A reader writes:
Dear Jim: I note that please is a word that never shows up in the mass nor in our prayers. I know that Jesus gave us the words to the Our Father which does not include the word please. There are a number of places in that prayer where I (as a wretch) would feel please is appropriate (please give us this day our daily bread, please forgive us etc). Is it possible that please is not used because the language spoken by Jesus did not include such a word?
You’re on to something here, though the problem isn’t just confined to Aramaic, in which the Lord’s Prayer was originally given. It also affects Latin, which is determinative of Mass and most other standard prayers. Neither of these languages has a ready-made word for "please."
"Please" is so important in English politness that it boggles our minds how another langauge can make do without an equivalent to this word, just as our minds boggle that some languages (like Latin, Irish, and Mandarin) manage to make do without a word for "yes."
Thing is: Words like "please" and "yes" don’t really have meaning as such. They are "function words"–words used to perform specific functions. "Please" is a particle of entreaty and politeness, while "yes" is a particle of agreement or affirmation. (Particles are typically short words that never change their form and perform specific functions.)
But it isn’t the particles themselves that are important: It’s the functions they perform. Every language has a way to perform the functions of entreaty, politeness, agreement, and affirmation, they just don’t have handy particles to do it.
A common way in many languages to express entreaty, for example, is to use the imperative mood. That’s what’s going on in the Lord’s Prayer, for example. You look at it in Aramaic (or Greek or Latin), and the verbs in the petitions are in the imperative mood ("give us," "forgive us," "lead us not").
That’s where the problem comes in for us English speakers: The imperative mood does double-duty in languages like the ones just mentioned, where it can serve either to mark a request or a command, but in English since we’ve sloughed off the entreaty function to "please" and other constructions ("Can you . . . ?" "Would you . . . ?"), the imperative is much more associated with commands in English.
If you just bring over an Aramaic, Greek, or Latin imperative into English literally ("Give us this day our daily bread"), it can sound to us like we’re commanding God to do something, when to the speakers of the original languages, it would have been obvious that in these cases the imperative is being used to signal entreaty. (Nobody commands God around.)
The problem is significant enough that people who might be tempted into the Health & Wealth Gospel movement have to be warned about how not to interpret imperatives in the original languages. If you look in Bill Mounce’s book Basics of Biblical Greek, for example, he has a passage warning people against intepreting imperatives directed toward God as commands. All kinds of screwy Hagan-esque "Write your own ticket with God" theology can get started if you don’t recognize how to interpret imperatives toward God.
So you’re right: There ain’t an Aramaic word that is directly equivalent to "please." The language conveys requests and politeness in other ways. That leaves us (including me) as English-speakers wishing "please" was in our standard prayers, but it ain’t. The thing for us to do is to just relax and recognize that the function is being performed by the imperative mood and that we have to take this account when we’re saying our prayers.
Funny, I have a friend from Italy who tells me that she finds it insincere that Americans constantly say “hello,” “how are you today,” “good morning” etc.
Icelandic doesn’t have a word for please either.
You learn something new every day…neat.
Hmm. The Germanic languages that I know of all seem to have the word Ya. So, when did that come into being? Is it present in Gothic? Proto-IE? How do the Gothic Gospels handle it?
Don’t the French have sil vous plait? (sp) Did that come from the Frankish dialect or from the Latinate influences?
Although the liturgy does not have the word “please,” there are plenty of occasions in the liturgy where we find Latin equivalents of “we beseech You” or “we beg you” (unfortunately those have been ICELised into plain old “ask,” which doesn’t really convey the sense of supplication). Also, anyone who immerses himself into the Scriptures and the liturgy in time will absord the wider connotation of the imperative that you mentioned — that is, their English will become more “biblical” in its tone and connotations, which will serve to lessen that false sense of issuing God commands.
My Wheelock book says “amabo te,” or “I will love you,” was an idiom the Romans used like “please.”
Jimmy:
Okay, so there is no word in the Lord’s prayer that we would “translate” as please. But, as you indicate it is directly implied by the text. That being said, shouldn’t a correct “interpretation” of it include a “please”? That is, in order to interpret the prayer rather than simply translating it, why don’t we include the please?
Even in English we use the imperative as a request sometimes, we just don’t notice it. For example, when asking a stranger a question we begin by saying, “Excuse me, sir,” yet we are not commanding him to excuse us.
A few clarifications/quibbles:
The Pater Noster does use the imperative in parts, but many of the commands are not in the imperative (they are jussive subjunctives). For example, the “lead us not into temptation” is not imperative.
In Latin there are several ways to express commands/prohibition. Each, however, has subtly different shades of forcefullness (as Jimmy was getting at). If you want to think of it this way, the language of the (Latin) Our Father has a built-in “please”.
fac ut bene valeatis,
scott
“amabo te” (which was very informal), “sis” (si + vis), “si placet”, were all used by the Romans at times as rough equivalents of “please”, but not with as much regularity as we use “please” (and they seem to have faded out in ecclesiastical Latin, though I could be mistaken). In Latin — and many other languages — the imperative doesn’t imply all the authority/insolence that it does in English. English developed a reliance on “please” and circumlocution in requests in the Middle English/into Early Modern English period, if I remember correctly. (This process of making requests more “polite” was also what caused “thou” to drop out of the language, because thou was too informal.) So, “please” could have been put into the Pater noster, but a Latin speaker would not have been *expecting* it in the way that an English speaker would.
Thank you, Anonymous Stranger. If I happen to find myself in first-century Rome, I’ll know better when not to use my “please” phrases. 🙂
See, people keep pointing out why there is no word for it used in the Aramaic or Latin. (Too tempting for people to showcase their linguistic credentials, I guess)
But I’ve yet to hear why, if it was implied by context, it is not included in an interpretion.
The “please” in the Our Father is expressed “Your will be done.”
The “please” in the Our Father is expressed “Your will be done.”
Nice sentiment, but hardly. You mean to imply that the “Your will be done” was not in there but was put into the english interpretation as a means of recognizing the “Please” implied by use of the imperative mood?
My daughter has been learning some Mandarin, and she advised me that the expression for “yes” in Mandarin is “shi” (it is so) or “hao” (okay). I checked it out at the following webpage:
http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/yes.htm
That page also cites expressions for “yes” in Latin and Irish.
Steve
If you ever visit the Greater Cincinnati area, be aware (please) that here “please” is also a particle signifying “Excuse me, I didn’t hear what you said. Please say it again.” 🙂
Steve,
The Latin they give for “yes” (“ita”, etc.), while very often being a suitable translation, is not exactly synonymous with English “yes”. “Ita” means “thus” or “it is so”.
Latin more often expresses yes by simply repeating the emphatic word back in the affirmative. So if you said, “Did you eat?”, I’d answer yes by simply saying “I ate”.
pax,
scott
“But I’ve yet to hear why, if it was implied by context, it is not included in an interpretion.”
I don’t think it’s implied by the context — it’s something that is untranslateable, which is why it isn’t translated.
First of all, thanks for the document. In most languages a “direct translation” is not available for such words. There are some words to use (in most cases, but not all) and for other cases we just explain the word we meant using another possible way. Steve said “if you said, ‘Did you eat?’, I’d answer yes by simply saying ‘I ate’.” is a way of describing “what to do in that case”.
I would like to say “yes its that simple”, but it is not. In some languages that type of answers might cause misunderstandings, as in Turkish the answer that Steve used should mean “stop bothering me” or “none of your business”, but a simple “yes” will be a perfect answer that would mean “yes” and also “thanks for asking”.
About “please” word, Turkish (again) breaks the rules on praying and directly commands the God, as “forgive us”, “protect us” etc., so it’s really possible to see people that commands God around. The difference is caused from religion, so it can be underestimated, but the point is “please” is an unspoken word for that situations, and all others understand that you didn’t meant to command the God. So it becomes “(please) forgive our sins”.
In some languages a direct translation of “me” or “I” means “ego” so they use “us” instead. In English “you” can mean one or several people but in German (Deutsch) “sie” (you) is used for respect or several people but “du” (you) means single person. If you try translating “du” word that returns “you” word, but if you go and talk to a german and if he’s not a friend of yours, “du” may cause a misunderstanding and he (or she) feels like insulted. If you do that in germany, he has right to report you for inslut, and their law says it won’t be tolerated, and thus, you have to show respect anyone by using “sie” word insted. (example: Sprehen sie Deutsch? – True / Sprehen du Deutsch? – False)
Weird or not, languages and people have lots of differences from place to place depending on their lifestyles. Accent or pronunciation, even your voice tone may differ the meaning.
Regards;
I would just like to comment, that it is an extreme insult to the prophets, scribes, scholars, and messengers of God that we as able people don’t learn the original languages. The English is simply unacceptable to reach the full meaning of the scriptures.
May God bless you and those who help teach us, but eventually we need to wake up and encourage our children to learn Aramaic in school instead of French or Spanish. Whats more important then knowing what, Abraham or Moses actually meant, word for word ? ?