Something I was just thinking about. So we know that Mormons are big on praying in Olde Englishe. It's more "respectful" they say. Or it "helps us be reverent". I know Mormons who FREAK if someone prays in modern day English. This leaves me with a a few questions:

1) Uh, wasn't 1600's English modern back in the 1600's?

2) What if you speak German or French or Japanese? Is there a "thee" vs "you" in the German language?

3) Do they really think God is that petty? (The answer is yes of course). "I'm sorry Billy, you said 'you' instead of 'thee'. Try it again and maybe I'll help you find your keys".

4) Do they realize how ridiculous they sound?

It goes to show that Mormons are far more concerned with appearances than with sincerity. Gee, seems like a familiar topic in Jesus's teachings somewhere....

Notice in the first vision narrative that gawd uses the King James bible version of the jesus baptism.

"This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."

The translation in other editions of the bible is different from this. That means that gawd plagiarized from the KJV for the first vision...or maybe JS did...

God doesn't like how Americans have butchered the English language. He's probably second guessing his decision to have a hillbilly restore his church in a book that required thousands of spelling, punctuation, and language revisions because the hillbilly in "translating" the BOM wrote like he talked.

I'm trying to keep my linguist hat on and say to myself "what an interesting thing this group of people does when it uses archaic forms of pronouns and verbs to solidify group identity." Which is true. But it really does kind of sound ridiculous, doesn't it?

It's often done wrong, too. You can't just slap an -eth on any old verb and assume that it's a correct Early Modern English form. In fact, by Shakespeare's day the 3rd person singular verbs had competing forms (and the one we use today won). Sometimes people would say "he loveth" and other times "he loves."

And it is weird that people perceive all the thee/thou/thine stuff as formal and respectful, when back in the 17th century it was the *informal* way of interacting with someone.

(And yes, Germanic and Romance languages generally kept formal/informal markers. Japanese has waaaaay more levels of formality than Western European language and it changes forms to indicate in-group and out-group status too).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2011 12:08AM by Inverso.

Wow, thanks for the info!

Must really suck to be a Japanese Mormon. "OK, crap, now which level of formality are we supposed to use here?"

Was the 'eth' form really used in third person verb conjugations?

I thought the difference was this:

Dost thou loveth me? (informal marker)
Do you love me? (formal marker)
Both are in first person.

Granted, my knowledge of English language history is slim at best.

Also, we certainly shouldn't get into prescriptive vs descriptive here. It is more interesting why Mormons do things than to try and make them look stupid. Prescriptivists make my blood boil :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2011 03:07PM by snb.

It would be "thou" as the pronoun and "-est" as the suffix for regular verbs: "Thou lovest me."

The 3rd person is "He loveth" (or sometimes "He loves" because the change to our modern form was already underway).

Your example is a bit more complicated because you've used "do" as a helping/modal verb, which is followed by the unconjugated form "love": "Thou dost love me," "He doth love me."

The question forms would be "Dost thou love me?" or "Lovest thou me?" (2nd person) / "Doth he love me?" (3rd person)

Prescriptivists are the bane of our existence in linguistics! It is very hard to convince my students (and colleagues, too) that the rules for grammar, for linguists, are compiled by observing the behavior of speakers. *They* are the experts. This principle is as uncontroversial for us as organic evolution is for biologists



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2011 03:23PM by Inverso.

Actually, there is a thee/thou equivalent in German and German TBMs pray using the familiar du, which is akin to thee and thou. The same goes from Spanish and Portuguese. Many languages distinguish between a formal "you" and a familiar "you." Which means, when speaking to a person you do not know or with whom you do not have an intimate relationship or with an authority figure (ie: a teacher, boss) you would use the formal "you" and the familiar "you" for friends and family. English also used to make this distinction, which is what thou (singular) and thee (plural) were--the familiar form of "you."

Sorry to get all technical but I studied Linguistics in college and took a course in the history of the English Langauge, so I'm kinda a nerd about this sort of thing.I also took German and was taught (this was at BYU) to pray using the informal "you" (which is du, in German) because we are supposed to have a intimate personal relationship with HF. When I went to Brazil on my mission I was also taught the same thing, to pray using the familiar "te" rather than the formal "voce."

After I learned about how to pray in German and realizing that thou was the equivalent of "du" I thought that it was cool that we prayed using thou because, to me, it showed our closeness and familiarity with God. But, then I heard a talk by Oaks where he basically said using thou was about showing respect and reverence to God. I thought that he really had no idea what thou meant and how it once was used and it irked me that he wanted to make it about decorum.

It all seems pretty silly now but it really does matter to most TBMs.

We all know that thee/thou is the familiar. The point is that it's ARCHAIC familiar. In contemporary English, when you want to speak in familiar terms, you do NOT say thee/thou the way you would say "du" in German. In contemporary parlance, in fact, a majority of people would consider thee/thou to be overly formalistic.

If the goal is to speak to god as you would a friend, you simply can't say thee/thou.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2011 12:39AM by resipsaloquitur.

Actually I don't think most people know that thou is the familiar form of you. In fact, most TBMs think it's about being formal, not familiar.

I realize that it's archaic, that's why I said it's silly.

*high-fives inverso*

Yup--"Thou" was what you used to call your equals and inferiors; "you" was reserved for your superiors (like tu/usted in Spanish and tu/vous in French).

And I want to stab anybody who tries to ape archaic English by slapping "-eth" onto the end of everything.

It's like this:
I do
Thou dost
He/she doth
We do
You do
They do

I am
Thou art
He/she is
We are
You are
They are...

Hell, I got a million of 'em.

It's great fun -- especially when you're mocking someone trying to be archaic. :)

Yes, there is a thee/thou/thy/thine structure in many, many languages. The Mormon church teaches the same thing about praying in all these languages, so in that they are at least consistent. In German one uses "Du, Dich, Der, Dein," etc. In Italian, "tu, te, tuo," etc. One is supposed to use the familiar, deferring out of respect to God as a family member. The problem is, English dropped that long ago and it's stupid and meaningless to persist in believing that it is somehow more proper.

His original talk is found at this link:

http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1993.htm/ensign%20may%201993.htm/the%20language%20of%20prayer.htm


However, you might just want to read the archived thread--especially the second post (made by Tal Bachman)--found here:

http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon401.htm


I remember hearing this talk back when it was originally given in the 90's. I was a non-believer at the time, but still masquerading as a TBM. It confirmed to me just HOW utterly clueless "the brethren" are on so many topics--even those most important to church doctrine and practice--and it was given by arguably the most learned and scholarly of all the General Authorities. TRULY pathetic!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2011 10:44AM by Fetal Deity.

Back in the day uneducated gullible rabble thought thats how god talked cause their bibles told em so.

So joey wrote his translation of ancient egyptian spoken by jews turned natives into olde english

my fa orjte olde english sentances have smitten. Or whyfore in them

mental pain. He tried to write in my native dialect and I could spend all day here telling of discussions I had with folks about this.

All this time I thought the Lord knew better and we'd morphed the language into something else, however, Northern English is virtually unchanged so old Joe had it wrong all along.

Being a Shakespeare lover one would think I'd worked it out as his language fits in with ours very well.

Good grief - I was a complete idiot!

Briggy

How is Shakespeare's version of English any less authentic than Joseph Smith's version of English?

Why would person A's version of English cause you pain, while person B's version of English be just fine?

It is all language.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2011 03:06PM by snb.

which if you read Richard Packham's explanation you may come to understand.

Also, I was raised in a part of England where old English is the local dialect.

That's all.

Briggy

Well, syntax and morphology aren't set in stone and saying that something is bad grammar is an indefensible position.

I do find it interesting that older dialects of English are still spoken in England. What area do you live in?

but I doubt you'll understand the spoken version but I'm sure He Who lives Upstairs will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EldlA9VIoeU

:-)

I had it threatened out of me with the whoosh of a cane only to be told later that it was the purest of pure.

Confused? You bet I was.

Briggy

Haha, I bet.

That stuff is super interesting. You are right, I don't understand a lot of it. However, I am hungry for a meat pie right now :)

There is an excellent article by R. Packham of this parish, regarding the many ways in which J. Smith got it so very wrong:


http://home.teleport.com/~packham/linguist.htm#KINGJAMES


The whole of the article is well worth reading.

Rudi

Many genealogists know about this.

This is the shortest explanation:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ye

ye 1 (, y)
def.art. Archaic
The.

[Misreading of ye, from Middle English þe, spelling of the, the (using the letter thorn).]

Usage Note: In an attempt to seem quaint or old-fashioned, many store signs such as "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe" use spellings that are no longer current. The word ye in such signs looks identical to the archaic second plural pronoun ye, but it is in fact not the same word. Ye in "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe" is just an older spelling of the definite article the. The y in this ye was never pronounced (y) but was rather the result of improvisation by early printers. In Old English and early Middle English, the sound () was represented by the letter thorn (þ). When printing presses were first set up in England in the 1470s, the type and the typesetters all came from Continental Europe, where this letter was not in use. The letter y was used instead because in the handwriting of the day the thorn was very similar to y. Thus we see such spellings as ye for the, yt or yat for that, and so on well into the 19th century. However, the modern revival of the archaic spelling of the has not been accompanied by a revival of the knowledge of how it was pronounced, with the result that (y) is the usual pronunciation today.

From Wikipedia:

Abbreviations
The following were abbreviations during Middle and Early Modern English using the letter thorn:
– (þe) a Middle English abbreviation for the word the
– (þt) a Middle English abbreviation for the word that
– (þu) a rare Middle English abbreviation for the word thou (which was written early on as þu or þou)
(ys) an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word this
– (ye) an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word the
– (yt) an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word that

Here is a written example:
http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/cmLFth.asp

An almighty sky daddy example from the most perfect book:

2 Nephi 33:10 And now, my beloved brethren, and also Jew, and all ye ends of the ...
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/BOM/2ne/33.html

You can say he means "you", but it makes less sense that way.

Is it just the one verse where he made that error or are there more?

I was not thorough. I do not know about D&C.

Most people don't know the "y" is pronounced "th", so I would not be surprised if some profit somewhere, whether JS or BY, made another error.

To use thou in prayers is not reverence, it is tradition. Frozen tradition, I’d say. And that amateurish GA doesn’t know what he is talking about.

Originally, say a thousand years ago, European languages had one word for "you" in the singular and another for "you" in the plural. In English those words were thou = singular and ye/you = plural (plural like you guys, y'all etc).

In late medieval ages it was fashion in high society to address their equals or superior in the plural and to use the singular for their subordinates. This spread to other classes of society, and today most European languages have two words for "you" in the singular. This sounds complicated to Americans, but they forget that English has a system of terms of address, which is even more complicated. Roughly speaking the familiar version of "you" is used when Americans would address somebody by first name or nick name and the formal version when Americans would use last name, title, Sir or Madam.

Around 1600, at the time of King James and his Bible version, English too had this double system. Only in Bible and prayers the older principle “thou = singular” and “you = plural” was kept. To King James and his people to call God you would sound like “Mr God, sir” today – or it would imply that there were several gods. Also, the Hebrew and Greek of the Bible and the Latin of the pre-protestant church prayers has the older system, and the only way to render that in English was to distinguish between thou and you.

Later English took one step further than other languages. The English got so polite that they dropped the familiar “thou” entirely and called everybody by the formal form. But religious language in general is conservative, and the outdated word forms were fossilized in Bible and prayers and English got a separate grammar for religious subjects.

I’d agree with those who say it is time to move on and use normal grammar even in church. Only normal grammar can be a lot of things. Most people would find it irreverent to pray like “Big J.C., my man, good to know you’re listening, buddy”. Or what?

Slightly OT, but I've done Shakespeare, and even though he bent the rules pretty severly, trying to get around some of the "Elizabethan" in the BoM is truly brain-breaking.

No no no no, he didn't bend rules, he disregarded and then destroyed them.

Then Bacon's *cough* I mean, Shakepspear's butchered language became a beloved subset of popular literary terms for centuries.

As a mish in Spain we had to pray in the tu form...which is INFORMAL and we were taught that it was proper because you need to address him like you would address your own father. Yet we had to speak to the people in the very formal Usted form (which in Spain is simply totally out of date, makes everyone uncomfortable and no one uses any more). I had people begging me to stop speaking to them in Ustd., but I would not of course for fear of being disobedient.

I guess God has different rules for those who hail from Spain.

program there was actually a suggested goal about "learning and using proper prayer language"

My YW leader demanded that everyone set this as a goal since she felt that our prayers were not proper. so much for the "personal" part of personal progress...


On an unrelated note... a relative of mine left TSCC and is currently an active non-denominational christian. She was asked to give a prayer in the presence of my TBM family. There were a lot of whispers after about her prayer in which she used normal english and didn't follow the exact LDS format. Huh, I thought it was a nice from the heart prayer and it didn't contain anything objectionable.

1. 1600's English is considered "Ye Olde Moderne" English.
2. Yeah, most languages have different terms that are used for different people. Spanish, German, Turkish, etc have two. Japanese has a ridiculous amount of different terms for different situation, such as child speak.
3. I doubt that they think god is petty. Maybe you interpret their behavior to be as such, but they certainly don't. They think they are showing respect, even if it is in one of the dumbest ways ever.
4. Some are, some aren't. It is silly to generalize ALL Mormons as anything.