Saturday, October 26, 2024

Daily Bread 4

Continued from part 3.

Some of the collections were, like Trumbull's, specific to a language family. And even the larger works tend, over time, though not uniformly, to be organized according by family, rather than just alphabetically, as such schemes developed within emerging language sciences. Conversely, the study of language increasingly devalued Pater Noster collections, as it became a real science, say, during the (long) eighteenth century. This stage of its development is sometimes given in personal shorthand as Leibniz to Humboldt.

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Leibniz is a short-list contender for the “last man who knew everything,” but I think it is fair to say that his interest in language comparison stemmed from a bigger goal of working out the origin of nations, where a new scheme beyond Biblical literalism was needed. In his Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement, his reaction to Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he has his character say,

Sans parler de l'origine des peuples, qu'on connaîtra par le moyen des étymologies solides, que la comparaison des langues fournira le mieux
Not to speak of the origin of nations, which becomes known by means of solid etymologies, which the comparison of languages will best furnish.

He saw collecting source material, including in particular word lists and translations of the Pater Noster, as key in such a plan. The posthumous Collectanea Etymologica contains correspondence with Witsen, detailing his efforts to obtain these.

Je n'ay pas encore reçû les Pater en Langue Scythique, Samojede, Baskire &c.
I have not yet received the Pater in the Scythian langauge, Samoyed, and Bashkir, etc.
Depuis ma derniere lettre, j'ay reçû les deux Oraiſons Dominicales ci-jointes; …
Since my last letter, I have received the two attached Lord's Prayers; …
Ayant reçû ces jours-ci l' Oraiſon Dominicale en Langue Samojede, je vous l'envoye ci-joint.
Having received a few days ago the Lord's Prayer in the Samoyed language, I am sending it to you attached.

There follow some of the results, including one in Hottentot, with an explanation of clicks (which sadly do not occur in the daily bread verse).

Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language, in one on Leibniz, when describing this program and the correspodence, has a footnote with a translation that makes these principles much more exact and scientific. Although this passage has been quoted frequently since, it does not seem to actually correspond to Leibniz's Brevis designatio meditationem de originis gentibus, ductis potissimum ex indicio linguaraum, which, if it has a big thesis, is about how locations get named. Kruszewski would use the German translation of Müller as the motto at the head of his Очерк науки о языке 'Outline of Linguistic Science'. I wonder where the passage really comes from.

Humboldt contributed to Vater's volumne 4 of Mithridates a section on Basque. The inclusion of the Vater unser seems to have been primarily occasioned by needing to correct spelling errors in the versions given in volume 2 that were taken from Hervás.

I do not know that Humboldt explicity devalued Pater Noster collecting in his theoretical writing. But Pott's introductory volume that accompanied an edition of Humboldt's Über die verschiedenheit des menschlichen sprachbaues und ihren einfluss auf die geistige entwickelung des menschengeschlechts (Englished as On Language: the Diversity of Human Language-structure and its Influence on the Mental Development of Mankind) does.

Vater unser Polyglotten dagegen, ehemals ungemein beliebt, erhoben sich selten darüber hinaus, Gegenstand religiösen Interesses, oder gar nur eiteler Liebhaberei, zu sein, zu wesent lichem Nutzen für die Wissenschaft. Als zu abstract musste dies Gebet den Uebersetzern öfters grosse Schwierigkeiten bereiten.
Polyglot Lord's Prayers, on the other hand, once extremely popular, rarely rose above being an object of religious interest, or even of idle hobby, to be of significant use to science. As this prayer was too abstract, it often caused great difficulties for translators.

One of the Vater-unser-Polyglotten cited in Pott's footnote there, along with Auer and Dalton, The Album of Language (not Languages) by Gábor Naphegyi (not Nahegyi) is one of those unfortunate works inside Gale Sabin Americana and so not scanned by anyone else or available outside a subscribing library.

So too, Jürgen Trabant in Europäisches Sprachdenken (p. 239),

Genau diese Art der Beschreibung der Sprachen als Ansammlungen von Übereinstimmungen und Abweichungen von einer als Normalität gesetzten europäischen (griechisch-lateinisch-spanischen) Grammatik wird Humboldt kritisieren, und er wird dem Mithridates — ohne Vaterunser, die Vaterunser sind gerade ein weiteres gravierendes Hindernis für die echte Sprachforschung eines Vergleichenden Sprachstudiums entgegenhalten.
It is precisely this kind of description of languages as collections of similarities and deviations from an assumed to be normal European (Greek-Latin-Spanish) grammar that Humboldt will criticize, and he will counter Mithridates — without the Lord's Prayer, the Lord's Prayer is just another serious obstacle to genuine linguistic research in comparative language studies.

Comparing Humboldt with the Mithridates authors, Grimm wrote to Bopp (12 Jan. 1828),

Hätte doch Adelung und Vater nur Funken gehabt von solch universalem Sprachtalent, so wäre der Mithridates ganz was anderes!
If Adelung and Vater had only had sparks of such universal linguistic talent, Mithridates would have been something completely different!

Between the times of Leibniz and Humboldt, the Pater Noster contributed even more directly to testing the hypothesis of a Finno-Ugric language family. In a scene somewhat reminiscent of Cardinal Mezzofanti, the Demonstratio. Idioma Ungarorum et Lapponum idem esse tells how Hell had Sajnovics listen to a Carelian informant recite the Lord's Prayer. (That is the 1771 Trnava edition. The 1770 Copenhagen edition has a somewhat shorter description. This paper implies that the changes were made less to give Hell his due and more to downplay the role of Scandanavian scholars.) Earlier some principles are given for how to recognize true cognates and not loanwords, noting that religious terminology would be particularly likely to be borrowed. It also discusses the 'bread' word, Leibe (láibi) and possible relations to German Lab or Russian Gleba (хлѣбъ); the Sami (and Finnish) is indeed, just like the Russian, a loanword from Gothic (or some early Germanic language).

Not that the timeline was the same in all philologist subcommunities. For example, though there was concern among European Christian Arabists about the propriety of teaching with Quranic texts, it did become the norm by the seventeenth century. But for a while the Pater Noster and other prayers were preferred. Postel (1538) ends the Grammatica Arabica section with the Pater Noster and the Fatiha (with no title and Amen added) in Arabic script without transliteration and with Latin translation (which has problems in the latter case). The same version is given by Gesner 1555, Rocca 1591, and Megiser 1593 and 1603, all with different transliteration schemes; Rocca also include the Arabic script, with slightly different vowel pointing. But Postel's grammar was also issued separately bound. Two works, both titled Alphabetum Arabicum, by Jacobus Christmann 1582 and Giovanni Battista Raimondi 1592, also include the same text in the sample readings, again with different pointing and transliteration. Except for an extra preposition, the 'daily bread' verse is the same as the MSA version.

خبزنا كفافنا أَعْطنا في اليوْم
ẖubz-nā kafāf-nā āʿṭi-nā fī al-yawma
bread-our sufficiency-our give-us on today
hhobzna châphaphna ahtana phi liaum
chobzana chephaphona agtona phil i aumi
hhobzna chäphaphana ahtana phi liaum
chobenza cephaphna ahhttana phi aljomi
chobezna cephaphna ahhttana phi aljomiʼ
chobenza kaphaphena aatna phil-iaumi

Thomas Erpenius, in his Grammatica Arabica (1613), at the end of the first book, after introducing the alphabet, takes several verses (51-55) from Ad-Dukhan and fully points them step-by-step, Later posthumous editions, such as from 1748, add Luqman fables and adages. His own Rudimenta Linguae Arabicae (1620) gives as Exercitatio Surah 64, At-Taghabun. Erpenius was the standard Arabic grammar in Northern Protestant Europe until the nineteenth century. See Jones, Learning Arabic in Renaissance Europe.

The online equivalent of wall text, in a Library of Congress exhibition of Vatican rarities, for a copy of Ambrogio's Introductio, also credits Scaliger for the rejection of the Pater Noster among Arabists. As with Humboldt above, I am not quite sure whether that refers to a specific passage in some work or letter.

Nevertheless, yet another Alphabetum Arabicum, from the Vatican in 1715, is unà cum Oratione Dominicali. The text is a bit different from the above.

أعطينا خبزنا كفاتنا كل يوم بيومه

It also seem to have a compositing / printing error for كفافنا.

There is a hadith, Sunan Abi Dawud, Book 29 Medicine (كتاب الطب kitab al-tibb), 3892, with an Islamicized Lord's Prayer as a healing incantation; sadly it loses the food petition.

Trumbull spends some time summarizing the transcription errors in the Algonquin entries in Mithridates, specifically the (33) Shawnee one (its 430) that appears at the front of these posts.

As mentioned above, we previously encountered Adelung's Mithridates in a peanut post, when Leo Wiener corrected its Judaeo-German. As he notes, 145. Jüdisch-Deutsch comes from Hervás, 194. Giudea-Germanica. Corrected, it is:

Aun gib aunat hithí aunezereth gezi haltin beruith;
Un gib uns heite unserem gesetzten Brojt;

The geography was not always reliable. This paper follows the peregrinations of a Tupi specimen.

Araiauion ore remiou Zimëeng cori oreue.
Aräiauion ore remiou ëimëeng cori oréue.
day-each our food give now us.

Note the snarky keywords on the paper: «Notre Père, collections, copier-coller» / “Lord’s Prayer, collections, cut-and-paste”. This paper traces the intellectual origins of Thevet's translation. This paper covers the roles of Amerindians in the composition and dissemination of the Lord's Prayer in Brazil at that time. And this paper compares ten versions of the Lord's Prayer in Tupi-Guarani from around the same time.

It also lays out, in particular, the consistency of the 'daily bread' verse.

Notre (ore) nourriture (remiou, remju, remiri, remiu, rembiù, remiou, rembiù) de chaque (iauion, bondoara, yabiȏdoara, yabiondoàra, yabiõ ndoâra, ñabò guàra, aiedouare, ñȃbȏ’guâra) temps (ara, àra, âra, àra, are, ara), donne (ëimëeng, eimeeng, eimeng, eimeeng, emeè, eimé, Emeȇ’) nous (ore) maintenant (cori, curi, ioury, coára pĭpe).

Sometimes there are intentional substitutions. Wilkins explains in the Preface about the Bengali entry,

Bengalicam ego litteris genti huic propriis lingua autem Malaica expreſſi, quod ea ibi quam maxime uſitata & quod Orationem Dominicam ſtylo Bengalenſium conquirere non potuerim. De lingua Bengalica notandum eſt, olim fuiſſe adeò communem ut in multis circumſitis regionibus ſeſe diffuderit, aſt introducta Malaica univerſali ſerè totius Indiae Orientalis lingua, tantum inter limites Bengalae ſeſe continuit, atque priſtinum uſum amittere cepit, ut praeter litteras à pauciſſimis nationibus adhibeatur, in primis tamen à Mahumetanis Magni Mogolis ſubditis, uti hoc ex ore civis cujuſdam Bengalenſis hauſi.
I have expressed Bengali by the Malay language in the proper letters of this nation, because it is most commonly used there, and because I could not find the Lord's Prayer in the style of the Bengalis. It is to be noted about the Bengali language, that it was once so common as to have spread in many surrounding countries, but when Malay was introduced as the universal language of the whole of Eastern India, it continued only within the limits of Bengal, and began to lose its former use, so besides the letters it was used by very few nations, but primarily by the Mohammedan subjects of the Great Mogul, so I have gathered from the mouth of a certain citizen of Bengal.

And, indeed, the Bengalice specimen has a reading identical to the Malaice one, which is taken straight from a translation of the Gospels by Dutch missionaries.

Onſ dagelicks bꝛoodt gheeft ons heden.
Roti kita derri ſa hari-hari membrikan kita ſa hari inila.
رُتِ کِيتَ دَرِّ سَهَرِ هَرِ ممَبِرِيکَنْ کِيتَ سَهَرِ اِينِلَ
রওঠ​ি ক​িথঅ দ​েরর​ি ষহঅ হার​ি মামবর​িক ান ক​িথঅ ষহঅ হার​ি িন​িলঅ

Note that Malay has vowel points like Arabic, rather than Jawi. I have done the best I can to approximate the Bengali, given that Unicode wants to render some vowels on the left. Sprachmeister reproduces for Bengalica both the script in a fold-out and the transliteration. But Pantographia, after reproducing some of the Bengallee alphabet from the Encyclopédie, in the Appendix gives only Chamberlayne's transliterated text, that is, Malay.

It seems almost inevitable that these far-flung collections should include some wholly spurious entries. Gramaye has several, such as the second one in the collection, labeled Antiqui Ægyptij.

Beko hibh pueum, theth hio memah,

Another work of the same year, Specimen litterarum et linguarum universi orbis, also has it (but with habh for hibh), with an explanation,

Orationem Dominicam communicauit mihi Ægyptiaco & Nilotico ſermone Bapt. Fererius ſequens.
The Lord's Prayer in Egyptian / Nilotic speech communicated to me by Bapt. Fererius follows.

This was picked up by Pierre d'Avity, in his Description générale de l'Afrique, describing the Moeurs Anciennes of the Egyptians (again with minor spelling changes: thet for theth — that is what you should Google for to see how wide spread it is), cited as Orat. Dom, 100 ling. (that link is the 1600 edition; it not in the original 1614 work that became his “Geography”; it is in the 1637 edition, too, but there only seems to be that horrible Gallica scan, so it's hard to make out any citation). From there, it was taken up by Müller, labeled Coptica quaſi Antiqua and cited as Grammaye ap. D'Avity Afr. 297. (that being the page in the later edition). That is copied by Motte, with the same label Coptica quaſi Antiqua and citation (though now with bibh for hibh).

But it is then called out by D. Wilkins in his preface to Chamberlayne,

Copticam ſtylo ut dicitur antiquo Editiones Collectionis Orationis Dominicae priſtinae ex Petri d'Avity Africa pag. 197. deſumpſerunt, eſt autem chaos vocum Ægyptiacarum, Hebraicarum, Græcarumque quæ nunquam uti hîc conjunctae ſunt, in lingua Coptica fuerunt in uſu ſed ab Auctore Grammaji effictæ, linguae Copticæ ignaros hucuſque illudere quaeſiverunt. Quid enim Theut habh ataſt en ornos aliud quam ⲧⲉⲩⲑ אב אתה ἐν ȣ̓ρανοῖς? Nonne arich eho derivari poſſet ab אֲרִיךֶ decorum Chald. et ךָ echa Pronomine Poſſeſſivo tuus! Annon bahl eho regnum tuum, à בעל Dominus & Pronomine ךָ tuus originem ducere poſſet? Ita etiam ah ſicut Hebræum אךֶ & iſi vox Ægyptiaca ⲓⲥⲓⲥ terra eſt. Reliquæ voces exoticæ nullam cognationem cum Coptica Æthiopica aut Arabica habentes lingua genium conſtructionis Africanae vel Aſiaticæ non ſapiunt, maleque tales quales ſunt ab Auctore ſunt expressae; …
Coptic style, as it is called ancient, in the Edited Collections of former Lord's Prayers from Peter d'Avity Africa page 197. They consumed a chaos of Egyptian, Hebrew, and Greek words which were never used together in the Coptic language, but were invented by the Author of the Grammar, and sought to mock those hitherto ignorant of the Coptic language. For what is Theut habh atast en ornos other than ⲧⲉⲩⲑ אב אתה ἐν ȣ̓ρανοῖς? Could not arich eho be derived from אֲרִיךֶ in Aramaic and ך echa, the Possessive Pronoun your! Is it not true that bahl eho 'your kingdom' could originate from à בעל 'Lord' & the pronoun ךָ 'your'? So also ah like the Hebrew אךֶ & isi is the Egyptian word ⲓⲥⲓⲥ 'land'. The rest of the exotic words, having no kinship with Coptic or Ethiopic or Arabic, do not suit the language of the genius of African or Asiatic construction, and are bad such as they are expressed by the Author; …

And given in the main work as Coptice ſtylo ut dicitur antiquô. Nevertheless, it is still included in Sprachmeister as Coptica quaſi Antiqua again, with a note that, as well as the same citation, does observe that an different Coptic version had been supplied earlier; in Hervás as Orazione in Copto quasi antico; and in Fry as simply Coptic 3.

Finally, by Mithridates, v. 3, it is relegated to a long footnote, summarizing all that and concluding, somewhat begrudgingly,

Schlau ist der sehr wahrscheinliche Betrug dadurch versteckt worden, daſs man da einerley Laute wiederhohlt findet, wo man sie zu erwarten hat.
The very probable deception has been cleverly concealed by the fact that one finds the same sounds repeated where one would expect them.

George Psalmanazar's Formosan language hoax (see The Pretended Asian, especially chapter 3) included a translation of the Lord's Prayer and a native alphabet (although the prayers are not given using it; the scan of the following edition is maybe a little clearer). French, Dutch, and German editions followed.

Amy khatſada nadakchion toye ant nadayi,
Our bread daily give us to day,

Once again, the invented language does a pretty good job of appearing to have the statistical shape of a natural language; so I assume that the 'bread' word khatsada is meant to be related to an earlier described khatzadao, “a very good ſort of Bread,” made from one or the other of two roots, chitok and magnok.

Müller (and, copying that, Motte) already had a Formosana (copied; I believe this is understood to be Siraya), from a (now lost) catechism by the Dutch missionary Robert Junius. The cited authority, J. L., is Job Ludolf.

Pecame ká ca[n]gniang wagi katta,
Give-us - food-our day this,

Daniel Gravius's translation of Matthew, per Trumbull's breakdown, has 'bread' instead of 'food'. Adelaar analyzes this verse in Siraya: Retrieving the Phonology, Grammar and Lexicon of a Dormant Formosan Language (p. 213).

Ph'ei-kame wae'i k'atta ki paoul-ian ka mams-ing.
P’h’-ey=kame wäi k’=ăta ki paul=ian ka ma-m’sing.
Give-sj.uo=1pe.nom day lk=prox df bread=1pe.gen lk ao1-enough

Elsewhere, Adelaar derives kan-ǝn 'food' from kan 'eat'; and paul 'bread', “< Portuguese (via Hokkien?)”. Here are various Siraya translations side-by-side, including Psalmanazar's fictitious one.

In preparing the preface to Chamberlayne, D. Wilkins corresponded with M. V. La Croze (see above); to a letter listing some problem languages, he received a reply giving Gravius.

Formoſana eadem eſt, quae exſtat in ſuperioribus editionibus, hic uero ex autographo Ludolfiano in ſeptem petitiones diſtincta.
The Formosan is the same as that which exists in previous editions, the real one here from the hand of Ludolf, in seven distinct petitions.

And it appears, Formosane, with only slight differences in spelling from Müller and divided into verses. And the preface directly repudiates Psalmanazar.

Miraberis forſitan, Lector Erudite, quod Orationem Dominicam Formoſanam tantopere diverſam ab eâ quae ex ore Georgii Pſalmanazaaris in deſcriptione Inſulae Formoſae fluxit appoſuerim? Miraberis quod literis Latinis cam expreſſerim cum ex libro hoc Formoſanac hauriri potuerint? Sed ſcias velim me auctoritate Jobi Ludolphi in Epiſtola ad Mullerum monitiſque Amici Berolinenſis adductum Orationem Dominicam litteraſque ejus ceu ſubleſtae fidei ſpreviſle, mihi vero ſufficere utramque litteris Pſalmanazaarianis à me congeſtam inter privatas ſchedas latitare.
Perhaps you wonder, erudite reader, that I should have added a Formosan Lord's Prayer that differs so much from the one which flowed from the mouth of George Psalmanazar in his Description of the Island of Formosa? Do you wonder also that I should have expressed in Latin characters what has been taken from the book of this Formosan? But I would like you to know that I was influenced by the authority of Hiob Ludolf in his Letter to Muller, and by the advice of the Amici Berolinensis, and rejected that Lord's Prayer and those characters as being of little credence; indeed it was enough for me that whatever was collected in the Psalmanazar text should remain hidden in my private papers. (tr. Keevak & Cheney)

And, in fact, Psalmanazar's never did appear in a Pater Noster collection, except with qualification. Still, that is not the end of his influence on them. Sprachmeister, which aimed to be more than just a collection of prayer translations, included Psalmanazar's alphabet and parts of (the German translation of) his language description, including the outlandish explanation of, „Warum die Japaneſiſche Sprache von der Chineſiſchen und Formoſaniſchen differire,“ which has previously come up in a comment over at LanguageHat. Then in the Orationis Dominicæ Versio part of the book, the version from Chamberlayne is given, citing that as the source. But, as a compromise, a fold-out page is pasted in transliterating Junius's translation into Psalmanazar's alphabet. Recall that even Psalmanazar hadn't printed his supposed prayers using his alphabet. And, again, Auer included that version as “Formoſaniſch. 84. Aus Benjamin Schulze's V. U. S. Leipsig, 1748.” (Asien, second column of Ost-Asiatische Inseln, under Japanisch) with a typeface that is later given on the alphabets page (fourth column from the right).

And, finally, Mithridates includes Junius's version, cited as Aus Rob. Junii Katechismus, Delft, 1645, 12. The preceding language description has this footnote,

An des untergeschobenen Ge. Psalmanazars (N. F. B. de Rodes,) erdichteten Description de l'Isle Formosa, 1708 wird hoffentlich niemand mehr denken, wenn er gleich auch ein so genanntes V. U. welches sich anfängt: Amy Pornio dan chin orhnio vieg, hat. Er starb 1764 zu London, nachdem er daselbst die protestantische Religion angenommen, viel an der alten Geschichte der algemeinen Welthist. gearbeitet, und noch vor seinem Tode ein öffentlich gedrucktes Bekenntnifs seines in Ansehung der Insel Formosa begangenen Betruges abgeleget hatte.
Hopefully no one will remember the fictitious Description of the Island of Formosa, 1708, by the spoofed Ge. Psalmanazar (N. F. B. de Rodes), even though he has a so-called Lord's Prayer which begins: Amy Pornio dan chin orhnio vieg. He died in London in 1764, after having adopted the Protestant religion there, worked a great deal on the ancient history of general world history, and before his death had made a publicly printed confession of his fraud in relation to the island of Formosa.

Note the error vieg for viey. Wikipedia has vicy, due, I suppose, to OCR problems; you can thus tell when it was the source. Ornio versus Orhnio was a contemporary difference between the English and French (and German and Dutch, respectively) editions.

The Taensa language hoax, while having its own Oraison Dominicale, was evidently too late to gain any traction.

Pva k-yehônigin héfne-ayar-bre me-hebutgi-vunimpa-coukkabiao,
Give for-us day-this-during daily-our-bread,

J. Wilkins included various translations of the Lord's Prayer for comparison against the translation into his Philosophical Language.

ɩo velpɩ rɑl ɑɩ ril ɩ poto hɑɩ ſɑba vaty̯
Maiſt thou be Giving To Us In This Day Our Bread Expedient

That version is broken down word-by-word, first as the Real Character (logographic script) and then as the Philosophical Language (phonetic scheme) that is put on top of that. I do not know of any practical way of rendering the former here, but here is the flavor of the latter:

  1. (Sɑba) Sɑ denotes the Genus of Oeconomical Proviſions, (b) the firſt difference, and (a) the ſecond ſpecies, which is Bread.
  2. (Vɑty̯) (bɑ) is the Genus of Tranſcendental General, (t) the fifth difference, y̯ the ſeventh ſpecies; the change of b to v, denoted this Word to be an Adjective, and to ſignifie Expedient.

And, after that, A Compariſon of the Language here propoſed, with fifty others, as to the Facility and Euphonicalneſs of it. in the form of columns,

“ taken out of Geſner, Mithridates, and Megiſerus his Specimen, as they have collected and lettered them to my hands.”

He declines to go to the trouble of transcribing each of them into a uniform phonetic form, which would give a fairer comparison. But still hopes for second place.

In the comparing of theſe Languages, it may be granted that ſome few words of each Language may ſeem preferrible to others in this: But take it altogether, and in the whole, and it may at leaſt ſtand in competition with the beſt of them, as to its facility and pleaſantneſs. Tis moſt likely, that the generality of Readers will be apt in the comparing of theſe Inſtances, to give the precedence to thoſe Languages they are acquainted with. I ſhould deſire no more from them, but that they would be content to permit this new Language to come in the next place, which would be a ſufficient teſtimony for it.

A similar confidence in his readers drawing the wanted conclusions from a long list of Pater Noster translations motivated Pfeiffer, in Pansophia Mosaica e Genesi delineata 'Mosaic pansophy outlined from Genesis', mentioned above for Chinese. As well as finding all twenty-eight articles of the Augsburg Confession in the Book of Genesis, he claimed to show that Hebrew was the der Ursprung aller Sprachen 'the origin of all languages'. Starting his list of seventy languages with,

In der Ebraͤiſchen Sprache als der Stamm⸗Mutter/ und Koͤnigin aller Sprachen lautet demnach das Vater unſer am fuͤglichſten alſo:
In the Hebrew language, as the root-mother and queen of all languages the Lord's Prayer thus sounds most appropriate as:
…
4. Eth léchem chükkénu then lánu hajjóm.
…
Hierauff wollen wir nun zu allererſt herben ſetzen der Ebraiſchen Sprache naͤchſten Toͤchter / oder die Sprachen und Mund⸗Arten die ihr am alleraͤhnlichſten sehen / als
I. Die Chaldaͤiſche / und zwar Babyloniſche.
Now, first of all, we want to set out the closest daughters of the Hebrew language, or the languages and dialects that most resemble it, such as
I. The Chaldean, and specifically Babylonian.
…
4: Lachina di miſſetana habh lana bĕjoma dĕna.

And ending with Poconchi.

4. Chaye runa cahúhúnta qvih viic.

That starting Hebrew version is the same as in the author's Methodus Ebraea.

אֵת לֶחֶם חֻקֵּנוּ תֵן לָנוּ הַיּוֹם
eth lekhem khuqqenu then lanu hayyom

Trumbull's first three (or four, depending on how you count) versions are Micmac. 1. is from Mithridates, 435. Micmac, explained there as from a letter of La Croze (see above) to Bartsch. 2(a). is from a note (signed S., whom I take to be Shea) from Rev. Christian Kauder on “Micmac or Recollect Hieroglyphics.” 2(b). is the same version, with different transliteration, from Rev. Eugene Vetromile, in his Indian Good Book and then with a (different from Kauder's) interlinear translation of the hieroglyphs in The Abnakis and Their History. Trumbull has much to say (most of it negative) about the translation, and even the Micmac text; specifically for the 'daily bread' verse, “Neither translation is correct. In fact, the Micmac is untranslatable.” These Mi'kmaq hieroglyphs are used in prayer books: here is the Lord's Prayer in the 1866 Buch das Gut that Kauder had printed with a newly cut typeface in Vienna (cf. Auer) and the 1921 second edition by Fr. Pacifique de Valigny, Manuel de prières. I have not yet made it to the library to look at the recent Mi'kmaq Hieroglyphic Prayers, which presumably does a reliable job of lining up the glyphic components with the morphemes. As I understand, the resolution of some former controversies seems to be that the system was a native invention, adapted / taken over by missionaries, and that it is a genuine writing system and not just a mnemonic device, though perhaps not capable of writing an arbitrary utterance.

There is nothing special about Trumbull's choice of Algonkian languages, other than that he knew a lot about them.

Chamberlayne has an entry Mohogice, with a note that it was sent by “Rev Dnus Berkeley E. A. Presbyter in Albania Novi Eboraci.” This is copied into Marietti as CCXXXIII Mohogice. Hervás has a similar 51. Mohaux, o Mohogica, which was copied into Mithridates as 427. Mohawk, as well as Gilbert & Rivington, 300 and 500 Mohawk. Hervás regularly includes literal word-by-word translations, but not for this one. Mithridates has a footnote giving Mohawk primary sources, a 1781 Primer for Mohawk children and a 1769 translation of Morning and Evening Prayer; the prayers there were presumably close enough to have been recognized as the same. Bergholtz has a Mohawk-Indian, captioned “Capt. Brant's Translation,” taken from the Book of Common Prayer. The following entry in Mithridates, 428. Dasselbe 'the same', is from Smith's History of New York. Comparing Chamberlayne, Hervás, the 1781 Primer, the Morning and Evening Prayer from 1715 and 1769, the 1787 Common Prayer, and Smith from 1757,

Niadewigniſerage tagkwanadaranondagſik nonwa,
Niadevvigni serage tagkvvanaranon dagsik nonvva:
Niyadewighneſerage tacwanadaranondaghſik nonwa;
Niyadewighniſeroge taggwanadaranondaghſik nonwa;
Niyadewighniſerage taggwanadaranondaghſik nonwa;
Niyadewighniſeràge Takwanadaranondaghſik nonwa;
neatewehnesalauga, taugwaunautoronoantoughsick,
daily give-us food(?) today

The Morning and Evening Prayer translation is credited to “Lawrence Claeſſe, Interpreter to William Andrews, Miſſionary to the Indians,” the Book of Common Prayer to Captⁿ. Joseph Brant, An Indian of the Mohawk Nation. / T'hayendanegea. More on the story of these two translations here. The section of Smith's History giving the Prayer is quoting a letter from Elihu Spencer. Jonathan Edwards — the First Great Awakening guy — quoted the translation in his Observations on the language of the Muhhekaneew Indians. When John Pickering edited Edwards, he also compared it side-by-side with the version in the Book of Common Prayer. Observe the footnote on that page where he says that while Mithridates cited Primer of 1781 and Common Prayer of 1769, Harvard(!) only had Primer of 1786 and Common Prayer of 1787. Nowadays, we can check online that the 1786 Primer does not differ and have already shown the slight difference between the 1769 Morning and Evening Prayer and the 1787 Book of Common Prayer.

Spencer before quoting the Prayer and Edwards afterwards call attention to an immediately noticeable feature of Iroquoian phonology.

…, all the Six Nations ſpeak a Language radically the ſame. It is very maſculine and ſonorous, abounding witli Gutturals and ſtrong Aſpirations, but without Labials.
The reader will obſerve, that there is not a ſingle labial either in the numerals or Pater noſter of this language; and that when they come to amen, from an an averſion to ſhutting the lips, they change the m to w.

Joseph Bloomfield copied the Lord's Prayer translation into his Journal and declared,

The Mohawk-Nation pronounce their Words long soft, full, low & with surprizeing sweetness.

There is also Matthew 6 in the 1880 Mohawk translation of the Gospels by Sosé Onasakenrat. This is still the standard liturgical version of the prayer. A complete translation of the Bible into Mohark, which was only finished last year (2023), includes them. This can also be found spelled out syllable-by-syllable online on a number of church sites.

Takȣanont ne kenh ȣente iakionnhekȣen niateȣenniserake.
Ta kwa nont, ne, ken wen te, ia kion he kon, nia te wen ni se ra ke.
give-us today our life daily

I am curious whether anyone knows who wrote these notes, which do not appear to be signed, in the Jena Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung in 1817, where they work out some vocabulary using translations from Mithridates and the Gospels.

Mithridates has a section on Cheerake, but no Vater unser; its authority is Adair's History of the American Indians, which gives a few words. Bergholtz includes Cherokee-Indian using the syllabary and the larger Gilbert & Rivington Cherokee adds a transliteration, taken from the second edition of the Standard Alphabet of Lepsius (noted above for Cantonese and Hakka; he was featured here before for editing the Egyptian Book of the Dead, from which one of Trumbull's Gilded Age mottoes was taken; the alphabet will show up again below). This is the same as the modern form of the prayer.

ꮒꮣꮩꮣꮘꮢ ꭳꭶꮅꮝꮣᏼꮧ ꮝꭹꭵꮟ ꭺꭿ ꭲꭶ.
ni-da-do-da-qui-sv o-ga-li-s-da-yv-di s-gi-v-si go-hi-i-ga.
Nidadodagwise̥ ogalisdaye̥di sgie̥si gohi iga.
Daily our-food give-to-us this day.

The translation in Luke is somewhat more different in its details from Matthew, from which that is taken, than the source calls for, perhaps due to different translators.

ꭳꭶꮅꮝꮣᏼꮧ ꮝꭹꮑꭾꮝꮧ ꮒꮪꭹꮸꮒꮢꭲ.
O-ga-li-s-da-yv-di s-gi-ne-he-s-di ni-du-gi-tsv-ni-sv-i.
Our-food give-us every-day.

The history of Bible translation into Cherokee — see, for instance, here — is closely associated with the Cherokee Phoenix. The last page of the first issue, published in 1828, in addition to giving Sequoyah's syllabary, has (in the first column) the Cherokee Lord's Prayer, a versified version, and a literal translation back into English.

ꭳꭶꮅꮝꮣᏼꮧ ꮣꮩꮣꮘꮢꭲ ꮝꭹꮝꮑꮈꮝꭸꮝꮧ.
Our food day by day bestow upon us.
O-ga-li-s-da-yv-di da-do-da-qui-sv-i s-gi-s-ne-lv-s-ge-s-di.
our-food daily give-to-us.

For the 'daily bread' verse, the versification only adds ᎠᏴ ayv 'us' for metrical effect. No translator is given, but Samuel Worcester and/or Elias Boudinot would likely have contributed it. The newspaper then serialized the translation of Matthew by George Lowrey and David Brown, getting to verse 11 in issue #15. This matches the modern version, except that 'daily' is ꮓꭶꮩꮣꮘꮢ no-ga-do-da-qui-sv. When Worcester and Boudinot's translation, “compared with the translation of Geoge Lowrey and David Brown,” was published in 1832, it had ꮩꭶꮩꮣꮘꮢ do-ga-do-da-qui-sv. The editions of 1850 and 1860 established the modern version. Gallatin's Synopsis of the Indian Tribes of 1836 transliterates the version of 1832 with an interlinear translation. The same transliteration and translation were evidently printed separately (together with the other three in the same place); Harvard preserves a copy of that.

Daily (adjective) our food give us this (a pronoun of time) day.
Tawkatawlaquisung awgalis-tayungti skiungsi hawli iga.

All these versions use the same word for 'bread', ᎠᎵᏍᏓᏴᏗ a-li-s-da-yv-di, which means 'food' or 'meal', related to verbs for serving a meal rather than for eating. So that perhaps the materiality of the petition is the act of being fed rather than sustenance.

Missions to the Navajo were too late for any of the nineteenth century collections; Mithridates Nabajoa is little more than geography. Wiktionary has a citations page for the Prayer with interlinear glosses. The same text, but with an earlier orthography, stands in for Matthew in a 1917 partial Bible.

Chʼiyáán tʼáá ákwíí jį´ nihaʼiyíłtsódígíí díí jį´ nihaa náádiníʼaah.
Food every-day you-feed-us this-day to-us give-it-again.
Cʼiyaṅ tʼaakwi jiṅh nîḣaʻ iyiłˊtsōdîgi ėi diʻjiṅh nîḣa nādînîāh.

One of the translators listed is Leonard P. Brink, and he is credited with a 1908 translation.

Ta-akwi jin bea inaani naxxa-iyilthtsood.

Again much of this is recognizable, despite an even earlier orthography. But it does not choose chʼiyáán 'food'. Is bea modern bááh 'bread', a loanword from Spanish pan?

A rival translation was made by Franciscan Friars and published in The Indian Sentinel, the official publication of the Society for the Preservation of the Faith among Indian Children, in 1918 and in a Catechism with every vowel length explicitly marked.

dishji ch'iian bedaqini'na dolełi naqa dileł,
dīshjī́ ch̓ĭĭắn bēdắʻqĭnīʼnā́ dŏlĕ́łĭ năqắ dī́lĕł,

Again choosing 'food'.

Continued in part 5.

Posted by MMcM at 12:04 AM  

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