female 2nd person singular pronoun in Psalms

In Garifuna the second person singular pronoun (“you” in English) has two forms. One is used in women’s speech and one in men’s speech. In the Garifuna Bible the form used in men’s speech is typically used, except when it’s clear that a woman is quoted or in Psalms where the women on the translation team insisted that the form used in women’s speech (buguya) would be used throughout the whole book.

Ronald Ross (in Omanson 2001, p. 375f.) tells the story: “Throughout most of the translation, [the distinctions between the different forms of the pronouns] presented no problem. Whenever the speaker in the text was perceived as a man, the male speech forms were used; and when a woman was speaking, the female speech forms were used. True, the women members of the translation team did object on occasion to the use of the male forms when the author (and narrator) of a book was unknown and the men translators had used the male speech forms as the default. Serious discord arose, however, during the translation of the Psalms because of their highly devotional nature and because throughout the book the psalmist is addressing God. The male translators had, predictably, used the male form to address God, and the male form to refer to the psalmist, even though women speakers of Garifuna never use those forms to address anyone. The women contended that they could not as women read the Psalms meaningfully if God and the psalmist were always addressed as if the readers were men. The men, of course, turned the argument around, claiming that neither could they read the Psalms comfortably if the reader was assumed to be a woman.

“Initially there seemed to be no way out of this impasse. However a solution was found in the ongoing evolution of the language. There is a strong propensity for male speech and female speech to merge in favor of the latter, so the few remaining male forms are gradually dying out. Moreover, male children learn female speech from their mothers and only shift to the male speech forms when they reach adolescence to avoid sounding effeminate. However they use the female form buguya when addressing their parents throughout life. So the women wielded two arguments: First, the general development of the language favored the increasing use of the female forms. Secondly, the female forms are less strange to the men than the male forms are to the women, because the men habitually use them during early childhood and continue to use them to address their parents even in adulthood. Therefore, the female pronominal forms prevailed and were adopted throughout the book of Psalms, though the male forms remained the default forms in the rest of the translation.”

See also female first person singular pronoun in Psalms and addressing God.

complete verse (Psalm 59:8)

Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Psalm 59:8:

  • Chichewa Contempary Chichewa translation, 2002/2016:
    “But You Jehovah, you laugh at them,
    you mock all those races.” (Source: Mawu a Mulungu mu Chichewa Chalero Back Translation)
  • Newari:
    “But O LORD! Seeing them You laugh.
    And you scoff at all such people.” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
  • Hiligaynon:
    “But you (sing.) just laugh at them, LORD,
    you (sing.) mock all of them who do- not -believe in you (sing.).” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
  • Laarim:
    “LORD, you are just laughing at them,
    you are laughing at all those nations.” (Source: Laarim Back Translation)
  • Nyakyusa-Ngonde (back-translation into Swahili):
    “Lakini wewe ee Bwana unawacheka,
    unayadhihaki makabila yote hayo.” (Source: Nyakyusa Back Translation)
  • English:
    “But Yahweh, you laugh at them.
    You scoff at/ridicule the people of the pagan nations.” (Source: Translation for Translators)

addressing God

Translators of different languages have found different ways with what kind of formality God is addressed.

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight

Like many languages (but unlike Greek or Hebrew or modern English), Tuvan uses a formal vs. informal 2nd person pronoun (a familiar vs. a respectful “you”). Unlike other languages that have this feature, however, the translators of the Tuvan Bible have attempted to be very consistent in using the different forms of address in every case a 2nd person pronoun has to be used in the translation of the biblical text.

As Voinov shows in Pronominal Theology in Translating the Gospels (in: The Bible Translator 2002, p. 210ff. ), the choice to use either of the pronouns many times involved theological judgment. While the formal pronoun can signal personal distance or a social/power distance between the speaker and addressee, the informal pronoun can indicate familiarity or social/power equality between speaker and addressee.

In these verses, in which humans address God, the informal, familiar pronoun is used that communicates closeness.

Voinov notes that “in the Tuvan Bible, God is only addressed with the informal pronoun. No exceptions. An interesting thing about this is that I’ve heard new Tuvan believers praying with the formal form to God until they are corrected by other Christians who tell them that God is close to us so we should address him with the informal pronoun. As a result, the informal pronoun is the only one that is used in praying to God among the Tuvan church.”

In Gbaya, “a superior, whether father, uncle, or older brother, mother, aunt, or older sister, president, governor, or chief, is never addressed in the singular unless the speaker intends a deliberate insult. When addressing the superior face to face, the second person plural pronoun ɛ́nɛ́ or ‘you (pl.)’ is used, similar to the French usage of vous.

Accordingly, the translators of the current version of the Gbaya Bible chose to use the plural ɛ́nɛ́ to address God. There are a few exceptions. In Psalms 86:8, 97:9, and 138:1, God is addressed alongside other “gods,” and here the third person pronoun o is used to avoid confusion about who is being addressed. In several New Testament passages (Matthew 21:23, 26:68, 27:40, Mark 11:28, Luke 20:2, 23:37, as well as in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate and Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well) the less courteous form for Jesus is used to indicate ignorance of his position or mocking.” (Source Philip Noss)

In the most recent Manchu translation of 1835 (a revision of an earlier edition from 1822), God is never addressed with a pronoun but with “father” (ama /ᠠᠮᠠ) instead. Chengcheng Liu (in this post on the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Theology blog ) explains: “In Manchu tradition, as in Chinese etiquette, second-person pronouns could be considered disrespectful when speaking to superiors or spiritual beings. Manchu Shamanist prayers avoided si [‘you’] and sini [‘your’] for this very reason. To use them for God would be, in Lipovzoff’s [one of the two translators] words, ‘the most uncouth and indecent way to speak to the Almighty — as if He were a servant or slave.’ There was also a grammatical problem. In Manchu, si and sini could refer to both singular and plural subjects. For a faith that insisted on the singularity of God, this was potentially confusing. By contrast, repeating ama removed any ambiguity.”

In Dutch, Afrikaans, Gronings, and Western Frisian translations, God is always addressed with the formal pronoun.

See also formal pronoun: disciples addressing Jesus, female second person singular pronoun in Psalms.

Honorary "rare" construct denoting God ("mock")

Click or tap here to see the rest of this insight.

Like a number of other East Asian languages, Japanese uses a complex system of honorifics, i.e. a system where a number of different levels of politeness are expressed in language via words, word forms or grammatical constructs. These can range from addressing someone or referring to someone with contempt (very informal) to expressing the highest level of reference (as used in addressing or referring to God) or any number of levels in-between.

One way Japanese shows different degree of politeness is through the usage of an honorific construction where the morpheme rare (られ) is affixed on the verb as shown here in the widely-used Japanese Shinkaiyaku (新改訳) Bible of 2017. This is particularly done with verbs that have God as the agent to show a deep sense of reverence. Here, azake-rare-ru (嘲られる) or “mock” is used.

(Source: S. E. Doi, see also S. E. Doi in Journal of Translation, 18/2022, p. 37ff. )

Translation commentary on Psalm 59:8 - 59:9

The psalmist is confident that God will defeat his enemies; the two synonymous verbs in verse 8a-b are the same as those used of the LORD in 2.4a-b (see also 37.13). The thought of the wicked, that no one can hear them, provokes God to laughter. Again the nations are pagans, heathen, Gentiles.

Verse 9a in the Masoretic text is “His strength, to you I will watch.” The initial ʿuzo “his strength” of the Masoretic text is ʿuzi “my strength” (referring to God) in many Hebrew manuscripts and is adopted by practically all commentators and translations, including Hebrew Old Testament Text Project. Revised Standard Version takes Strength as a title for God, O my Strength (similarly New International Version, New English Bible).

The Hebrew verb “I will watch (to you)” is somewhat unusual in this construction (see Revised Standard Version footnote). In other places where this verb is used with an object governed by the preposition ʾel, as here, it means “to watch over, to guard” (see 1 Sam 26.15; 2 Sam 11.16), so that one would expect the meaning here to be “I will watch over the LORD”–which is obviously wrong. Despite the strangeness of the construction, Hebrew Old Testament Text Project, New Jerusalem Bible (“wait”), Traduction œcuménique de la Bible, Bible en français courant, Bible de Jérusalem (“look to”), New Jerusalem Bible (“keep my eyes fixed”), and Good News Translation (“I have confidence”) believe the Masoretic text makes sense. So Bible en français courant “I look to you, my protector.” Revised Standard Version (see Briggs, Oesterley, Anderson) has followed the Syriac “I will praise,” as in verse 17. Biblia Dios Habla Hoy has adopted a suggestion by Dahood; by the use of different vowels for the same consonants, the passive of the verb shamar “to keep, guard” is read: “I am guarded.” Everything considered, it seems best to follow Bible en français courant in translating this line.

Fortress translates a word that is used also in 9.9, where Revised Standard Version translates “stronghold” (see comments there).

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on the Book of Psalms. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1991. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .