St Jerome

X99Lynx at aol.com X99Lynx at aol.com
Wed Mar 3 04:34:13 UTC 1999


In a message dated 3/2/99 8:55:49 PM, John McLaughlin wrote:

<< No matter one's religious affiliation or attitudes, this has got nothing to
do with language.>>

This is so patently not true it is... amazing.  We are talking about written
words and mass translations of words here from one language to another.  How
could it not be about language?  And once again in the historical context, it
is actually occuring at the borderline between two different phases of a
language, when a decision is to be made between staying with the old or going
with the new.  It is about nothing else but language.

Jerome's translation was faced with the fact that the Latin language was going
through serious disruption in grammar, sound and meaning at the time.
Donatus, by tradition Jerome's teacher, catalogued these changes not many
years before the Vulgate was written.

Donatus specifically mentions "changing and transposing of letters, syllables,
tones and aspiration. (...transmutatio litterae, syllabae, temporis, toni,
adspirationis.)  The long /i/ in "Italian" has already made its apperance by
Jerome's time, Donatus warning that we must "pronounce Italiam with a short
first vowel;..."  He notes shifts in "sound to conjugation" - "since 'fervere'
is of the second conjugation and should be pronounced long".  And he notes the
following regarding 'aspiration' - "which some ascribe to writing, some to
pronunciation, because of h, which, as you know, some consider to be a
letter, some the sign of aspiration." (... quem quidam scripto, quidam
pronunciationi iudicant adscribendum, propter "h" scilicet, quam alii
litteram, alii adspirationis notam putant.)  In fact, Donatus may even have
given us the true derivation of the word 'salmon' which the OED ascribes to
"salere", to leap, but which Donatus describes as being the result of the
sudden dropping of syllables in the "new Latin" of his day: "in loss...of
syllable, as 'salmentum' for 'salsamentum' (fish sauce, marinated fish)" (ut
salmentum pro salsamentum).

What Jerome was talking about in the passages quoted by Sheila was a choice he
decided in adopting this "new language" instead of adhering to Classical,
which was no longer really being spoken by the people.  This decision (the one
which St Augustine also claimed to make) meant that he was dealing with a live
language whose meanings and forms were shifting and not "good language" in the
sense of the "grammarians."  And as has been said for a long time, Jerome
abandoned both Donatus and Old Rome in the Vulgate.  The result was that
Erasmus, who documents many of the "barbarisms" Jerome adopted in "correcting"
Jerome's grammar, specifically is aware of what Jerome has done and calls his
language "Italian."  The influence exerted by Jerome's choice of course will
powerfully affect the language of court and of written legal documents in all
of Europe for centuries to come.  To say this is not about language is a
little preposterous.  Unless one possibly has an axe to grind with Jerome
based on "one's religious affiliation or attitudes."

<<Christian evangelization has probably been one of the greatest boons
to linguistic knowledge in history (note our only record of Gothic, etc.).>>

It seems John McLaughlin has changed POV in mid-post here.  Perhaps that nun
he mentions got to him and cleared his mind about things.

Regards,
Steve Long

[ Moderator's note:
  I was reminded today that things we Americans take light-heartedly are rather
  more seriously regarded elsewhere.  I apologize to those who were offended by
  the original joke (and possibly by this rejoinder), and will remind everyone
  that we are all writing for an international audience here.  We should adopt
  the strictures of a formal dinner, where politics and religion are recognized
  as topics not to be discussed.
  --rma ]



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