According to Hebrew myth, there was once a time after Noah’s
flood in which the whole world (i.e. all the people who could be dredged up
after God killed everyone) spoke the same language. These people decided to
build a tower (actually a ziggurat) “to make a name for themselves” as one
people, else they become divided and separate. God didn’t like the fact that
these people were trying to gain power and unite, so he said to his god-brethren,
“look, these people already speak one language and now they’re starting to coalesce
their power to build a lousy ziggurat – I don’t like it! Let’s screw with ‘em.”
The Lord went down and decided to rain on their unity parade by making them
speak different languages, thus driving them away from each other. Moral of the
story: don’t even think about trying to come together as one and potentially
end all future conflict between different tribes and clans and languages and
races, because God much prefers the strife that comes from division.
By the time I die I hope to at *least* know Chinese and
Spanish; preferably, I’ll learn one more language for good measure. Arabic is
an incredibly useful language to know on the business front, but my (very)
brief experience with it tells me it will be a much greater strain to learn
than other plausible alternatives. I could learn Japanese, but it seems that’s the
popular thing to do right now, and I don’t know how much I like being on the
bandwagon (I know, I’m that kind of person). I’m not infatuated with any
others, though I have considered French and German as potential useful
languages.
I hope I don’t have to read this out loud. This is literally
as dull as a description of the weather. Oh well.
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