www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall New Name For "Passion"

Dear Friends,

Mel Gibson's movie, "Passion", has been renamed "The Passion of Christ." (because of some kind of copyright infringement).

If you haven't seen the trailer it is viewable at:

http://www.passion-movie.com/english/trailer.html

Paul

Cool trailer it is.

On the side, the linguist in me bristled when I heard Pilatus speaking according to modern Church Latin, instead of the classical pronounciation, or a dialectual pronounciation.

Why did the linguist in you bristle?

Do you think Erasmus knew anything about how Latin was "really" pronounced "back then"?

I would also like to point out that "Church" Latin is a dialectical pronounciation--based on later Latin.


I could just as easily go off on the way you guys pronounce Greek!

oi=ee
y=ee
i=ee
�=ee

etc.


All in good fun--but I was glad that they decided to use living Latin instead of the dead Latin of British universities.


LatinTrad

If one is trying to maintain historicity, then it makes sense to use a dialect that would have been used at the time, not a dialect dating from eighteen centuries later. This is a gross anachronism, no less than using classical pronouciation in a modern Latin liturgical setting.

Besides, the "dead Latin of British Universities" is a Latin pronounced using modern English vowels and consonants. That is truely dead.

At any rate, i had it in mind that Gibson sought the most accurate portrayal possible, and this was my criticism from the trailer.

I think he should call it something like "Passio secunda Evangelia"

AK

Does anybody know if there would be a portion of the movie about His Resurrection?

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine

Attempting to determine precisely how Latin was pronounced 2,000 years ago strikes me as an effort that is unlikely to succeed. I'm all for authenticity, but this is "a bit much". Am looking forward to seeing (and hearing) the film. Incognitus

The same goes for Hebrew, but does it really matter? The heavey British accent didn't annoy anyone watching the Life of Brian.

Joe Thur,
who actually saw the Killer Rabbit

Dear SPDundas,

Good question. As of yet I've heard nothing about a resurrection scene in the movie.

Since Mel Gibson is a traditional Roman Catholic I would think he would include the resurrection (e.g., the rosary's Glorious Mysteries). On the other hand the Way of the Cross ends with the burial of Jesus.

I am eagerly looking forward to seeing this movie.

Paul

New avatar: Saint John Chrysostom

CIX!

Alrighty, I'm jumping into the fray!

Probably for the same reasons the linguist in me bristled. Actually I didn't so much bristle as cringe.

Erasmus knew quite a bit, and we've been able to reconstruct far more of the Classical and Vulgar pronunciation since. Naturally we can't reconstruct with complete accuracy, but there are several points we *can* be sure of, such as:

V was pronounced as an English W.

H was pronounced half the time as a H and silent the rest of the time. It was most certaintly never given a K sound as in mihi => mickey.

C and G were always hard.

TI was always TI, and never SI.

Diphthongs were pronounced as diphthongs, hence AE was ai, OI as oi.

In Vulgar Latin, V became a modern V, the diphthongs became as in modern Italian, but C became a soft C (what we would now call and S). Hence "receptus" would have been "reh-sep-toos" and "lucem" would have been "loosehm" to St Ambrose, for example.

Actually, it isn't. The "Church" pronunciation is nothing more than Modern Italian, plain and simple.

Ah, but the pronunciation of Modern Greek was largely in place by the 12th Century, and can claim Byzantine pedigree. The "Church" prounciation dates only from the 1700s at the latest and was confined to Italy.


Church Latin really is hardly living Latin! If by the "Latin of British universities" you refer to the "Anglican pronunciation", that's actually the pronunciation used in pre-deformation England.

If Gibson went to all the trouble to make sure his film was historically accurate, he could have tried to make the Latin as close as possible to the Classical or Vulgar pronunciation as possible, rather than use the Italian pronunciation which is wildly inaccurate. But then I'm also left wondering how accurate his film's Syriac will be, I'd cringe to hear any trace of a modern accent.

Actually the argument (which I would not seriously dispute) that the current pronunciation of Latin used in the liturgy is really just the modern pronunciation of Italian supports the argument that Church Latin is living - this is the pronunciation in which mothers speak to their children. Incognitus

Brian (to the leper who'd just been healed, and complained that he'd lost his livelihood): "There's no pleasing some people."

Ex-Leper: "That's just what Jesus said, sir!"

The bigger sin is the omission of Greek by replacing it with Latin.

I can only pray the Aramaic will sound convincing. Over 99% of you should be happy for not being plagued with Semitic ears like myself. I have no doubt you will find Caviezel's speech satisfactory.

However, I'm afraid it will take no less than a villager from one of the Aramaic-speaking Syrian villages to please me in this regard.

Let me give you my opinion of Caviezel's Aramaic. As expected, a contradiction arises. In the trailer, he sounds surprisingly "not bad" and "Semitically" convincing (I didn't think the Aramaic "My God" is identical to the Arabic "Ilahi". Let's hope Gibson didn't get his languages mixed up.)

However, in an interview, he quoted an Aramaic verse, and it sounded to me no different than a foreigner speaking Arabic with a very bad accent. I do hope he was only foregoing adopting a proper-sounding accent for convenience' sake during the interview. If not, then I only hope cinema will do to his voice what it apparently can do to his looks, miraculously change them for the better.

Here's hoping. I can only wish him the best in his efforts. At first glance, he's certainly the best-looking and most Semitic Hebraic-looking Christ I've ever seen.

As for Greek, thank God the Greek Church doesn't use Erasmian or New Testament Greek pronunciations. Keep those 'oi's as 'ee's, please.

In IC XC
Samer