Thread: Words for God

To the other believers in this forum, please do not view my post as a negative thing, but as something that we can use for our benefit, and most importantly, God's benefit. I don't want us to be divided. I f I have offended you please tell me.....I hate division among the children of God.

On another note....Christians are being persecuted around the world, and I have several friends that I know very personally that have been persecuted for their faith in other countries. It's not something to be taken lightly.....if you want the details, pm me.

Hey, don't worry about it Truelove, but just remember somthing. We have two things in common, we beleive in the same God, and are trying to learn Russian. So don't speak for "us", the beleivers. Just because we have those two things in common does not mean we have everything in common .

I ам the Good Shepherd - Я Пастырь Добрый
I give My life - отдаю жизнь Мою
No one takes it - никто не отнимает её
I Мyself give it - Я Cам отдаю её

I already have both a dictionary and a Bible. None of this is stuff that I couldn't have figured out myself between the two. If you're going to post random bits of Christianity, could you please at least post random bits of Christianity that are actually useful lexicon and grammar? I don't think you're converting anyone here, you're just reinforcing people's already negative opinions, which I can't imagine is your goal.

And now, I have (shockingly) a few actual on-topic questions. I already know the verb "to pray," but I'm not 100% certain how you make certain constructions with it. For example, how would I say "I'm praying for my sister," in the sense that, say, my sister is ill and I'm praying that she'll get better. Or "I'm praying for world peace," like I'm praying in hopes that it will come about. Instinct suggests to me that one should use the preposition за, but I'm just not sure.

Also, what are the Five Pillars of Islam called in Russian?

I saw a copy of the Koran translated into Russian the other day. I'm kinda kicking myself for not buying it, but it was a little too expensive for me. It would have been an interesting read, though. I wonder if the translators managed to convey the poetry of the original Arabic at all?

Maybe you should go to the Moscow Mosque(I like that name ) and ask if they have any free Russian Qur'aans. The mosque in my town was handing them out like crazy the other day at the international students expo. Lemme see if I remember the 5 pillars in Arabic correctly...mmm...
ash-shahadaat
as-salaa'
al-ramadaan
az-zakaa'
al-hajj

Lindzi, have you ever read the Qur'aan in the original Arabic? If so, you would know it is impossibile to preserve the grace of the original in translation to any language. In addition to that I would say the grace of it is really impossibile for any non-native Arabic speaker to understand(unless they live and speak it for decades)

Since in English they're just direct translation and sometimes differ depending on how they were translated, I would assume you'd translate them directly into Russian too.

About praying for somebody or something, there is probably some exact form for it. However I think this is one of those cases where "for" might nt be able to be directly translated. I would guess that something like this would work too:
Я молюсь, чтобы она выздоровела.
Я молюсь, чтобы Бог разрушил Дизни-Лэнд(по словам Джэрри Фэлуэлл)

Just because we have those two things in common does not mean we have everything in common .

I wasn't trying to speak for everyone who claims to be a believer, sorry if it came across that way, but it wasn't my intent......I know no one has everything in common... and to be honest, I don't really understand what you are getting at, but don't worry about it, I don't understand a lot of things If your talking about this:

To the other believers in this forum, please do not view my post as a negative thing, but as something that we can use for our benefit, and most importantly, God's benefit. I don't want us to be divided. I f I have offended you please tell me.....I hate division among the children of God.

then again, I wasn't trying to speak for anyone, just trying to get the point across that if we claim to be Christians, at least in my book, we are all supposed to be united, no matter what our differences. It doesn't matter if anything else about us is different, it's who we believe in. If this isn't what you meant, then I am just one confused little child here...

Don't worry about it. The beaten horse is already dead, just move on .

I did......

Originally Posted by Pravit

About praying for somebody or something, there is probably some exact form for it. However I think this is one of those cases where "for" might nt be able to be directly translated. I would guess that something like this would work too:
Я молюсь, чтобы она выздоровела.
Я молюсь, чтобы Бог разрушил Дизни-Лэнд(по словам Джэрри Фэлуэлл)

Right (but Дисней-Лэнд). And Линдзи is right, too: with nouns, "за" should be used:

Я молюсь за мир. Я молюсь за ее здоровье.

one should use the preposition за,

to pray - молиться
prayer - молитва
I'm praying for my sister - Я молюсь за мою сестру.
I'm praying for world peace - Я молюсь за мир во всем мире.

Also "о"(+prepositional case) is used.
Я молюсь о её выздоровлении.
Я молюсь о мире на земле.
Я молюсь о ней. (But in this case "Я молюсь за неё" is more common)

Thanks everyone, you're peaches. That clears up the "to pray" question for me. So, theoretically, could you say "Я молюсь за того, что друг найдет работу"? Or would that construction sound weird?

Originally Posted by Pravit

Maybe you should go to the Moscow Mosque(I like that name ) and ask if they have any free Russian Qur'aans. The mosque in my town was handing them out like crazy the other day at the international students expo. Lemme see if I remember the 5 pillars in Arabic correctly...mmm...
ash-shahadaat
as-salaa'
al-ramadaan
az-zakaa'
al-hajj

Lindzi, have you ever read the Qur'aan in the original Arabic? If so, you would know it is impossibile to preserve the grace of the original in translation to any language. In addition to that I would say the grace of it is really impossibile for any non-native Arabic speaker to understand(unless they live and speak it for decades)

Since in English they're just direct translation and sometimes differ depending on how they were translated, I would assume you'd translate them directly into Russian too.

I have not, unfortunately. I'm still stuck on learning the alphabet. I learned the Russian alphabet in like two hours, but there's something about Arabic that my brain can't seem to process. All the dots and such like just kick my ass. I can sort of sound words out at this point (if they contain the letters that I've actually managed to memorize ), but it's still really halting. It sounds so beautiful when other people read it, though. I know I can't appreciate the meaning much (yet), and I've been told that no translation can do it justice, but the English translation of the Koran that I read was so gorgeous that if the original is that much better, it's worth learning Arabic just to read it.

I'll steal someone's Arabic-Russian dictionary and look 'em up, then. I suspected it'd just be direct translations of the Arabic words, but sometimes religious translators like to get all high-faluting.

Originally Posted by Линдзи

So, theoretically, could you say "Я молюсь за того, что друг найдет работу"? Or would that construction sound weird?

You could say "Я молюсь за то, чтобы друг нашел работу"

Yes Lindzi, did you know there are actually several different ways of reading it? What I also liked is how they almost "sing" it when they're reading it aloud. However I remember once when I was younger I asked my Muslim friend: "Do they come up with a song every time they read it?" He got mad and said "It's NOT SINGING!"

I have an English translation with the original Arabic on the side, as well as commentary on the bottom. I got it for free(they really do love handing out their Qur'aans!), it's quite nice if I ever study Arabic more. Don't you love Arabic calligraphy?

As for me, the alphabet was not too hard, but my problem is memorizing the order of the letters. Of course we foreigners run into problems because we can't guess the vowels in between letters(without a lot of experience). In religious and scholarly, they have little marks showing exactly how to pronounce everything, but it gets quite confusing especially when they put marks all over the place to make it look pretty.
For me, I pretended that the dots show (approximately) the way various letters are pronounced in the mouth, to help me memorize. "T" is pronounced by tapping your tongue on your front teeth, and there are two dots on top of the thing. "N" is a deep sonorous sound so when it is written at the end it gets a nice deep sac. "B" is pronounced with your bottom lip and so the dot comes on the bottom. And so on...

Such an unfair world it is, everyone killed for no apparent reason, but yeah, technology will prevail .. I think we Muslims are terrorists in many people's eyes, and there is nothing I can do about it because I give. But yeah, this world isn't navsegda..

Who agrees that we should like, you know, do this big meeting, reunion for all of us somewhere.. let's say.. many people are from North America here, so I guess maybe instead of Russia we meet in ... Canada? hehehe

oh well. Your call, just a thought.

S novym godom, everyone!

Comrade, I thought we have already agreed on such meeting in little town known as Ышкыш. One of the only towns in the world whose name begins with Ы.

how do you say: i'm a religious nut. in russian?

Я каждую пятницу хожу в мечеть.
Ya kazhduyu pyatnitsu khazhu f mechet.