We were working on the S. S. Wesley Anglican chant of Psalm 121 from Wyton's Anglican Chant psalter, and in front of a half dozen handmaids in the choir, I goofed and said "So that the nun shall not strike you by day."

Lector once said: "A reading from the book of the prophet Exodus."

Another said at the end of second reading: "The word be with you." ... Awkward pause followed by hesitant, "Thanks be to God."

Is it common practice for pronunciations of words to adopt the ecclesiastical pronunciation of Latin, even when in English prose? 'AY-men', 'SIGH-rack' and 'GEE-zoo' &c. are all very traditional English pronunciations from before the 19th century. In the Anglican/Episcopal Church, 'AH-men' only overtook 'AY-men' within the last century. It still isn't a pronunciation recognised by the OED.

I've never heard that, Catherine. Well, I'd consider it sloppy, but that's an opinion.

For Steepleman: there are reasons for Catholics to have retained the Latin pronunciation of "Amen", and I suppose "Alleluia" as well.

There is the long experience of having said and sung those words in the Latin context, which made them not only habitual, but also universal. They don't involve diphthongs, so they are more euphonious when sung, or even spoken, than the variants Steepleman cited.

There is also the principle of ressourcement: after all, the liturgical reform was vaunted as connecting Catholics with the early Church; that would be a reason not to adopt pronunciations that perhaps arose with the late-medieval or Renaissance-era English church.

I'd use them when singing Howells or RVW.

Another angle: "Amen" was well-established among American Catholics in English-language devotional prayers long before the liturgy was put into English. Can Catholics with experience of the 1950s comment on whether one would hear "Ah-men" or "Ay-men" in a recitation of the rosary, or at a novena?

I heard nothing but 'Ah-men' and 'Ahl-le-lu-ia' when I was growing up in the Episcopal church. When I heard 'Ay-men', etc., I assumed that the speakers-singers were unlearned Baptists or some such. It is likely, though, that the variants of these words sung in England before the great vowel shift, and, for that matter, in every other country, was common due to the fact that Latin, in those days, was in every country pronounced according to the speech habits of that country. Erasmus of Rotterdam once complained that he could not understand Latin from one province to the next because everyone pronounced it according to his own tongue. There is a hold-over alive and well today in the Latin of English public schools and universities, which cultivate a highly Anglicised pronunciation which most today, accustomed to the Italianate 'church Latin', would consider to be somewhat eccentric. (But then, England is the happy home of the eccentric, is it not?) Anglicised Latin predominates also in the realms of science, biology, and law. In American schools and universities, though, teaching the 'classical' pronunciation of Caesar's and Cicero's time is the norm.

For any who would like to hear what Latin sounded like in late mediaeval and renaissance England there is a magnificent recording by Paul McCreesh of the complete mass of Christmas day complete with plainchant (including the readings) and a polyphonic mass by Shepard, sung in pre-vowel shift English.

It is fascinating to me how that linguists can reconstruct how particular languages were spoken in remote times past, as, for instance, as found in Siinging Early Music, edited by Timothy McGee.
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As for pronouncing words such as 'alleluia' and 'amen' in an English context, it is customary in our linguistic culture to pronounce words as they are pronounced in their native context. We pronounce (or try to pronounce) French words or phrases in our speech as would the French. No one, for instance, would pronounce chateaux by pronouncing the initial 'ch' as 'tch', nor pronounce the 'x' at the end of it. When pronouncing German, or Spanish, or Italian words we do our best to say them with their native pronunciation. So it is with 'Amen', which is a Latin word, and 'Alleluia', which is an Hebrew word. The same goes for 'Jesu', which is both a Latin word and an Old English word, being, as Schonbergian points out, the vocative form of 'Jesus' in Old English. Thus, 'Jesu' in an English context is pronounced 'Gee-soo', and in a Latin context, 'Yay-soo'.

No such thing now seems to happen when loading the JESU page, but it once had a tinkling broken glass noise that would make me first frown and then grin.

Catherine, this may be what you are looking for.

I've always done Jee-syew in English for Jesu.

Is-ray-elle vs. Is-rie-elle?

When I first read the name Melchizedek, I though it was pronounced Mel-chihz-eh-dehk with a ch like in cheese. Thankfully I learned the correct pronunciation before having to sing it a mass.

"the Latin of English public schools and universities"
Here at 3:30 : v-eye-vat reg-eye-na
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2FBBb14em8

One sings that, and the difference is largely spackled in the doing, at least in a space with some resonance and enough people.

MJO,

Listen to the congregational response: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners now at the hour of our death."


I don't hear an "and" either spoken or even implied, and there's really no space left for it.

Our Father is 'in the heavens'

Probably more faithful to the Latin and Greek - even if unintentionally so!

Heard this recently (the second time I’ve heard it in real life)

“O death, where is thy string?”

I still get a kick hearing anus the high priest every year during Holy Week.

Several years ago, I was serving Mass in my parish, and we had an orchestra which played during Mass. During the distribution of Holy Communion, they begun playing the main theme of Jurassic Park.
If I were not assisting the priest at that moment, I would have laughed.

Years ago, when I attended Mass on my college campus, we had a variety of readers with varying abilities. After the Prayer After Communion, one of the readers would go to the ambo and read any announcements for the week. This one week, reader said, "This coming Tuesday, join us for a spaghetti dinner at St. Andrew's Ep-is-co-pal Church." She read it exactly as I have hyphenated, to which I turned to my friend: "The protestants are dividing as we speak!"

Another funny moment in college was when one of my friends and I stayed back during Holy Communion because we hadn't been to Confession. We looked at each other, and I said: "So, what are you in for?" We both lost it.

Not at Mass, but this reminds me of hearing the Alto soloist at Messiah this past December sing "She was despised"... I'm not even exaggerating. I was there with three friends and all of us just lost it.

How's this for funny timing? Tonight at the Easter Vigil during the Service of Light, the beautiful and solemn procession arrived in the sanctuary, the darkness broken only by candlelight. Just as the deacon placed the paschal candle into its large candle stand, the dead silence was broken by someone's cell phone going off rather loudly. The ringtone was the Theme from Rocky! As the phone's owner scrambled to quickly turn it off, there was another brief moment of silence. But the large congregation couldn't hold it in...they spontaneously broke out into laughter as the pastor quipped, "Well, that sounded just about right."

Later in his homily, he said, "As if right on cue, we heard the Theme from Rocky. But we have someone stronger than Rocky here, in our Lord Jesus Christ risen from the dead!"

I had forgotten to ask this here, but some of the above comments reminded me.

We went to hear a pretty good local choir sing excerpts from Handel's "Messiah" this past December but the choir wore masks while singing. One selection sounded as if they were singing "His bite is worse than his bark." (Or possibly bark worse than bite.) I still don't know what the lyrics actually are, as I have never sung the whole oratorio. It kept coming back to the line and once I pointed it out to my husband it became more and more difficult keep from snickering. Any guesses?

Even maskless, and with good diction/direction, choral English (especially if accompanied) can sound like ... Russian (yes, that's the specific comparison I've heard many times over years) ... in a very resonant acoustic to layfolk who aren't given texts.

My question was much closer to Johnny Carson's "Stump the Band" bit than I ever thought it would be.

I heard that a child in a Sunday School class (Presbyterian I believe), when assigned to draw a picture of the nativity scene had the teacher say, "Well, now I see the Virgin Mary, some kings, some animals, the baby Jesus , now who is this big fellow over here?" To which the child replied, "O, that's Round John Virgin."

My favorite typo comes to mind every year on Ash Wednesday:

”Remember: you are butt dust, and to dust you shall return!”