Slavonic, that’s cool, too… But if someone expresses a desire to connect with Latin-- the language they seem to think is (a) most useful to them in their situation, and (b) has a good chance of being the language they’re most likely to encounter in the wild-- it’s good to be supportive of someone who wants to broaden their horizons and fire a few neurons. 💓 And if they find out that they can’t get past amo/amas/amat or Caecilius est in horto, that’s okay, too. At least they’ve tried.
 
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