Amen
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After uttering that affirmation in response to Peter Grubtal's wish (here) that "the [Butkara] stupa doesn't get destroyed like many other Buddhist relics in that area" — thinking of the Taliban and Bamiyan — I worried that what I said may have been too Christian and Jewish. Upon reflection, however, I realized that nothing could be more ecumenical (in the broadest sense) than "Amen":
Amen (Hebrew: אָמֵן, ʾāmēn; Ancient Greek: ἀμήν, amḗn; Classical Syriac: ܐܡܝܢ, 'amīn; Arabic: آمين, ʾāmīn) is an Abrahamic declaration of affirmation which is first found in the Hebrew Bible, and subsequently found in the New Testament. It is used in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim practices as a concluding word, or as a response to a prayer. Common English translations of the word amen include "verily", "truly", "it is true", and "let it be so". It is also used colloquially, to express strong agreement.
Like "Om / Aum", "a sonic representation of the divine" (source), "Amen" transcends specific religiosity. From deep in the throat to the lips, Om encompasses all sounds. As an aside, one of my students told me that his name was "Pranav". I asked him what it meant, and he said that it was Om. I queried, "How can that be? Om is Om. How can Pranav also be Om? How can Pranav be equal to Om?" The student told me that's just the way it is, so I looked it up, and, sure enough, Om is said to be "a very simple sound with a complex meaning. It is the whole universe coalesced into a single word, representing the union of mind, body, and spirit" (source). Praṇava (प्रणव) literally means "fore-sound", referring to Om as the primeval sound (source).
Amen is a word of Biblical Hebrew origin. It appears many times in the Hebrew Bible as a confirmatory response, especially following blessings. The basic triconsonantal root א-מ-נ, from which the word is derived, is common to a number of languages in the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages, including biblical Aramaic. Meanings of the root in Hebrew include to be firm or confirmed, to be reliable or dependable, to be faithful, to have faith, to believe. The word was imported into Greek from the Judaism of the early Church. From Greek, amen entered other European languages. According to a standard dictionary etymology of the English word, amen passed from Greek into Late Latin, and thence into English.
From Hebrew, the word was later adopted into the Arabic religious vocabulary and leveled to the Arabic root ء م ن, which is of similar meanings to the Hebrew. The interjection occurs in the Christian and Islamic lexicons, most commonly in prayer, as well as secularly, albeit less commonly, so as to signify complete affirmation or deference. In religious texts, it occurs in Arabic translations of the Bible and after reciting the traditionally first chapter of the Quran, which is formally akin to religious supplications.
Popular among some theosophists, proponents of Afrocentric theories of history, and adherents of esoteric Christianity is the conjecture that amen is a derivative of the name of the Egyptian god Amun (which is sometimes also spelled Amen). Some adherents of Eastern religions believe that amen shares roots with the Hindu Sanskrit word Aum. Such external etymologies are not included in standard etymological reference works. The Hebrew word, as noted above, starts with aleph, while the Egyptian name begins with a yodh.
In French, the Hebrew word amen is sometimes translated as Ainsi soit-il, which means "So be it."
The linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that, as in the case of Hallelujah, the word amen is usually not replaced by a translation due to the speakers' belief in iconicity, their perception that there is something intrinsic about the relationship between the sound of the signifier (the word) and what it signifies (its meaning).
(source)
When I was a little boy and followed my Mother around to the many different churches to which she took us, particularly those that were more on the evangelical side, I was always mystified by how members of the congregation would punctuate the pastor's sermon by solemnly intoning "Amen!" at salient points I wondered what those vibrant tones meant as they echoed through the rafters of the high ceilings. They were both enchanting and forbidding.
May blessings be upon you, now and forever. Amen!
Selected readings
- "Awoman: gender-free language in Congress" (1/4/21) — with extensive notes and comments on false etymologies, mispronunciations, morphological and grammatical misinterpretations, etc.
- "The vocabulary of prayer in modern China" (4/7/14)
- "The serenity meme" (7/14/08)
Laura Morland said,
October 18, 2022 @ 6:14 am
Interesting that you found the "vibrant tones" forbidding as well as enchanting!
Just a postscript: it might be worth mentioning, in the context of U.S. English, the alternative pronunciations /eɪˈmɛn/, /ɑːˈmɛn/, /ˈeɪ.mɛn/
The Wiktionary notes that "both pronunciations are used, sometimes even by the same speaker depending on the context." That's true for me: I personally use the ɑːˈmɛn form in religious contexts;ˈeɪ.mɛn in colloquial speech.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/amen#Pronunciation
Philip Taylor said,
October 18, 2022 @ 7:09 am
Not having any deeply-held religious beliefs (other than "if there is a God, then he is no more, and no less, likely to be the Christian God than he is to be the Muslim God, the Hindu God, the Shinto Gods, etc, but see [1] below), I have never previously considered this, but on introspection I now believe that I follow Laura's practice in this — /ˌɑː ˈmen/ for sacred usage, /ˌeɪ ˈmen/ for secular (as in "Amen to all that !"). The LPD concurs.
[1] Only for those interested in theology rather than linguistics. What I actually believe is that Man created God in his own image, rather than vice versa as the Christian Bible (and perhaps others) would have us believe. I believe that Mankind has an innate need for a supernatural power on whom to call in extremis, when no mortal being can help, and what more natural than to imagine that supernatural power as someone/thing similar to ourselves but immortal, ineffable, and with unlimited powers ? I am told by those who know more of these matters than I that this idea is not original and has been formulated by many others previously.
Pau Amma said,
October 18, 2022 @ 10:43 am
Not quite, at least in my dialect(s)*. "So be it" connotes grudging acceptance, which "Ainsi soit-il" doesn't. Closer would be:Ainsi soit-il** or perhaps ***Soit.So be it
* Native speaker of Parisian French, fluent in originally North American English, now with some influence from world English(es).
** Closer in register, but this is often said in answer to in ritualized sequences.
*** Literal meaning, but not a ritualized utterance anywhere as far as I can tell.
Pau Amma said,
October 18, 2022 @ 10:49 am
Seems to have stripped my fancy HTML. Let me try again without it.
Not quite, at least in my dialect(s)*. "So be it" connotes grudging acceptance, which "Ainsi soit-il" doesn't. Closer would be:
"Ainsi soit-il.": "So mote it be."** or perhaps "May it be so."***
"Soit." "So be it."
* Native speaker of Parisian French, fluent in originally North American English, now with some influence from world English(es).
** Closer in register, but this is often said in answer to "Amen" in ritualized sequences.
*** Literal meaning, but not a ritualized utterance anywhere as far as I can tell.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson said,
October 18, 2022 @ 11:36 am
Any relationship to Arabic "Kamen" meaning again or also?
Rodger C said,
October 18, 2022 @ 12:00 pm
"Ritualized sequences"? I associate "So mote it be" specifically with Freemasonry.
David Marjanović said,
October 18, 2022 @ 12:12 pm
Oh, mote is real? I thought it was invented for fun.
David W said,
October 18, 2022 @ 1:37 pm
"This verb [mote] is ancient in English, but has been archaic for centuries. No doubt the Freemasons retain it to support their claim to a venerable antiquity. It occurs in Beowulf, Caedmon, Chaucer, and Spenser, and was used by Byron and Scott as a conscious archaism. In meaning it is roughly equivalent to may."
(Mencken, _Chrestomathy_, 141n.)
Stephen Goranson said,
October 18, 2022 @ 3:05 pm
a) Ludwig Feuerbach was an influential proponent of God as projection.
b) Crossing the line of some pronunciations above are some preachers' use of "amen and amen."
KevinM said,
October 18, 2022 @ 3:38 pm
@Laura Morland: I had the same thought: Ah-men in church, A-men elsewhere. But it also occurred to me that the distinction does not map exactly onto that of sacred vs. secular. I use Ah-men in all placid contexts, and A-men for emphasis, or to indicate enthusiastic agreement or closure (as in the final episode of MASH). (I've almost always lived in the NYC area, but this all comes, I believe, from my mother, a native of West Virginia.)
Martin Schwartz said,
October 18, 2022 @ 3:48 pm
Abrahamic: Apart from our not knowing how Abraham pronounced an used the word, "Abrahamic" is an ecumenically feel-good politically hypercorrect term indicating something shared by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; the linguistic scenario for "amen", with Hebrew as the source of the word in Syriac, Greek etc., and Arabic, renders "Abrahamic" sort of mystifying or reduntant.
A close and relevant manifestation of the Semitic root is Heb.
'emeTH (TH = theta: Sephardic/Israeli emet, Ashkenazic emes) 'true, truth' <*'amin-t-. The factitive/causative form of the root
gives 'to declare as true. to believe', as we find also in Arabic, independent of its loanword 'āmīn. I think the real Anc. Egyptian
cognate of the Semitic is m-n 'to remain, endure', though for all I know Egyptocentrics would see the Egyptian as the source of
Greek ménō, Lat. maneo etc., were they that erudite. Conventional Egyptologists take Amun as *"the hidden one'. Combining the themes "Abrahamic" and "esoteric", I now jokily posit
a universally underlying Source, Brahmā ~ Abraham, whence both aum and amen– hmm, maybe that's true in some hidden and inscrutable way which could also involve Amun …. Anyway, I note that the Ashkenazic pronunciation of "amen" ranges from omeyn
to (Gaiician-Polish) umayn. Amenities require I not run on and close
here.
John From Cincinnati said,
October 18, 2022 @ 4:10 pm
In the 1963 B&W movie Lilies of the Field, the character played by Sidney Poitier leads the group of East European Catholic nuns in choruses of the song "Amen". In spoken dialog Poitier pronounces it A-men, to which the nuns initially respond Ah-men. In the song it is consistently A-men (strung out to four syllables). YouTube video of that rousing sequence here.
John From Cincinnati said,
October 18, 2022 @ 4:19 pm
The YouTube link I gave above is indeed to the song "Amen", but I also wanted to link to the English Lesson sequence that I referred to, where Poitier and the nuns pronounce Amen differently, here.
Daniel Barkalow said,
October 19, 2022 @ 1:27 pm
The pronunciation and history make me wonder if "amen" got split in the Great Vowel Shift, with ritual usage being seen as maybe-Latin you reproduce phonetically by rote (and not affected), but other usage being a regular English word (and therefore affected).
/df said,
October 19, 2022 @ 2:40 pm
When saying "Amen to that" or similar with the /eɪmɛn/ sound (either stress), are we (at least from otherwise /ɑmɛn/ areas) not, consciously or not, aping some stereotypical Southern preacher? I believe I often hear and occasionally produce cod-Southern vowels in this context.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 19, 2022 @ 11:21 pm
In English, the vowel variation is generally in the first syllable, but there are other languages in which the vowel in the second syllable differs from what it is in English. For example, in an Eastern Orthodox service in the U.S. where the priest is switching back and forth between English and Church Slavonic, you can tell if the choir is on their toes if they shift their "amens" between the languages to match, with a Slavonic "amen" having what we would call in English the FLEECE vowel in its second syllable.
Misha Schutt said,
October 20, 2022 @ 10:28 am
A couple of things.
Believed to be the first choral setting in English of the Lord’s Prayer, John Sheppard’s lovely Our Father ends with “Always so be it,” perhaps because they hadn’t yet decided whether Amen was too Latin for the brand-new Church of England.
https://youtu.be/GW0k9wB3vUc
About 30 years ago, I sang High Holy Days with the coir of a Conservative synagogue that had just switched from Ashkenazic to Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, and being pretty good at Israeli Hebrew,mi ended up coaching the cantor in details of diction. One thing he utterly refused was the idea that Amen should be pronounced [aˈmɛn] rather than the traditional [ɔˈmeɪn]. It sounded too Latin to him.
Misha Schutt said,
October 20, 2022 @ 10:29 am
A couple of things.
Believed to be the first choral setting in English of the Lord’s Prayer, John Sheppard’s lovely Our Father ends with “Always so be it,” perhaps because they hadn’t yet decided whether Amen was too Latin for the brand-new Church of England.
https://youtu.be/GW0k9wB3vUc
About 30 years ago, I sang High Holy Days with the choir of a Conservative synagogue that had just switched from Ashkenazic to Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, and being pretty good at Israeli Hebrew, I ended up coaching the cantor in details of diction. One thing he utterly refused was the idea that Amen should be pronounced [aˈmɛn] rather than the traditional [ɔˈmeɪn]. It sounded too Latin to him.
Philip Taylor said,
October 21, 2022 @ 4:48 am
(https://youtu.be/GW0k9wB3vUc) — both beautiful and uplifting, Misha. Thank you.