Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Lajos Szőke: Aspects of liturgical languages in Europe

language resembles the role of liturgical language in Hesychastic interpretation, (see in detail:Weinreich, 1963. 150-171). Strangely enough, Panini's efforts made some thousand years ago to describe Sanskrit aimed at something similar. He was anxious to revive not only the graphic form of a Sanskrit word but its sounding as well (hence his detailed phonetic descriptions). He assumed that in liturgical use both originally written and pronounced words had identical value (M. Fehér, 1993-94, 606-625). Catholic and Protestant Bible-translations of the Reformation period had a strong influence on the literary languages in Europe (the Károli and Káldy in Hungary, the King James version in England and Luther's in Germany). The authority of these first translations, however, proved to be so great that the correctors of later centuries dared to make only minor modifications in the language. Even 19-th century revisions did nothing more than correct the obsolete words and christological errors, thus preserving the archaic language. This method created a strange situation for the Protestant liturgical language. It was on the way to becoming like the Church Slavic in "Slavia Orthodoxa", although it had nothing to do with Hesychasm. This unwillingly created situation led to a thorny contradiction between the principles of theology and the practice of language-use. As Protestant theoreticians claimed to revive the early Christian liturgies, this artificially supported archaic language stood in contrast with the principles (see: Bittinger, 1966). A real change in "language-policy" was instituted by the Catholic and the Protestants only in the 20th century. This slow development was marked by transitional solutions which can be best demonstrated if we compare two missales (Catholic). Magyar-latin misszále (Budapest, 1944:438) „ És elindulván, szokása szerint az Olajfák hegyére méne: követék pedig őt a tanítványok is. " Lukács, 22:39 In this short passage there are three archaic forms: méne, követék - verb, past tense, elindulván - verbal adverb, past tens. Passages without biblical quotations do not have archaic forms. Magyar misekönyv, (Budapest, 1967:400) ,^Az utolsó vacsora után Jézus elindult és szokása szerint kiment az Olajfák hegyére. Követték őt a tanítványok is." Lukács, 22:39 146