|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
173.52.250.214
In Reply to: RE: I used to be able to speak (somewhat) both Esperanto and Afrikaans... posted by John Marks on February 04, 2016 at 16:58:47
I learned to speak Esperanto as an early teenager, but as there was no-one
to speak it with, I quickly forgot it. I also learned Latin up to the point
where I could read and write it - don't ask me why the English educational
system thought that would prepare me for life after graduation.
John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile
Follow Ups:
I once recall reading that in days of old. the British Foreign Service would only hire gentlemen fluent in both Greek and Latin. The rationale being, if one could learn those languages, they could do anything.
> I once recall reading that in days of old. the British Foreign Service would only hire gentlemen fluent in both Greek and Latin. The rationale being, if one could learn those languages, they could do anything.
I went to a presentation at a local Waldorf (whose pedagogical methods I find most compelling) high school. It was an all-school musical. I thought to myself that if one could sing an unamplified a capella solo on stage in front of hundreds of people, they probably could do just about anything they wanted to in life.
I was not disappointed.
Why ! For when Caesar returns John ........
Kidding aside, I walk around with a German-Jewish name and face, but an Irish-Catholic upbringing such that, when I was a tyke, I heard my mother's aunts speaking Gaelic when they did not want us to understand. So I get wrongly typecast a lot.
I was at a CES, waiting in line at a wine tasting, and the gentleman behind me looked at my name tag and stated that I must be of German heritage and began reciting in beautiful cultured German poetry of Goethe, Schiller, and Heine. His name was very ethnically Irish, so I asked him in surprise, "I recognize the poetry, but 'Ich habe keine Deutsch;' and, where did you learn that?"
He ruefully chuckled and said that in the late 1930s early 1940s, he was in a Jesuit prep school in Dublin (I think it must have been the same that Count John McCormack and James Joyce had been at, at the turn of the century).
His story was that, in expectation that the Germans would conquer England, the Dublin Jesuits spent most of every school afternoon having the students listen to shortwave broadcasts from Germany, and then drill them on the highlights of German literature. That, so they would shine in a brief interview, and gain the privilege of bilingually administering England for the Nazis.
If you did not already know, the shortest verse in the Bible is:
"Jesus wept."
Words fail me.
Jesuits?
Anyway.
jm
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: