Multi-Lingual Musings

Well, I'm feeling better from my fall. Thanks for the well wishes ;). I still have a scraped up knee but it is getting better. I forgot all about it when I went up during the altar call at church Sunday and almost started crying real tears when I dropped to my knees, and, er, not of repentance. Skinning your knee at 7 was always much easier than doing it at 37. LOL Falling is SO not for old people.

Tonight we have RU at our church, and I was just sitting here reviewing my memory verses. I've memorized 1 Corinthians 13:1-8 this week (that comprises 3 challenges, but it seemed somehow easier to just do the whole enchilada at once). I memorized this years ago in German, and so as I am saying it to myself I am having a hard time speaking English. Maybe it is just the way my poor brain works.

Tamie and I were talking and she made the comment about my aptitude for languages, and that is really something I am jazzed about as languages have always fascinated me. I thank God for it. I like to be able to learn languages easily, because I also like to communicate with others. It's also sort of fun to speak a few different languages and have everyone assume you are the typical American (speaking only moderate Spanish, not 3 languages)...and then eavesdrop on what they are saying about you. Ok, maybe that is not so nice, but it does get amusing. Once I was at someone's house in Germany, and they started speaking French to each other because they didn't want me to hear what they were saying and assumed, in the words of the woman, that it was a big enough fluke that I was a bilingual American, but it would be highly unlikely for me to speak french too. Well...guess what? I had 6 years of French in high school and college, and though I don't think I can speak it too well today (I never used it like I use German), I did understand what was being said, and eventually had to come clean about it. Languages are so fun.

Anastasia, my 10 year old, told me just a couple of years ago that she feels that when she grows up God wants her to go to China, and so she wanted to start learning Chinese right now. Of all the languages I *Don't* know! Mandarin is the hardest language for an English speaker to learn. However, that has not deterred Anastasia. I figured it would pass in a few days or weeks...but here we are, two years later, and she is still dutifully learning Chinese, and loving every minute of it ("it makes more sense than English sometimes, Mom!" I heard recently). After a bit of web surfing, I found some programs to help her teach herself Chinese, and we found a native Chinese speaker at a local China Buffet restaurant who was thrilled to help make sure she is on the right track. It provides a fun excuse to go get the lunch buffet every so often ;). GOOOO (that is my alliteration for the Chinese word for Good :-) I am sadly also getting a fifth language stuck in my brain, and actually dreamed of dancing Chinese characters last night).

Before this I always thought of oriental languages as a lot of screeching noises, but now I see Mandarin as a really beautiful language that is very expressive of deep ideas, as it is based on ideas not phonics. Even some of the characters and how they are put together just blow my mind. The Character for the word that means "peace" "bliss" or "contentment" is the character of a house with the character for woman inside of it. The character for the word that means "goodness" is a character for woman and the character for child side by side. There is a lot of family-tie symbolism in the characters that just has such a deep wow factor for me.