Monday, October 16, 2006
When I picked Alesia up from Lindamood Bell today, we rode along for a while, and then had the following conversation.
Alesia: “Mom, where do all those words come from, long time ago?”
Me: “What words? What exactly do you mean?”
Alesia: “You know, English words. How did people come up with them?”
Me: “Well, English is made up of a lot of different kinds of languages. We borrowed from the Celts, the Gauls, the Romans – “
Alesia: “What about Russian?”
Me: “Well, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English all came from Latin. Latin was spoken way back, a long time ago, like when Jesus lived. The Latin is why it’s not too hard for a person who speaks English to learn Italian, French, German, whatever. But Russian, Polish, Czech, etc. – those are Slavic languages. They are very different. That’s why it’s so hard for Americans to learn Russian.”
Alesia: “Oh. That’s not what I meant.”
Me: “Well, what did you mean?”
Alesia: “I meant, how did people long time ago think up words?”
Me: “I don’t know. Those Latin folks just made ‘em up, I guess.”
Then somehow we got into a discussion of how there are many cognates, even between Russian and English – words like restaurant, computer, music, theater, etc. are very similar. I also explained about how Russian nobles in the 19th century learned French, so many French words were incorporated into Russian. She was interested in that. I explained about the one Russian word I know, which is almost identical to French [billet, for ticket]. Then I didn’t know any more Russian words as examples, so I told her how America and France share a lot of words. For example, French people now say “le weekend” and we have lots of words from France, like “parfait.”
I’m just thrilled she is taking an interest in language, period!
I told her to feel lucky she just has to learn English, not Chinese or Arabic! LOL
