The Anger of Compassion

The 'Why' of Foreign Language Studies

For the last two hundred years, anyone concerned with communicating all over the world has really depended on but two languages: French and English. Command of both tongues never did provide a perfect solution to every spot, but it was well nigh universal, and it worked. Similar accomodations have always been made.

For example, the court language of Nicholas II and Alexandra was French; the "court" language of most upper-class Romans would have been Greek (Shakespeare or no Shakespeare, Julius Caesar's terminal "Et tu, Brute?" was far more likely to have been "kai su, teknon?" as both he and Brutus were members of the Roman privileged classes), and if Pontius Pilate ever interviewed Jesus of Nazareth without benefit of an interpreter, said interview would, I think, have been conducted in Greek. And French did become, and remain for some time, the language of diplomacy (and of empire and more -- Vietnam's last emperor, Bao Dai, was always interviewed in French, and many of Lebanon's post-World War I heads of state were more comfortable in French than in Arabic), and of course in our day English is the language of commerce, of aviation, and of the internet.

Still: does it ever go away, the allure of the foreign, the remote, the exotic? Does that not include food and art and music and the language involved? I stand with the claim that it does, and Pejman Yousefzadeh agrees -- and, of course, he's right. The Pejevidence is the original Tuscan in which Dante's Purgatorio was written, even as he praises an edition featuring both that Tuscan and a translation by the American poet W.S. Merwin. Obviously, it's great to have both.

I'm entirely with Pejman on this. I remember the thrill as a youth of reading Chaucer in Middle English, and of reading Goethe, Schiller, and others in German. That was well over twenty-five years ago, and my German isn't what it was -- and it was no great shakes back then, trust me. But...but...

These writers had something to say, and they weren't Americans, and they weren't Brits. I want, want, want -- and I will have this:

I want to read Pushkin Lermontov and Gogol in Russian.

I want to read Hugo in French.

I want to read Homer in Greek -- and the great comic Aristophanes, too. And yeah, I know they were two quite different dialects: I'm not interested in doing this for the braggin' rights, but for the selfish pleasure of DOING IT.

I want to enjoy the operas of Puccini and Verdi without depending on the surtitles, just listening to the singing in Italian. And yeah, I'd like to dip into Dante, as well.

I want to go back to Schiller and Goethe and Novalis and others, in German, and you know what? I'd like to read stuff in all these languages on the internet, as well. Why not?

And if such efforts bring me to a deeper appreciation of my native English, why, that's yet another benefit.

Posted by Craig Ceely at March 30, 2005 11:50 PM