In France, there is a council to preserve the purity of the language. It is against regulations for TV and radio networks to use English words where a French equivalent exisits. Language, though, is meant to be alive. Its beauty comes in its ability to adapt as times and cultures change.
Hebrew was a dead language, unchanged and unspoken for hundreds of years. With the rebirth of a Jewish homeland, the Hebrew language was revived and now, what was constant for so long, is adapting, changing, morphing.
Watching the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee tonight, I was struck by how many of the list words had roots in other languages. Actually, every word came from somewhere else-- Greek, Latin, French, German, Hawaiian, Persian, Turkish, Italian, Spanish-- English is rich with world influence. The very words we speak are, in a way, a special kind of melting pot.
The winning word in the spelling bee? Ursprache.
Meaning? A parent language, especially one reconstructed from the evidence of later languages.
Etymology? German for "Speech of Ur"
Ur is where the Tower of Babel once stood. Ursprache, then, was the language all men shared before God stopped their ziggurat project by confusing their languages. Ursprache is referred to as "the lost language of Paradise."
Perhaps we'll all speak ursprache again some day.
5 comments:
Also interesting to note from the spelling bee was the Runner-up stumbled on "weltschmerz," meaning world-pain or world-weariness but can also mean "sadness over the evils of the world."
Great Post, Wordsmith!
I love this post...language fascinates me...and I SO look forward to the day when there will be no language barrier...:-)
I gut ta woutch tha "litening rond" wile I exersized lass nite. It wus INTENTS. I lovd it. I culdn't evan prononce mooss uv thoes wurds.
I loved this post. I am part of Writers' View and found the blog address there. www.clellascorner.blogspot.com
I use blogging much as you do. Blessings
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