Circular Language

Outside I hear chanting.  It is from the Greeks because it is… rush week!  What is interesting about Eureka is that they do two rushes, a spring and a fall, and freshman can only participate in the Spring Rush.  I think that allows freshman get their heads on straight when it comes to college, not to mention that on a small campus like Eureka you get to really know who is in each fraternity or sorority.  By the way, the chanting ones are the Delta Delta Pi Sorority and the Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity.  I’m pretty sure I won’t join a fraternity at this point, but if I ever did, it would probably be the Sigs.  I’m friends with quite a few of them.  Sorry Ronnie and Paul… I just don’t know any of the TKEs!!

On to more pressing matters!  It’s quiet around here tonight.  Most of my friends are at the Reagan Leadership Retreat, others are watching the Lord of the Rings, and yet others are doing college things in which I do not wish to partake.  You know how it goes, right?  So I am very solitary tonight.  Not a bad thing at all, as I have had a very frantic week with many a paper due and the continued acclimation into my new lifestyle.  One never has as much free time as he or she thinks that they do. 

It is also funny how what we think will be hard is actually easy.  Like my Spanish class, for example.  I thought that Spanish would be horrible to take this year, and I was 99% sure I was going to change it.  I’m glad that I didn’t because it has been my easiest class by far and I am still strengthening my language acquisition skills.  This is where I want to give a nice little shout out to one of my favorite teaches, Kris Earle, for not only instilling in me great amounts of practical knowledge, but also the love of learning something so foreign as, well, a foreign language.  Everyone should try to learn another language if they have the opportunity, because it opens so many doors. 

Speaking of which, I do want to point out that learning a language, particularly Spanish, but any language for that matter, is not “un-American”.  Many people know this, but when I hear “that one or two” it goes all over me.  Learn a language instead of fearing it, because whenever we hear more “protectionist” language, it is simply vocalizing fear.  (I could open a can of worms there, but I won’t.  But… if you really DO want to go there… email me!)  If you're dead set on not learning another language, don’t!  Just don’t fear those that speak in a different tongue than you.  Come on, it’s silly and it tends to make you look more foolish than you actually are.

Speaking of which, English is such a wonderful language because it is incredibly diverse.  It all goes back to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 (My writing teacher taught on this the other day, but I already knew it… so I feel the need to give partial credit to Dr. O’Malley).  That is when a Norman named William the Conquer did what his name implies and conquered what we now know as England.  He was from France (Norman… Normandy- see the connection?) and he brought in his Latinate French language to our Germanic style language.  So while English is Germanic at its core, many of our words are also French.  French is a Romance language, which means it originated in Latin (Hence Latinate French “back in the day”).  Latin has its base in Greek, which is what I’m studying now.  Whoo-hoo for circles!

Anyhow, long story short is this.  English was the collision of two very different languages and that is why it is not only the largest language, but the hardest language.  That is why it is so delightful to write in English (what I’m doing now!) because of the plethora of words.  In fact, we are the only language that requires a thesaurus. 

If you don’t know how we got from chanting Greeks to thesauruses, I don’t blame you, as I only vaguely understand it myself.  Oh well!  However, if you don’t understand any of the words below I invite you to look them up in the only book to outshine the thesaurus… the dictionary!