Re: Pater Noster (purely linguistically)

Hi!

Mark wrote:
> >      - Would it be appropriate to translate 'heaven' with 'divine world'?
> >      - Maybe 'divine transcendental world', but that might be redundant?
>
> Well, the words for "heaven" in natlangs - including "heaven" itself -
(John notes this, too.)

Yes, in German, of course, there is only one word for 'heaven' and
'sky'.  Qthen|gai is meant to be a 'modern' conlang (whatever that
means) so I will not always use history of languages as a guideline,
although history is very often a very clarifying device. :-)

> >          optative(be.reserved.from.profane.use(thy name))
>
> The Latin is expressing a desire, or perhaps a "third person imperative"
> . . . is that what an "optative" is?
Yes, desire, but not imperative.  Humans are not in the position of
using imperative here, I think.  It seems quite different from 'let
there be light', where the imperative would be appropriate. :-)

> But if you use "profane", you run into question-begging, since "profane"
> is pretty much defined as "the opposite of holy/sacred".
Ah, right! :-)  I did not notice.  Thanks!

But anyway, my current translation is 'cannot-be-used-malevolently'
(with an axiomatic negation particle).  This one does not have this
problem, but 'holy' seems to imply that it shall not even be used
benevolently for non-divine purposes whatsoever.  Maybe 'we shall not
curse with thy name.'  With 'curse' being a variable like 'bread' is
one for 'food' that many translations have.  Hmm...  Not very
satisfactory.

It's hard to use only derivation: Qthen|gai does not have ad-hoc
compounding, but I do want to derive *one* word 'holy' in the above
sense, not a clause, and the morphological means are limited.

So I need further thinking.

John wrote:
> I think you've nailed this one.
Sounds good. :-)

> *** The Greek word _epiousion_ here is problematic
Oh, if that's the only problem! :-)  I have a lot of problems with the
vocative + first two lines.

> it's not the usual word for 'daily', and appears only once outside
> the Lord's Prayer.
Where?  Is it known what exactly it means?  Is it important for the
message of that line?  I thought I understood that line...

**Henrik

Reply