The Lens of Language
Ever since I was a little girl, I have been fascinated with different languages. It began with German. My mom taught me simple words in that language of our ancestry, and I reveled in my knowledge of another tongue. She had some antique books written in German which, to my young mind, held beautiful mysteries of knowledge that were waiting to be unlocked, and which she promised to let me have as soon as I knew German. I was determined to master this language, so I developed a summer study program to teach myself German. While my self-study did not produce anything near fluency, it did inspire a further love of the language. When I entered high school, I began taking German classes where my knowledge of the language really began to come together. At the university, I continued my German studies and finally felt I had a solid grasp of simple German. A personal benchmark in my German progression was when I conversed in German with a group of tourists from Germany at Yellowstone. Few thing...