This pope may have been born and reared in South America, but he is clearly Italian and all the way! You can see here why the Italians love him so much. And the children who asked the questions in Italian, even the little ones use the formal address to the Holy Father and that takes some finesse at that age and their Italian is impeccable. In Italian, there is a formal way to speak to an acquaintance or stranger or someone of a different "class" that you and then there is the familiar. We have lost that completely in English or at least in the USA.
What happened in English was that the polite form of the second person (which is also the plural form 'you') gradually ousted the familiar singular form 'thou' in the 17th century, although the Quakers continued to use it, and it still survives in Yorkshire dialect (and of course in the more familiar vernacular prayers and psalms of Catholics, and the traditional liturgy of Anglicans).
Its loss in a liturgical context can cause problems, particularly after a relative pronoun: "Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world" sounds fine, but "Lamb of God, who take away ... " sounds odd, although it is grammatically correct. The present translation gets round this by replacing the relative pronoun with 'you'.
3 comments:
This video made me feel so happy. I love the little redhead's question, Papa's response, and Rocco's laughter while translating.
This pope may have been born and reared in South America, but he is clearly Italian and all the way! You can see here why the Italians love him so much. And the children who asked the questions in Italian, even the little ones use the formal address to the Holy Father and that takes some finesse at that age and their Italian is impeccable. In Italian, there is a formal way to speak to an acquaintance or stranger or someone of a different "class" that you and then there is the familiar. We have lost that completely in English or at least in the USA.
What happened in English was that the polite form of the second person (which is also the plural form 'you') gradually ousted the familiar singular form 'thou' in the 17th century, although the Quakers continued to use it, and it still survives in Yorkshire dialect (and of course in the more familiar vernacular prayers and psalms of Catholics, and the traditional liturgy of Anglicans).
Its loss in a liturgical context can cause problems, particularly after a relative pronoun: "Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world" sounds fine, but "Lamb of God, who take away ... " sounds odd, although it is grammatically correct. The present translation gets round this by replacing the relative pronoun with 'you'.
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