Jazz Among All the Women

 Not all of the mistakes and alterations one hears in the recitation of the rosary in the livestreams arise from not being a native speaker. In plenty of cases, across the spectrum of languages, one hears variations and alterations in pronunciation and wording that, if one picks up on them, can be highly insightful about the language one is hearing.

In pronunciation, the biggest variation one hears is in Portuguese. Anyone who speaks Portuguese would not be surprised by this.  Any of them could tell you how the R-sound at the beginning of words becomes an H in Brazilian pronunciation, and that the round pure O vowel becomes an OO. Thus the Brazilians actually pronounce Rio as "Hee-oo.:  But one hears this in continental Portuguese too. It is not cut and dry.

Some Portuguese continental speakers still roll out their r's in the Spanish way. This is common at Fatima, of course. But like I said, it's complicated. It is not uncommon to hear the same speaker, from one repetition of the Ave Maria to the next, pronounce rogai por nos peccadores (pray for us sinners), in the continental way and then in the Brazilian style. Obviously this is not done in some purposeful way, but "just happens" as they recite it. I did not at all expect this. What does this tell us? It says that to the Portuguese ear, these two ways of pronouncing the word have the same value of interpretation to the ear. In a Structuralist sense, they form part of an axis of pronunciation in the variation of the line, which are all equivalent.

Even more interesting to me are when a native speaker alters the wording of a prayer, either by a mistake, or on purpose.  One mistake I heard by a Spanish woman greatly intrigued me. As anyone who has learned Spanish knows, that language has two different verbs that are equivalent to our verb "to be," namely ser and estar. 

One learns in Spanish class that, roughly, ser is used for permanent conditions and identity, whereas estar is used for temporary conditions and spatial location. 

Learning the distinction between them is easy in theory, but remembering to use them correctly and naturally when speaking is a different matter. I am still susceptible to saying Yo soy (the ser form) when I should be using Yo estoy. Spanish speakers probably expect to hear this mistake made by English speakers, in almost a stereotypical way.

In the Rosary, the distinction between the two verbs is crucial to the meaning. In asseting that Mary is blessed among women, one says in Spanish bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, which (because eres is the conjugated form of ser) asserts that Maris is permanently blessed among women as part of her identity and being. It is not a passing condition. Likewise in the Spanish equivalent of "the Lord is with thee", one says El Señor es contigo, asserting that the Lord being with Mary is a fixed condition.

Well, normally at least. Last week I heard this mix-up happen by a native speaker of Spanish, while reciting the Ave Maria at Lourdes. By her accent, the woman who made it was obviously continental, as are most of the Spanish-speaking priests and sisters at Lourdes.  Yet in reciting the line I mentioned, on one of the ten sequential repetitions of the prayer that form a decade of the Rosary, she spontaneously said El Señor está contigo, which means that the Lord happens to be with Mary at the moment.

By the next repetition, she had fixed her mistake. She only made it once. Yet it blew me away to hear it by a native speaker of Spanish. 

Even more intriguing to me are when one of the reciters changes the wording of the prayer, freestyling perhaps to provide an alternate version. Today during the fifth and final decade of the Italian Rosary at Lourdes, which is always done by Italian priests, of which they are plenty at Lourdes, the older priest who was tasked with being clean-up changed tu sei benedetta fra le donne "thou art blessed among the women", to tu sei benedetta fra tutte le donne "thou art blessed among all the women". As he did so, he punched the pronunciation of tutte, lingering on the double t as Italian speakers do. It was very pleasing. I felt his joy and enthusiasm in his recitation. It felt like hearing a jazz musician cutting loose in a solo.