A poll, random linguistics and a few requests

[erratio]

The Poll
When you sing the Australian National Anthem, how do you pronounce the word 'advance'?
A: To rhyme with 'pants'
B: Advarnce, to be assonant with the word 'path'


For myself, I have no idea. I read both pronounciations and they both sound correct to me.

Random Linguistics

I finally discovered why I've occasionally been mistaken for Canadian/British!

From the Wikipedia article on Australian English:

Cultivated Australian English has many similarities to British Received Pronunciation, and is often mistaken for it. Cultivated Australian English is now spoken by less than 10% of the population.


I find this strange though because I don't consider my word usage to be very.. cultivated, to say the least. In fact I often seem to go out of my way (without really meaning to) to use some really weird or earthy turns of phrase and pronounciation. Sometimes I think that it's my subconscious need to distance myself from the speech patterns of people who I don't like, so my mum's strange idioms are in, my high schools' South African phrases and accents are out, and in between is a healthy sprinkling of random phrases that seemed particularly apt to me when I heard/read them. Oh and growing up with a reading vocabulary far beyond your spoken can lead to some really strange pronounciations :) I'm still coming across them nowadays (who the hell uses that word anyway? Other than me)

Anyway, I guess that puts my accent mostly in General Australian English but sometimes straying into Cultivated. Woot!

The requests

1. Does anyone know where I can buy dreidels? At some point I'll probably go check Gold's near Bondi Beach but I have no idea where else one could possibly buy these. And Gold's has a reputation for being expensive, so an alternate source would be nice. Heck, any source would be nice, I don't even know if Gold's has them.

2. If I wanted to read the Christian Bible (ie. the New Testament, Gospels, etc) what version(s) would you recommend I read?

Comments

POLL

[seirenes.livejournal.com]

A) :) but then again i've got a pretty strange mixture accent myself....

Re: POLL

[doctorer.livejournal.com]

Now that I have the serious business out of the way (see below) I can comment on your post!

B - I tend to gravitate towards BRP where there's a clear distinction, because the American accent gives me bad memories.

I am frequently asked about my accent, and occasionally "cultivated" (or "educated") Australian is proposed. Usually though people just can't name it, and rightly so - it's almost entirely constructed. I must say I'm quite proud of being the only person I know who can claim a truly constructed accent (I base this claim on the fact that over the last ten years nobody has ever reached a consensus on "where" my accent is "from"). Go me!

[(Anonymous)]

Straight to the Bible question: your best bet is the NRSV. They have attempted to be non-denominational, and have Jews as well as different demoninations of Christians on their editorial committee. King James Version (also known as the Authorised Version) is also very good, but does not take recent scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls into account. Do not, however, bother with the NIV or any of the idiomatic translations (like Good News Bible, etc).

[mia-at-lj.livejournal.com]

King James is fun to read, especially if you are into linguistics. They wrote the King James bible to make it sound poetically beautiful, and not just a complete literal translation if what my English teacher said in high school is correct.

I've only read Good News Bible and New International Version and the Catholic Revised Standard Version. The advantage of the idiomtic ones is that they are easy to read. I haven't really made an opinion on the differences, though there is a huge difference in the language structure in the three editions though they basically kinda mean the same thing.

Though I do like the childrens version with pictures!

[(Anonymous)]

True, the idiomatic translations are a lot easier to read (which is the whole point, I guess!), but you do have to be careful. Idiomatic translations are also doctrinal translations. An example (one of many):

Jer 7:22 says that "For when I freed your fathers from the land of Egypt, I did not speak with them or command them concerning burnt offerings or sacrifice". Bit a problem, this verse, considering God almost speaks of nothing else throughout the entire book of Leviticus! How does the NIV resolve this problem? "I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices". Sure, they makes things easier, but it's completely unfaithful to the text.

An example from the New Testament might be 1 Pet 4:6. This says that the gospel was preached "to them that are dead, that they may be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit". This is also a problem as this implies that conversion is possible after death. How does the NIV resolve this? That the gospel was preached "to those who are now dead". Again, this solves the problem, but it is still unfaithful to the text.

In reality, the NIV was created as a response to the NRSV. Because of the fact that the NRSV allowed non-Protestants (and even non-Christians) on their editorial committee, a group of evangelical Protestants went and made their own translation. Unless you have the time to check every verse that you read against another version, my advice would simply be to stick with an alternative version instead. NIV is very readable, but it is too often simply incorrect.

[axl12.livejournal.com]

The most commonly read is the New International Version.

[doctorer.livejournal.com]

Unfounded, and unhelpful. The most commonly read is neither the most accurate nor the most appropriate, simply the most widely disseminated - sort of like saying McDonalds is the best food because it's everywhere.

Not meant as a personal attack mind, just a venture into clarity for the day.

There are two major distinctions you want to make when seeking a Christian Bible. The first is whether you want a "Catholic" or "Protestant" bible. This history will be fiercely denied by protestants, but you know me too well to think I care. =)

Basically, the "bible" as we know it did not exist for several decades after the death (and, presumably, resurrection and ascention) of Jesus. In that period the sole governance of the faith was held by the Church and its leaders, the apostles. The apostles not only traveled, preached, and wrote; they appointed successors to the office conferred on them to continue this work of teaching and governance. There were several generations of these successors (the first bishops) before the Synod of Rome in the 4th century had to sort out the real Christian "scriptures" from the fakers - this council decided the contents of the Bible. The division came over a thousand years later at the protestant "reformation", when Martin Luther effectively decided that his personal theology had more authority than the universal practice of the entire Church over the previous 1200 years. He rejected certain parts of what we call the Old Testament and rearranged books of the New in order to modify the apparent importance of a few (key) epistles. Protestants will claim that the books he rejected were "the insertions of a corrupt church", but that claim can be addressed by our friendly apologists at Catholic Answers:

http://catholic.com/library/What_Your_Authority.asp

In short, the protestant bible is the thinner (incomplete) and inaccurate version, the Catholic bible is the version in continuous use since the establishment of the Faith.

[erratio.livejournal.com]

So.. where does the King James lie in this? And in general which version is which?

[doctorer.livejournal.com]

The second distinction is whether you want a more "literal" (textually idiomatic) or a more "modern" (contemporary idiomatic) translation. On one end, the more literal translations are more difficult to read (the older style of writing does not flow so easily) but tend to more accurately convey the desired meaning of the passage. They do, however, require the reader to be very culturally aware and willing to seek guidance when obscure text arises. The contemporary translations seek to make the bible more readable by (in some cases) adopting a style closer to narrative - this can at times be seen to compromise all but the most obvious meaning behind the text, stripping deeper relationships and interactions between various parts from the text.

I would recommend the Jerusalem Bible (famed for its excellent footnotes and cross-referencing) or the Revised Standard Version. I specifically avoid the NRSV because its only real changes were to make the language "politically correct" - this can and does, in many cases, make the language stilted and even modifies the fundamental meaning of a given passage for the sake of modern sensibilities. A token example is the preference for using "God" or "the Lord" when possible in preference to the original "He/His" etc. The New American Bible, despite its name, also has a good reputation and is from memory a slightly more literal translation.

In your case, perhaps it is better to consider getting both a more literal and a more contemporary translation - I'm not sure what you want from the bible, but if it's just a general interest the flow of the contemporary translations is hugely beneficial.

Regarding the NIV specifically - I hate the NIV. It claims scholarly superiority, but the fact remains it is nothing more than a political bible produced by proponents of a particular theology. Every passage that is even remotely contested by evangelical protestants is translated to explicitly promote the protestant theologies while "disallowing" others (such as the catholic and orthodox ones) as demonstrated above. It is totally unsuitable for anyone who is attempting to learn about Christianity in a sane way - read the text first, then interpret it (rather than mould the text to one's existing interpretation). The King James version is similarly unsuitable - it was written for political reasons (attempting to provide the newly Protestant England with a Protestant translation of the Bible to English) and is riddled with archaic and inaccurate language. The language is doctrinally stilted and prone to severe misinterpretation by modern readers - especially where stylistic practices have reversed in the interceding 400 years. For a better (and more charitable) guide to all the stuff I've said and more, see our friends again at Catholic Answers:

http://catholic.com/library/Bible_Translations_Guide.asp

[erratio.livejournal.com]

Ahh, my thanks for that

I should perhaps have mentioned in my post that I was looking for the more literal versions. It's all very well to have a nice story but when I remember back to my scripture at school there's way too much meaning packed in there for an interpretation to do it any justice

Revised standard version it shall be then!

[doctorer.livejournal.com]

The RSV is pretty good, it's one of my preferred translations. For my personal use though my favourite remains the Jerusalem. Though the translation itself is somewhat less literal, the cross-referencing and footnotes in the Jerusalem Bible convey far more meaning than transliterated Hebrew idiom ever could.