Should italian be learnt by catholics?

[ProVobis]

Not a kidding matter. As a 40-year polyglot and professional translator, I can testify that foreign language acquisition and maintenance is very time-intensive.

What do you think of Rosetta Stone?

 

[JohnTomHoc]

Actually, everybody should learn FRENCH!!!

Mais bien sûr. (Where’s the smiley for “gallic shrug”?)

Something needs to be said in favor of German.

As a francophonic fourth-or-fifth generation German unmelted by the melting pot (except we didn’t speak German at home thanks to a world war or so), I agree wholeheartedly.

“Frisch weht der wind der heimat zu. Mein Irish kind wo weliest du.”

during Wagner’s bicentennial. . . .

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

If you attend Spanish Mass la paz (“peace”) is about the only thing you need to remember.

Also gracias.

Si

Or Hebrew, which Christ worshipped in?

Except he spoke Aramaic?

Because no NT manuscripts in Hebrew remain, maybe?

Because they were written in Koine Greek?

 

[minkymurph]

Si

Except he spoke Aramaic?

I thought that as well.

 

[DaveBj]

What do you think of Rosetta Stone?

I’ve never used it, but the general opinion from a foreign-language learning forum that I used to be a member of was that RS wasn’t worth the money.

Or Hebrew, which Christ worshipped in?

Si

Except he spoke Aramaic?

I thought that as well.

The language He spoke and the language He worshiped in were different. After all, for centuries that was the case for Catholics – they spoke whatever the local language was, but they worshiped in Latin.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Fr. Ronald Knox mentions the surprise of a Protestant colleague had Oxford who told him that he “just assumed” that Catholics made their confessions in Latin! Knox could just picture the poor priest thumbing through his Latin grammar trying to figure out what the penitent was confessing. . . .

It has been my impression that during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a great number of people could speak passable Latin. Traders and bankers traveled astonishing distances among a great array of peoples to do business, and among them, it was not uncommon to converse in Latin. And during the Middle Ages particularly, the local dialects were so many and so diverse that one might or might not be able to converse with people two villages away in the native version.

 

[ProVobis]

The language He spoke and the language He worshiped in were different. After all, **for centuries **that was the case for Catholics – they spoke whatever the local language was, but they worshiped in Latin.

:yup:

 

[ProVobis]

Fr. Ronald Knox mentions the surprise of a Protestant colleague had Oxford who told him that he “just assumed” that Catholics made their confessions in Latin! Knox could just picture the poor priest thumbing through his Latin grammar trying to figure out what the penitent was confessing. . . .

FWIW, spoken Latin (or more formally called Vulgar Latin, from which the ROMANce languages are derived) didn’t follow the grammar rules very strictly. There is a very early document showing a sample of differences between Vulgar Latin and Classic Latin. (Can be extended to Ecclesiastic Latin as well.) It’s called Appendix Probi.

 

[JohnTomHoc]

It has been my impression that during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, a great number of people could speak passable Latin. Traders and bankers traveled astonishing distances among a great array of peoples to do business, and among them, it was not uncommon to converse in Latin. And during the Middle Ages particularly, the local dialects were so many and so diverse that one might or might not be able to converse with people two villages away in the native version.

 Very much so. 

 It was only after 1950 that Latin ceased to be taught as a matter of course to schoolchildren, at least in high school. As late as the late 1960s, the older sister of a college friend (a Protestant one) could have a conversation with a German tourist at the Acropolis because they had both had Latin as a regular part of their curricula.

 

[JohnTomHoc]

The language He spoke and the language He worshiped in were different. After all, for centuries that was the case for Catholics – they spoke whatever the local language was, but they worshiped in Latin.

My native language, late-20th century English, has been terrifyingly debased even since I was in school in the '60s & '70s -- and even then, any sort of elevated speaking was looked on with frowns. A good deal of the love of Tolkien's books comes from their idiom, which is a simple & beautiful elevated 20th century idiom.

Even with the faithful translation of Paul VI’s rite, I can’t ‘lift [my] heart unto the Lord’ in the idiom used – contemporary English is irredeemably a lowest-common-denominator dialect. But this is my personal difficulty – other people function in it without complaint. For me, it has to be the traditional rite in the traditional language. Likewise, the divine office. It removes the distractions of temporal elements & associations that inevitably come to mind with English.

 

[Sarabande]

Very much so.

 It was only after 1950 that Latin ceased to be taught as a matter of course to schoolchildren, at least in high school. As late as the late 1960s, the older sister of a college friend (a Protestant one) could have a conversation with a German tourist at the Acropolis because they had both had Latin as a regular part of their curricula.

My father graduated catholic high school with a class of 800 boys (mostly from blue collar to lower middle class families) in 1965 and they were still teaching Latin even as late as then. His year books have notes from his buddies talking about the tough year in Latin class. Even though he’s not one who cares whether or not the mass is in Latin or the vernacular, he does believe that those years of Latin certainly were helpful for him, especially in understanding the origins of words in his own language and sometimes being able to figure out the meanings of words he didn’t know without looking at the dictionary.

 

[ProVobis]

Even with the faithful translation of Paul VI’s rite, I can’t ‘lift [my] heart unto the Lord’ in the idiom used – contemporary English is irredeemably a lowest-common-denominator dialect. But this is my personal difficulty – other people function in it without complaint. For me, it has to be the traditional rite in the traditional language.

I’ve often wondered why sursum corda was translated/created that way in the English myself. And apparently the English in turn was used as a basis in other languages. For example, it’s levantemos el corazon in Spanish. But Polish keeps it simple: W górę serca, more in line with the Latin. OTOH, Italian has an interesting: In alto i nostri cuori.