Modernized language in hymnals

[Sarabande]

For the record, I’m on your side on this. Laud is laud and praise is praise. Though they may be one-syllable synonyms, they produce different sound waves, the poetry is altered, and tradition is destroyed. But then someone who is not into arts or music, those mean nothing to them. And I know you’re heavily into music.

Yes, you are right and I agree that for people who aren’t into the arts would care about a change like this. Funny thing is that I wasn’t even thinking (at least consciously) about the poetic and artistic reasons for not liking the change, which you’d think I would and should. haha! I felt the people who changed “laud” to “praise” were assuming that we did not understand the meaning of the word. They took it upon themselves to think for us, that we are ignorant and that if we didn’t know the word, wouldn’t have the brains to look it up for ourselves.

 

[The_Reginator]

Excuse my ignorance and stop the presses.

GIA – Grown In America???
OCP – Ontario College of Pharmacists or Oatmeal Cream Pies???View attachment 16949


What is wrong with “When I survey that wondrous cross”?

 

[Phemie]

Excuse my ignorance and stop the presses.

GIA – Grown In America???
OCP – Ontario College of Pharmacists or Oatmeal Cream Pies???

GIA
No wonder they go with initials, they originally were “Gregorian Institute of America”. If they’d kept the name they might be sued for fraud/false advertisement.
**
OCP**
Oregon Catholic Press

 

[englishredrose]

I actually don’t mind singing and learning what out of date words mean because it all apart of wording and hate it when publishers modernise words because they think we are too thick to find out what it means. I know that prayers and services are all alike in modernising words but find it very demeaning when they claim that people of today wouldn’t understand it. People of the past didn’t understand it until they were taught it and that is how we can learn today and it is easier for us to go away and use all the resources available to us to find out what it means.

Only this December I had decided to look up what royal harbinger means having sung it for the last 25 years without a care for what it meant though love the hymn. it not difficult to find out what it means and I do think that somethings modernising words kill the original meaning of the hymn too at times. So what if we are singing ‘thee’ instead of ‘you’ it don’t worry me! Thee may actually fit the paraphrasing and the notation of music and ‘you’ might distort the original sound and kill the gloriousness of the set of words in the hymn because ‘you’ does sound entirely different to ‘thee’ in poetry and in meter… Those who wish to modernise wording should do so with extreme care and I hope the hymn that I am writing at the moment will not be modernised because the first word alone isn’t a word in the dictionary but by my own wording of the verse it easy to work out what I mean by the word. It be accused of being bad grammer in the future I know but it done with deliberate intent to get what I want of it.

Just because the poets are now dead, doesn’t give publishers any right to modernise the word really and I really am against it because we are intelligent enough to go away and find out what it means and to change the word from thee to you will change the sound and meter and rhythm too if one thinks about it.

Some of the language may be archiac but so what if the churches are using a wide selection of hymns anyway to cater for their congregations. It is good to learn new words and I resent the updating of words because they distort the sound to the original setting.

 

[marytk]

I love that we can use “thou” with GOD the creator. But there are many who don’t seem to know what Thou and Thee mean. I have read posts where it is “disrespectful” to call God “You”. Because it is old English many seem to think that it is more formal to call God “Thou or Thee” . What is wonderful is that we are allowed to use the familiar form of you.

 

[DaveBj]

I love that we can use “thou” with GOD the creator. But there are many who don’t seem to know what Thou and Thee mean. I have read posts where it is “disrespectful” to call God “You”. Because it is old English many seem to think that it is more formal to call God “Thou or Thee” . What is wonderful is that we are allowed to use the familiar form of you.

Bear in mind that the older translations of Sacred Scripture use thee/thou also when addressing Satan :bigyikes:

 

[englishredrose]

Bear in mind that the older translations of Sacred Scripture use thee/thou also when addressing Satan :bigyikes:

as that was the language at the time rather than whom each was addressing…

 

[marytk]

Bear in mind that the older translations of Sacred Scripture use thee/thou also when addressing Satan :bigyikes:

Well I wouldn’t give Satan the Respect of the formal you (If I lived back then) with God it is for a different reason. He invites me into a closer relationship. He deserves the formal form but invites us to call him Daddy.

 

[RedSparklyShoes]

I don’t have any problem with thee to you and thy to your. What I DO have a problem with is polictical correctness.

At my grandfather’s funeral, I just about lost it when in the new Anglican hymnal, they had changed the line in Joyful Joyful we Adore thee from “God our Father, Christ our brother” to “God our Father and our mother”.

 

[Cavaille-Coll]

When Jesus addresses Satan in Scripture, He is, of course, speaking to an inferior.

 

[marytk]

I don’t have any problem with thee to you and thy to your. What I DO have a problem with is polictical correctness.

At my grandfather’s funeral, I just about lost it when in the new Anglican hymnal, they had changed the line in Joyful Joyful we Adore thee from “God our Father, Christ our brother” to “God our Father and our mother”.

That is what I really can’t take. I don’t like it when it changes things like I will raise HIM up or good Christian Men rejoice BUT I try to take it as IF the language is a stumbling block to someone who truly doesn’t see herself included with the word “man” or "he’ then I can try to take it. But you just don’t mess up things like God the FATHER and the SON.

 

[DaveBj]

Back to the subject of modernizing hymn language, we had a horrible example this morning:

“Thine be the glory, risen conqu’ring Son,
Endless is the vict’ry you o’er death have won.”

ARGH!!!

If you’re gonna modernize the lyrics, go all the way; don’t mix styles!

(I sang “thou o’er death has won,” not at the top of my voice, but loudly nonetheless.)

(I know, if that’s the biggest problem I have, I’m living a blessed life )

 

[Sarabande]

Back to the subject of modernizing hymn language, we had a horrible example this morning:

“Thine be the glory, risen conqu’ring Son,
Endless is the vict’ry you o’er death have won.”

ARGH!!!

If you’re gonna modernize the lyrics, go all the way; don’t mix styles!

(I sang “thou o’er death has won,” not at the top of my voice, but loudly nonetheless.)

(I know, if that’s the biggest problem I have, I’m living a blessed life )

hahaha! First World problems. But I agree. That would bother me as well.

 

[littlenothing]

I don’t have any problem with thee to you and thy to your. What I DO have a problem with is polictical correctness.

At my grandfather’s funeral, I just about lost it when in the new Anglican hymnal, they had changed the line in Joyful Joyful we Adore thee from “God our Father, Christ our brother” to “God our Father and our mother”.

Gag!!!

 

[aspirant]

Few things get under my skin quite as effectively as replacing Early Modern English articles in hymnals with contemporary articles.

It sometimes throws me when I’ve learned a lyric one way and we sing it another,* but I honestly do not understand people’s gripes about changing pronouns from “thee” to “you.”

(* For example, I learned “all those who hear, now to his temple draw near” but the parishes around here all sing “all those who hear, brothers and sisters draw near.” Neither offends me, it just throws me for a loop. )

For example, on Palm Sunday, we sang “All Glory, Laud, and Honor,” whose first verse reads, in its original incarnation:

“All Glory, Laud, and Honor, to Thee, Redeemer King.”

In our hymnal (OCP, so I suppose this is not terribly surprising), it is written as:

“All Glory, Laud, and Honor, to You, Redeemer King.”

Countless other hymns have been polluted by the pedestrian language of our modern age.

“You” is not really more “pedestrian” than “thee,” it’s just more current. (More below.)

On the other hand, nobody translates or “updates” Shakespeare. Well, yes they do actually, but this only gets a “niche market” play such as the MTV-style ROMEO+JULIET starring Leo DiCaprio and Clare Danes.

I dislike the movie, but on this point I must defend it: it was not really lacking in thees and thys.

In fact, at the end of the movie, a ring engraved “I love thee” is shown. Someone in the theater near me asked, very loudly, “What does ‘thee’ mean?” I couldn’t help but wonder: “Was this person not able to understand any of the movie?”

But this points to the reason archaic pronouns are being changed. Yes, there really are people who do not understand them.

I guess I may be in the minority on this thread, but I really don’t hold any special affection for Elizabethan English.

You’re not alone. I don’t have any special passion for archaic pronouns.

Oatmeal Cream Pies???

YESSSS.