# Que soy era immaculada concepciou



## francisgranada

Hello everybody!

When Bernadette Soubirous asked the "Lady" that appeared to her in Lourdes, who she was, the answer was _"Que soy era immaculada concepciou". _This sentence is in the local Occitan dialect and it is usually translated as _"I am the Immaculate Conception"_.

My spontaneous literal translation into Spanish would be: _"Que soy (aqu)ella inmaculada concepción" _which is not necessarily the same as "(_Yo) soy la inmaculada concepción". _

As I don't speak any Occitan language/dialect, my question is: What is the exact meaning of the sentence?

Thanks in advance


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## jazyk

_Era_ seems to be the feminine definite article in some Occitan dialects. See here and here.


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## francisgranada

Thanks, Jazyk . So the function of _era _seems to be resolved.

What still remains unexplained to me, is the initial _que _("Que soy ..."). Well, _que _is a multifunctional world in Romance languages, so it's function in this case may depend on the context (i.e. what has been told before, etc.) ....


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## jazyk

To me it sounds like Tell everyone/Everyone should know that I am...


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## francisgranada

jazyk said:


> To me it sounds like Tell everyone/Everyone should know that I am...


To me as well ... But I don't know if this kind of construction can be used also without any explicit context. For example (in Spanish):
- Y tú , ¿quién eres?
- _Que _soy tu padre. ¿No lo sabes?

Is such kind of a dialogue possible?


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## jazyk

Not to me.


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## Cenzontle

The Butt & Benjamin Spanish grammar (Sec. 33.4.4—if you follow the link, click on the first snippet) says:


> _Que_ may appear at the head of a sentence or clause, especially in speech.


The first of seven functions listed is


> To reinforce the idea that what follows expresses something expected, something repeated or something that is being insisted on.


I suppose the question is whether Occitan has the same possible use of "que".


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## Dymn

This _que _before a verb is typical of the Gascon variety of Occitan, its usage is very common (like, you will find it every two or three sentences) but unfortunately I don't know its function.


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## Sardokan1.0

In my opinion, this "que" before the phrase could be translated as "That", but only when answering to a specific question.

example :

_Who are you? What am I supposed to say if they ask me? -> *That *I am the immaculate conception_

Tha same construction can be reproduced in Italian, and Sardinian, maybe in other Romance languages too?

*Italian : *Chi sei? Cosa devo dire se me lo chiedono? -> *Che *sono l'immacolata concezione
*Sardinian :* Quie ses? Ite debo nàrrere si mi lu domandan? -> *Qui *so s'immaculada cuntzetzione


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## Penyafort

That _que _in Gascon simply introduces statements. It's a syntactic particularity. Just don't translate it, because initial _que_ in other Romance languages has different meanings / nuances.


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## CapnPrep

As Dymn and Penyafort said, this is a typical feature of Gascon, known as "enunciative _que_", and it simply marks the declarative force of the sentence. As such, it doesn't really translate into anything in Spanish or English, etc. It is not the same _que_ as the subordinating conjunction, because you can have both at the same time:
Pèir *qu'*ei un pèc. "Peter is an idiot"
Que pensi [que Pèir *qu'*ei un pèc]. "I think [that Peter is an idiot]"​
See here and here for more discussion and references.
​Spanish also allows sometimes _que_ to introduce main clause declaratives, but in that case it does seems to derive from a subordinate construction like [_Te digo_]_ que …_ It's clear that this is not the same thing as the Gascon _que_, either syntactically (in Spanish it appears clause-initially, to the left of the subject) or semantically/pragmatically (in Spanish it has much stronger assertive force).


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## francisgranada

Thank you very much!


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## Kevin Beach

The "Que" is easily explained by the context, when one knows it.

In 1854, Pope Pius IX had defined the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus; i.e the teaching that, unlike all other humans except Jesus Himself, Mary was conceived without the stain of Original Sin.

In 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, living in a provincial, rural region, was known not to good at her religious studies and had not heard of the newly defined doctrine. Therefore, Mary told her to tell the Church authorities "*That* I am the Immaculate Conception", precisely to identify herself to them in a way that Bernadette couldn't have imagined or invented.

"Que" is an important part of the remembered words, because it demonstrates the Church's belief that Mary wanted her message to be passed to the Church and not to stay with Bernadette alone.


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## Hulalessar

Kevin Beach said:


> The "Que" is easily explained by the context, when one knows it.
> 
> In 1854, Pope Pius IX had defined the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus; i.e the teaching that, unlike all other humans except Jesus Himself, Mary was conceived without the stain of Original Sin.
> 
> In 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, living in a provincial, rural region, was known not to good at her religious studies and had not heard of the newly defined doctrine. Therefore, Mary told her to tell the Church authorities "*That* I am the Immaculate Conception", precisely to identify herself to them in a way that Bernadette couldn't have imagined or invented.
> 
> "Que" is an important part of the remembered words, because it demonstrates the Church's belief that Mary wanted her message to be passed to the Church and not to stay with Bernadette alone.



The doctrine may not have been defined until 1854, but it had been around for centuries. Whether Bernadette knew of the papal bull she must surely have heard Mary referred to as the Immaculate Conception even if she was not aware of the significance of the designation.


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## Kevin Beach

Hulalessar said:


> The doctrine may not have been defined until 1854, but it had been around for centuries. Whether Bernadette knew of the papal bull she must surely have heard Mary referred to as the Immaculate Conception even if she was not aware of the significance of the designation.


The evidence at the time was that Bernadette didn't know what the phrase meant, or that it referred to a person. She was illiterate and had missed a lot of her schooling because of family circumstances. She was unable to remember details of what she was taught. She was regarded as pious but unintelligent.


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## Hulalessar

I am prepared to believe that Bernadette did not know what the phrase meant, but not that she did not know that it referred to Mary. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was a hot topic in the 1850s. Following the papal bull in 1854 (if not before) the dogma must have been referred to in sermons and/or announcements from the pulpit and catechism classes even if not talked about at the village pump. Whatever one's views on the apparitions, the fact that Bernadette came out with the phrase is not a convincing reason to believe they were actually a manifestation of Mary.


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## Kevin Beach

Hulalessar said:


> I am prepared to believe that Bernadette did not know what the phrase meant, but not that she did not know that it referred to Mary. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was a hot topic in the 1850s. Following the papal bull in 1854 (if not before) the dogma must have been referred to in sermons and/or announcements from the pulpit and catechism classes even if not talked about at the village pump. Whatever one's views on the apparitions, the fact that Bernadette came out with the phrase is not a convincing reason to believe they were actually a manifestation of Mary.


I agree with your last few words. Bernadette's use of the phrase alone would be weak evidence. However, it was said that it was enough to persuade her Curé (Parish Priest), who was responsible for her catechesis and was very well aware of her general religious ignorance, to refer the matter up to diocesan authorities.

The rest of your post, though, is unsupported supposition.


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## Hulalessar

Kevin Beach said:


> The rest of your post, though, is unsupported supposition.



I doubt there is a record of what was taught in catechism classes and said from the pulpit in Lourdes in the 1850s. In _Ineffabilis Deus_ the Pope said: "Let all the children of the Catholic Church, who are so very dear to us, hear these words of ours." Bearing that in mind, and in any event given Catholic Mariology, it surely has to be the case that the phrase "immaculate conception" was in the air in all Catholic communities in the 1850s.

If catechesis in Lourdes in the 1850s was like it was in the convent I attended in England in the 1950s it mainly involved learning by rote. I moved to a state Catholic school and when I was nine or ten phrases such as "plenary indulgence", "extreme unction" and "culpable ignorance", not to mention "immaculate conception", were used in religious instruction. I doubt that few, if any, of my classmates understood the full significance of all these terms. I heard "extreme unction" as "extra munction". Even if I was not clear exactly what "munction" was the "extra" made some sort of sense as the sacrament is reserved for those in danger of dying. The explanation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was a bit coy as they were not too keen on explaining to ten year olds what was involved in conception. We were just told that Mary was born without sin.

Apparently when Bernadette first used the phrase she did not get it right and stumbled over it. I may be being picky, but "I am the Immaculate Conception" is not technically correct since no person is a conception, which is an event, not a person. Should one expect Mary to be technically correct?


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## Kevin Beach

Hulalessar said:


> I doubt there is a record of what was taught in catechism classes and said from the pulpit in Lourdes in the 1850s. In _Ineffabilis Deus_ the Pope said: "Let all the children of the Catholic Church, who are so very dear to us, hear these words of ours." Bearing that in mind, and in any event given Catholic Mariology, it surely has to be the case that the phrase "immaculate conception" was in the air in all Catholic communities in the 1850s.
> 
> If catechesis in Lourdes in the 1850s was like it was in the convent I attended in England in the 1950s it mainly involved learning by rote. I moved to a state Catholic school and when I was nine or ten phrases such as "plenary indulgence", "extreme unction" and "culpable ignorance", not to mention "immaculate conception", were used in religious instruction. I doubt that few, if any, of my classmates understood the full significance of all these terms. I heard "extreme unction" as "extra munction". Even if I was not clear exactly what "munction" was the "extra" made some sort of sense as the sacrament is reserved for those in danger of dying. The explanation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was a bit coy as they were not too keen on explaining to ten year olds what was involved in conception. We were just told that Mary was born without sin.
> 
> Apparently when Bernadette first used the phrase she did not get it right and stumbled over it. I may be being picky, but "I am the Immaculate Conception" is not technically correct since no person is a conception, which is an event, not a person. Should one expect Mary to be technically correct?


Well, just picking up your last point, "Immaculate Conception" is exactly what Mary is in Catholic theology. Remember, we are talking of Church Latin being translated conservatively into modern languages. In English, for example, very often the translation is by way of an anglicised version of the Latin words or phrase. Does the word "transubstantiation" have any other use in English, other than as a reference to the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist? The results are sometimes difficult to understand without learning or further explanation.

Mary is "she who was conceived unstained [by original sin]"; in Latin, IMMACULATA CONCEPTA. That became almost a title and was simply transliterated into equivalents in other languages. Perhaps rarely, if not uniquely, "Conception" is used to denote a person who was conceived, not a mental conception.

"Immaculada Concepciou" is the Provencale/Langueoc/Occitan version; again, transliterated from Latin.

Maybe the point you have raised explains exactly why Bernadette didn't understand it. Even if she knew what a concept(ion)was in philosophy, she didn't know that the Church had applied the word to Mary.


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## Hulalessar

I suspect that Bernadette was, like many Catholics today, devout but unclear on the niceties of doctrine. It is of course not only Catholics who can be devout but unclear on the niceties of doctrine.

The main point here is though not whether Bernadette understood the doctrine. Bernadette was perceived to be backward in her education and surprise was expressed that she uttered the phrase. My argument is that, whatever she knew or understood, she must have heard the phrase regularly and known that it applied to Mary.


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## avemariapurisima

Having a clear answer about, "que", the main problem remains at "era":


"era" means "the" (feminin article). By 1858, could it also mean "was" (past tense of being)? Was the phrase ever written phonetically at the time?

(Bigourdan, highland Bigorre of Gascony, has different nuances than Occitan)


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## francisgranada

avemariapurisima said:


> Having a clear answer about, "que", the main problem remains at "era":
> 
> "era" means "the" (feminin article). By 1858, could it also mean "was" (past tense of being)?


 First, "soy era" has no sense if we consider "era" to be the imperfect (past tense) of "to be" because of the presence of _soy _(that means "I am"). Second,  before  the _immaculada concepciou _an article or a demonstrative pronoun is required, in my opinion (though I don't speak any Occitan dialect). So, if I am right, "era" doesn't/cannot mean "was" in this case.


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## Hulalessar

avemariapurisima said:


> By 1858, could it also mean "was" (past tense of being)? Was the phrase ever written phonetically at the time?



I do not know about in 1858, but today "was" in Gascon is spelled _èra_; see here: Occitan conjugation - Wikipedia


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## sotos

Sardokan1.0 said:


> In my opinion, this "que" before the phrase could be translated as "That", but only when answering to a specific question.



Not necessarily, in liturgical texts. At least in Greek. In the everyday greek orthodox service, there are phrases starting with "Ότι" (That) which do not come as answers or explanations. For example, after the Πάτερ Ημών (Pater noster) it comes:
_*Ότι* σου εστίν η βασιλεία και η δύναμις και η δόξα του Πατρός και του Υιού και του Αγίου Πνεύματος, νυν και αεί και εις τους αιώνας των αιώνων. Αμήν._

The Amen at the end means that the phrase stands alone.


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