Divine Office, Latin Vs English

[Cherie]

I was just wondering if those who had been or are in religious life could help me with this. Although I studied Latin for two years in high school, I wonder how one can pray the Divine Office without knowing what one is saying/chanting. This is posing quite a dilemma for me. Thanks for any help you can give me.

We didn't pray the Divine Office in Latin, but we had many prayers and hymns in Latin and sometimes had the NO in Latin. Our superior insisted that we have an English translation right along with our Latin prayers so we could understand what we were praying. It was extraordinarily helpful, and though I did have two years of Latin in high school, I was surprised at just how much Latin I was able to truly learn simply by having the translation next to my prayers and hymns.

It really depends. Some people find that praying in Latin is even more spiritually nourishing than praying in English, while others find praying in a language outside of their vernacular is a real hindrance to attentive prayer. It really does go both ways, and it depends a lot on the person, their personality, sensibilities, etc. You'll just have to see if this is a real problem for you, and pray about it.

[maximillion]

I am old enough to have learned the common prayers in Latin at school - we had to re-learn them in English when the vernacular was introduced. Hence when I entered a community that had a full Latin sung LOTH it wasn't hard at all.

 

As others have said, you get used to it, and I LOVE those Latin Gregorian chants. There is NOTHING that can replace that for me.

Then, with renewal, we swapped over to French ( I was in a French community) I actually found this harder....less beautiful, and yes, visitors from elsewhere suffered as they hadn't when everything was in Latin, including the Mass.

 

So I have experience of both, and give me the Latin any day.......even without translation.

 

(We had regular Latin class in the noviciate and this was nearly always based on the LOTH and helping us to understand it).

[Totally Franciscan]

Thank you everyone for your input.  Your posts have helped me a lot and gave me a few chuckles along the way.  I am now not so distressed about Latin LOTH as I was.  In discerning with communities, the Latin will not be a deciding factor.  Presumably my two-year study of Latin will be a huge help as well.  Thanks again Pham!

[ChristinaTherese]

Mater, a dead language is one that is not spoken everyday on a regular basis.
;)


& arfink, call me a total dead-language hipster cause l do love Latin :p

By way of preamble, Im studying Linguistics in college, so I do know what I'm talking about.

A dead language is one that has no native speakers. Living languages change as each new generation learns the language slightly differently, but dead languages stay stagnant. They might be used every day, like Latin is, but they aren't learned and spoken from birth except possibly on very rare occasions. (I've heard of people whe got married whose common language was Klingon or something and then raised children speaking Klingon. That does not make Klingon a living language unless there's a sizable community that does that. It just makes them very weird.)

The changes that occur in living languages due to subsequent generations are particularly clear if you compare something like the original Beowulf, stuff by Cynewulf, etc. to their modern translations. They're both English, and recognizably similar if you know what to look for, but the differences due to the generations are so great that (and I say this from experience) it can be very difficult to translate them.

Thus, it is no insult to Latin to call it a dead language, it is merely as much of a statement of fact as calling Greek or the many languages that linguists have tried to record before all their native speakers die out dead languages.

[AnneLine]

Really good points, all, and I am NOT against Latin for liturgy at all -- I know for many it is a wonderful thing.  It is just really hard for me.

 

To be fair, I have some serious learning disability issues, and I think that is part of the reason I have such a hard time with it. 

 

My brain kind of shuts off when there is too much input, kind of an internal 'lalala I can't hear you!' response -- which is not an ideal way to go to prayer!

 

But it does sound very beautiful... just for me, not the stuff of prayer.

[maximillion]

Re reading this thread it strikes me once more how good is the Lord, in providing His Spirit to inspire so many different types of community so that all of our little human likes/dislikes/needs and even foibles can be catered for!!!!!