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My story starts with an image. An image of an elegant woman sitting at a table in a café
in Kiev, Ukraine where we stopped for lunch when visiting my uncle. She sat with a group
of businessmen merging two languages to create a link -- a bridge between two parties speaking
different tongues to enable them to come to an understanding. I wished deep inside it
were me speaking fluently in two languages, able to create the image with words, helping
find the common ground to those who may not have it yet. I was only 14 then, but the image
has stayed with me ever since. A year later, my mom offered to get me a tutor to learn
English and I took the opportunity. I was shy and could only dream to become as good
as that person from my brief encounter, but I decided to try my best.
Learning a foreign language is not just a simple replacement of one word with its foreign
equivalent. It is an ability to convey the meaning shaped by the people who live there.
And to do so, a learner is bound to understand and appreciate the history, customs, and traditions
of people for whom the language is native. Understanding and appreciation of the culture
through the language did not don on me immediately! But I soon learned that discovering the shades
of meanings that the same word can have is like an exploration, an archeological dig
using words instead of brush and trowel. All those simple words and phrases we use every
day have a story behind them: their own history forged from the traditions and customs of
the people, and shaped by forces, like economy, politics, geography, folklore, and so on.
And our goal is to unearth them! To breathe in the life into a sequence of letters. For
example, the word "nice" that we in the 21st century often use to describe something
"pleasing" or "agreeable," used to mean "foolish," "silly" or "ignorant"
in the 13th century coming from Latin "nescius" or "not knowing." Why and how did this
single word make an almost 180 degree turn in usage within just 800 years or so? Who
was that first person who coined it? A monk? A noble man? Did he have friends to share
it with or he just wrote it down and forgot about it until somebody else read it?
Or the word "bouquet" -- the dream of more than one female to get on Valentine's day (well,
it is nice to get flowers on any day) actually meant "a little piece of woodland" in
the 18th century... Which conjures up a completely different image? Only think about the imagination
of Lady Mary Montague who first introduced it. Would you say she preferred wild flowers
to roses from the gardens of Versailles? An even deeper understanding of another culture
comes from the idioms or phrases that we take for granted now, like "mind your p's & q's".
These are the letters which were easy to confuse when setting up a page to be printed back
in the 15th century. Who was the first to make a mistake - some little apprentice or
a seasoned type setter? When you start learning a language this way,
the culture and people gain more color, more depth. I was and still am captivated by the
English language, as a means to share thoughts and ideas; as the canvas that has depicted
lives of many people against the backdrop of history, culture, political movements,
customs, and traditions, hopes and dreams, failures, but also successes, around the globe.
With understanding and appreciating a foreign language, I learned to appreciate my native
language -- something that I had taken for granted as well.
And in the end, I did become a translator, and it was me helping create bridges between
cultures and setting up relationships where they had not existed before.
So why do not you try your own exploration of the language? Start with something simple.
For example... " sincerely"... I am sure you will enjoy it!