Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life. Jesse Lee Bennett
The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension. -Ezra Pound, poet (1885-1972)
A different language is a different vision of life. -Federico Fellini, film director and writer (1920-1993)
I have always loved reading. I don’t even remember a time that was pre-reading, but I know I didn’t learn to read until I was in school, and likely not until first grade, which for me would have been about age 5.
See Spot run! Those books didn’t bore me. I loved the pictures. And somehow that initial love translated to books of all kinds.
I wish I had stayed more with foreign languages. I’m always interested to find that a language doesn’t have a word for something … or that their similar word holds nuances that are lost in English. I took a mini-course at a local community college when James Clavell’s Shogun
I think the Internet enhances faster sharing too.
There’s a whole world of interesting things out there. I’m only scratching the surface. It’s been good to get back into a stack of books again.
What are you reading?
What languages do you speak? read? write? understand?
Do you have easy access to speaking your second (or fourth) language?
I took some German. That was my first foreign language, and it was difficult for me. I remember some words, that’s about all. Then I took two years of French, which was easier. I’d like to re-take it. I get a bit of practice in traveling, but I’m nowhere near being bilingual.
Karin
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2 comments ↓
Language.
Mirrors the culture from which it springs; unveils subtleties of perception.
I share your curiosity and love for language and reading.
I used to speak Yiddish, German, 2 dialects of Dutch, some Flemish, French, Italian, some Ladino, working on Spanish and Hebrew.
I’m reading Angela Carter’s Sadeian Women,just finished Interpreter of Maladies.
I keep rereading a lot of Spanish poetry- Neruda, Lorca.[ These thrill me beyond description]
I find that my motivation often coincides with my desire to communicate w/ others.
For example: After 2 days with lovely people who only spoke Russian [I had no one alive to teach me, as a girl], I found that I was understanding a good bit of what was being said, and making all sorts of efforts to repeat words, sounds.
Took many years of Latin, for the sheer pleasure of it.
The hardest place for me in my travels to date has been Russia. I was there immediately before traveling to China for our first Chinese daughter.
I expected not to be able to read street signs in China or store signs or…and I suspect it was easier to accept because of the difference in not being Chinese. Everyone in our hotels was conversant in English.
In Russia, no one spoke English, or claimed to, except for our guide. At the hotel and the shopping area, they claimed not to speak it. We were right on the sea in a nice hotel. Signs were unintelligible to us, but the people all looked like us.
I think the desire to communicate with others is a major motivator. As a child, I never expected I would travel outside the US to the extent that I have. In Europe, a small drive will get you to a place where you can practice the language you are learning. There is more motivation. If I had only learned the languages of my grandparents’ families, I would be speaking German, Dutch, Spanish or Portuguese, and French, but my relatives set all that aside to speak English.
I love the subtleties of Hebrew and Greek when studying the Bible. I do not speak or read or write the original languages, but with the help of Strong’s Concordance and other studies I’ve collected along the way, there are shifts in depth of understanding. I’ve wanted to study the Hebrew scriptures with Jews or know what it would be like to read and understand Greek for the New Testament.
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