The Tower of Babble

In this eleventh chapter of the bible, the people, who were a united bunch, decided to be great and build themselves a tower reaching to the high heavens. Evidently they did what they intended, or close enough, because God was not to pleased with them near his personal bubble. He was not super happy with them being great and all, so he destroyed their tower and sent it tumbling down. In the craziness of this ruckus, the people split off into groups that would form separate languages. His intention being, to keep them from easily communicating with each other and therefore keeping them from being as great as they could be.

It worked. We struggle now. Think of how much easier it would be if there was nothing lost in interpretation. If nothing else, I would have never called my friends Nazis. That is one major reason why I want to keep learning languages. Because the more I understand someone’s language, the more I can understand their culture, and then the more I will understand the world. Lofty task, I suppose. I would like to start with relearning German. I'm lucky because my parents moved me there when I was six so German was hidden somewhere in my mind like a present that took all of sophomore year to reopen. Unfortunately, now it’s wrapping itself up again. Maybe this time I’ll unwrap all of it. Like the grammar part too, because that would be lovely to find it stuck somewhere in my mind rather than having to memorize all of the articles of all of the things.

Right now I am trying to decide what would be better: to know many languages sorta well, or to know a few languages really well. If I choose the first, I would like to know enough Spanish to get by on, and enough Italian to live in Rome like I plan to in my dream life. Then French, so I can go on vacation to Paris and not be tricked into paying too much for a scarf at the market. If I choose the second I would learn German so well you couldn’t tell I was foreign and then learn Italian. (Which I would have to do because I will be living in Rome.)