Thus, we may find it beneficial to be ever mindful of our speech, should we not, Brothers and Sisters, lest we should stumble the weak ones. "Hence..." that's another word nobody but the Witchtower ancient ones use.GAG! Yep, I wonder what crusty old fossils write the magazines... it's like a long ago language, really dates the writers as from another, elderly generation. How can anyone younger relate to this? If the scary suits and Stepford dresses don't frighten the householders (who uses THAT word today?) the geriatric language will! Are we not grateful?
Does our language betray us?
by Mysterious 23 Replies latest jw friends
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reneeisorym
I think my writing in high school sounded JW .. It scares me to know what my teachers thought.
One remarkable feature in French JW speak is the high rate of anglicisms (due to the overuse of "calques" in the translation of old WT literature, which has informed the local JW jargon beyond repair) among people who never learnt English.
That's really cool to me too. I wanna know more :)
My speech has definately changed now. I always hated how they would say "obviously then" only to come to a rediculous conclusion.
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blondie
The WTS even has a word for their special vocabulary, "the pure language." They say they can tell an interloper by the wrong "theocractic" terms they use. You can tell what Bible people use too by the terms and phrases they use.
I figure it is a foreign language that is spoken by people who are more comfortable speaking in their native tongue. So I try to use WTS terms when doing my review. When discussing the WTS, I try to use their terms as well. When talking to a non-JW or long-time (30 to 40 years out) JW, definitions of terms are helpful.
sibboleth or shibboleth
Blondie
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TD
Interesting topic. I guess, everyone drops "Bread crumbs" every time they speak or write. With current and former JW's it's not just the use of esoteric terms, but their sentence structure as well.
For example, if someone starts a sentence with "Too..." it's not a dead give-away, but it's suggestive that they were once an American JW.
Another JWism is the overuse of the word "One" when it is functioning as a substantive. (e.g. "One's own....", "Interested ones..." etc.) This was a quirk of Fred Franz (Perhaps because he was at least self-taught in ancient Greek?) and there are still a lot of JW's out there that imitate his writing style in their speech.
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slimboyfat
I think reading the NWT too often was the biggest barrier to adopting a clear writing style.
Slim
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Narkissos
Old thread unexpectedly revived...
In my second example above, I should have explained that "appréciation" in French means "assessment, appraisal, (e)valuation," nothing like "gratitude" -- except in dub speech.
When I was asked to work in the translation dept. in Bethel, I had no formal training in the art and I had been reading almost nothing but WT literature (including the NWT) since I had left high school to pioneer (I was about 22 by then). The brother in charge of the dept. was quite conscious of the flaws in past and current translation of WT literature and he advised me to read original French works (good novels, for instance) -- which I did, first for my "mission." then with ever-increasing pleasure and thirst for true littérature (the English "literature" btw is another faux ami to us, applying to littérature = literary works, and to any publications such as the WT's, which only French JWs call "littérature"). This incidentally was instrumental in gradually helping me to think out of the WT box, but it's another topic.
I was taught to beware of the influence of English vocabulary and sentence structure (lexical and syntactical anglicisms) and became very familiar with language dictionaries and some great studies in compared stylistics, doubting everything in my acquired JW speech. I was welcome, in principle, to improve the style of French WT "literature," which I tried to do. But this implied breaking from the habit of calque, literal word-for-word rendering, which the most conservative were always ready to construe as "infidelity". "Honest-hearted people" may (or not) be painful English, les personnes au coeur honnête is terrible French (especially if followed with other attributes and relative clauses); but it would be a crime to drop the "heart". Some of the worst jargon proved to be untouchable (e.g. the above-mentioned service du champ).
I'll add to that if I think of some more examples (that was 25 years ago).
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Narkissos
Another JWism is the overuse of the word "One" when it is functioning as a substantive. (e.g. "One's own....", "Interested ones..." etc.) This was a quirk of Fred Franz (Perhaps because he was at least self-taught in ancient Greek?) and there are still a lot of JW's out there that imitate his writing style in their speech.
I was thinking of that "one" too, however, fortunately it was untranslatable into French. The vestigium of Freddy's "ones," though, was probably a unusual amount of personnes ("people") in WT literature (which could be improved by using the more common "gens").
One awful item was the adverb "evidently" -- mistranslated by former translators as évidemment, which is stronger and means obviously. We finally opted for a formula like selon toute vraisemblance (approximately "most likely") which carried about the same level of doubt, but it was highly pedantic. (Other similar faux amis among adverbs, "eventually" differs from éventuellement = "possibly"; "apparently" is often stronger than apparemment = "seemingly").
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purplesofa
I met up with a JW at work this week and was almost scared to say anything for forgetting the JW talk.
Amazing,
purps
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Open mind
Mysterious said:
Has anyone else noticed how you can tell who is new or fading, who was a long timer, who was never really into it, etc just from the way posts and language are structured?
I find this one of the most interesting aspects of reading here on JWD. Various backgrounds and various degrees of being free of JWs and/or religion in general. Since I'm still active and "exemplary" (on the exterior only) I freely swing back and forth between dubspeak and JWDspeak.
Just in case anyone's trying to keep up with the "pure language", did you know dubs in general don't say "The Society" any more? If you're talking about some new policy or piece of correspondence you say "The Branch". If you're talking about doctrine, you're supposed to say "The Bible says" or "my study of the Bible says". That way the Borg puppet strings moving your lips won't be as visible to the outside world.
Open Mind
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Narkissos
Constantly switching from full JW speak (at the KH) to middle JW speak (in FS) or normal (at work, for instance) requires linguistic skills with which all JWs are not equally blessed. This often results in undereducated dubs speaking the "pure language" where it is not expected, to the embarrassment of the less undereducated ones...