The Lord's Prayer in Five Hundred Languages

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The Lord’s Prayer in Five Hundred Languages, originally issued by Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington, Ltd., is now published by us at our Office, at 23, Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, as we have taken over the business of Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington, Ltd., with all their Oriental, Foreign and peculiar types, together with their trained staff.

The Oriental and Classical Printing Department, now the most complete, and one of the largest, if not the largest, in the world, is installed at our principal London works, at Duke Street, Stamford, Street, S.E., where we undertake Translating and Printing in all the living and dead languages.

June, 1908.

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When, in the earlier years of the present century, attempts were made at surveying and classifying the then known tongues of the globe, the Lord’s Prayer was—for its terse simplicity, its typical Christian spirit, and the generally known tenor of its wording—selected as the most appropriate text to serve as a representative of each language and dialect. But while Adelung—following in the wake of Conrad Gesner (1555) and our own Chamberlayne (1715)—brought together in his well-known “Mithridates” (Berlin, 1808–17) a vast number of specimens of the Lord’s Prayer, solely with a glottological object in view, A. Auer’s “Sprachenhalle” (Vienna, 1844–47), containing the Lord’s Prayer in 200 languages, was mainly intended to exhibit the then unrivalled resources of oriental typography which the Vienna Imperial Printing Office could boast of. Of other books of the same class, but of more modest compass and pretensions, may be mentioned “The Lord’s Prayer in the Languages of Russia,” with a valuable linguistic introduction by the Rev. H. Dalton (St. Petersburg, 1870), G. F. Bergholtz’s collection of versions of the Lord’s Prayer (Chicago, 1884), and “The Lord’s Prayer in the Languages of Africa” (1890). The publishers of the ​present most comprehensive work, which has been chiefly taken from translations of the Scriptures in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society, desire to put it forth as a specimen of the numerous languages into which the Scriptures have been translated, and as a fitting testimony of the capabilities of their own Oriental Printing Establishment: and they trust that the following brief notes concerning the characters in which the various versions are here reproduced may not prove devoid of interest to the reader.

It should be stated in the first instance that through the force of circumstances—in many cases religious, rather than political, conquest—certain alphabets have been foisted on languages for the graphic expression of which they are ill adapted. This applies, e.g., to the Burmese, Shan, and Siamese alphabets, which are based on ancient Sanskrit and Pali scripts; and with still greater force to the Arabic, which the Island has pressed upon conquered nations whose languages are of a totally different phonetic type, such as Berber, Tartar, Persian, Afghan, Beluchi, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Malay. We meet even with Javanese and Sundanese books in the Arabic character. Armenians and Greeks now write Turkish generally and far more conveniently with their own alphabets, while the Hindus of Sindh and Kashmir write their vernaculars with alphabets based on the Nagari. The latter, with its modifications (Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya, Panjábi), is now the leading type all over Hindustan. The Dravidian, or South Indian languages, on the other hand (Tamil excepted), with the Sinhalese, Javanese and Balinese, use alphabets derived from an earlier Indian model, but likewise arranged on the principle of the Nagari. The Tibetan character, a northern offshoot of the Nagari, is too cumbrous to suit the exigencies of that ancient vernacular. Thus likewise the scripts current in the islands of Sumatra and Celebes, to say nothing of the various simple alphabets (now obsolete) of ​the Philippine languages, represent but inadequately the living speech. The Dutch have, therefore, in a praiseworthy, practical spirit, endeavoured to introduce the Roman character into their vernacular (Malay, Batta, Sundanese, etc.) school books. Nearly all the languages which have been reduced to writing by European and American missionaries all over the globe now use the Roman character. As exceptions, may be noted some of the North American Indian tongues, for which by way of experiment a new simple alphabet has been invented; further, certain Finno-Ugrian and Caucasian dialects, which are written with Russian letters; and the various Karen dialects in Burma, for which a new set of characters has been devised on the Burmese pattern. In writing Swaheli, the lingua franca of the East Coast of Africa, Latin letters are now exclusively used in supersession of the unsuited Arabic script. There has been a ‘Romanizing’ invasion, with greater or lesser chance of abiding success, on several of the ancient literary languages of Asia. Chinese in its various dialectic forms, Japanese, Annamese, Siamese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali, Zend, and the cuneiform inscriptions in their various tongues, have been presented to us in Roman transcript together with numerous attendants in shape of accents, dots, hooks, circles, etc. In spite of all that may be urged in favour of this innovation, with which we are by no means disposed to quarrel, there is, and there ever will be, a large contingent of scholars, students, and lovers of oriental lore, who will prefer the original Eastern characters to their modern transliteration. It is these to whom the present publication mainly appeals, and whose interest, patronage, and goodwill the Directors of the Oriental Printing Establishment of Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington are anxious to enlist. But apart from this purely literary aspect, the extraordinary and almost unrivalled resources of their collection of oriental type, as set forth in the present ​publication, offer also a practical side which commends itself to the consideration of a far wider circle of the community. The missionary, the manufacturer, the merchant, the traveller, in short, the pioneer of commerce and civilization, can approach foreign nations only through their own vernaculars, and, in the case of those being written in characters of their own, by using those characters. The great Religious Societies and kindred institutions, as well as the foremost merchants and exporters, have thus for many years past availed themselves with signal success of the extensive typographical resources of this firm. While in Russia, France, and Austria, the great Oriental Printing Establishments are largely subsidized by the respective Governments, Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington have, unaided, brought together a profusion of type of the most varied description and adapted to the printing of almost any Eastern tongue: and they deserve the recognition of the public at large for the material aid they have for a quarter of a century been rendering in furthering the intersection between this country and the East.

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February, 1905.

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“The book is a typographical feat.”—Daily News. ** “This unique book, which is superbly printed, will be a grand addition to the library of a collector of literary curiosities.”—City Press. ** “The extraordinary resources of Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington’s collection of Oriental type have enabled them to produce what is almost a unique triumph of typography.”—Bookseller. ** “A beautiful specimen of modern typography, and does infinite credit to the printing staff of its well-known publishers.”—Dublin Evening Mail. ** “Is certainly worth buying as a literary curiosity. To students of philology or lovers of the curious the book will be almost equally interesting—one of the triumphs of modern typography.”—Dundee Advertiser. ** “This beautifully printed book may be described as a museum of the chief languages and dialects of the world … is of the highest interest for all students of the science of language, that even those who do not pretend to be great linguists cannot fail to find a pleasure in comparing together this immense variety of human speech. The large number of the Oriental alphabets employed in the production of the work shows in a very striking way the exceptional resources of Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington’s printing establishment.”—Catholic Times. ** “The enterprising publishers of this book can fearlessly challenge the world to rival them in variety of type for sublunary printing.”—Overland Mail. ** ​“Considered merely as a literary curiosity, the book is one which no collector should miss. It is superbly printed, and the printers may be complimented in the warmest possible terms upon the seemingly inexhaustible typographical resources of their establishment. It is only in England, and probably only in one house in England, that the Lord’s Prayer could be printed in five hundred languages.”—Eastern Press. ** “The book is a beautiful piece of typography … reflects credit upon the resources of its publishers, and a linguist will find it instructive in many various ways.”—Scotsman. ** “Each page is a real curiosity in point of letters and words, and the whole book is a marvel of printing resource.”—School Review.