Guest post: A passion for languages by Isabella Mori

I grew up in Germany and received what they call there a “humanistic education” in high school – e.g. there’s quite an emphasis on classic and new languages (Latin, Greek, German, French, English) and history. It was a bit weird, looking back – all the teachers were still strongly influenced by the war, and many of the male teachers were guys who had come back from battle, didn’t know what to do with themselves, and got thrown into teaching. Most of them were very wounded psychologically. (As if growing up with the German idea of “breaking the will of the child” wasn’t enough for them, never mind the war).

All that weirdness aside, and also the fact that I had enough of it by the end of Grade 9 and dropped out, I have to tell you that the best thing I ever learned in high school was Latin, closely followed by Greek. Yup, those dead languages.

Language, by the way, comes from “lingua”, which means “tongue”.

So that’s something I’m passionate about: the importance of those dead languages Greek and Latin. It’s one of the reasons why language dances for me. Words are not just sounds and black scribbles – I know where they come from. The word “language” immediately makes me think of the feel of words in my mouth, how my tongue moves to make an “L” and a “G”. Knowing Latin and Greek opens up language and makes it easy. Learning other European languages is way easier when you know them. Understanding complicated terminology becomes a breeze.

I don’t want to be one of a few people who got lucky enough to learn this. I’d love it if North American schools taught Greek and Latin. In the meantime, it’s a good thing this stuff is old – so it’s open source – here for example.

This is a guest post by Isabella Mori, one of the many Vancouver bloggers. She blogs at change therapy about psychology, creativity, spirituality and social issues such as peace and social justice.

Image by timbrauhn

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This is Entry # 4 of 49

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