[ForumMasta]

When I became Orthodox 31 years ago, I loved learning the responses and some of the troparia in many different languages. I could even chant "Christ is Risen" in Greek, Slavonic, and Arabic, and while I was being a substitute Latin teacher in a Catholic girls' high school, I trained a few of my students to sing "Mysterion Xenon" in a Latin translation of my own devising (now long forgotten) on the Byzantine tone, which absolutely amazed the school chaplain.

But lately, my parish (which has many elderly members who speak only Greek) began putting English into the Divine Liturgy. Our first project was to learn to say the Nicene Creed in English after we'd finished saying it in Greek. When they first tried it, I had a terrible time remembering how the Creed goes in English....

And isn't it strange, that now that the Latins are getting their Latin back, the Greeks are going into English. Proof of the wise saying from Monachos.net that God must be an English Gentleman™!

All I can advise here, is, if you want to be a polyglot pray-er, be careful not to get old, because when you get as old as I am, you may let your dimming mind wander from language to language within the same prayer!

"and ever o'er it's Babel sounds, the blessèd angels sing...."

Mary Emily
Kyrie pomilui