我 罪 / Mea culpa
Last night I attended an Advent Penance Service in my hometown church. As part of the service we all prayed the Confiteor together just before our individual confessions. The words we recited were of the revised translation that has been in use since the first Sunday of Advent of this year. The Confiteor was restored to using the words "through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault" from the Latin "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."
At that point I also thought of the Mandarin words we have been praying all along as well, 我 罪, 我 罪, 我 的 重罪, pronounced Wǒ zuì, wǒ zuì, wǒ de zhòngzuì. Again, a direct translation to English is messy (I/my sin, I/my sin, my felony?), but I often reflect on the way this sounds. The words 罪 and 重罪 are fourth-tone words. These mean falling tone, which is a rather staccato pronunciation. Preceded by the rising from the personal pronoun 我, this part of the prayer comes across as exhausted limping. The syllable zui, spit out in the fourth-tone also to my ear sounds like a surrendering contrition.
Language shapes us. Even ones we don't know terribly well.
At that point I also thought of the Mandarin words we have been praying all along as well, 我 罪, 我 罪, 我 的 重罪, pronounced Wǒ zuì, wǒ zuì, wǒ de zhòngzuì. Again, a direct translation to English is messy (I/my sin, I/my sin, my felony?), but I often reflect on the way this sounds. The words 罪 and 重罪 are fourth-tone words. These mean falling tone, which is a rather staccato pronunciation. Preceded by the rising from the personal pronoun 我, this part of the prayer comes across as exhausted limping. The syllable zui, spit out in the fourth-tone also to my ear sounds like a surrendering contrition.
Language shapes us. Even ones we don't know terribly well.
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