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On the same side

Posted on Mar 12th, 2008 by Melinda : Start Here Melinda
Instead of listing all the ways in which my opinions differ from yours in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, I prefer to do this:

Are you, basically, somebody who wants to protect life?  If you are, then we are on the same side.

This time (and perhaps forever) I will not presume to tell you how life should be protected.  Whatever my ideas are.  But promise me this - no matter how far into the future you read this post - let me know how you think life should be protected.  Fundamentally.

Teach me.  I will respond.

Because we have this in common.
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Tagged with: protect life, listening, holding

Spanish

Posted on Mar 12th, 2008 by Melinda : Start Here Melinda
There are many wonderful surprises in the Spanish language for an English speaker.  A beautiful nugget which continues to sparkle in my mind is the Spanish phrase for sunbathing: Tomar el sol.  To drink the sun.  Beautiful.

Learning Spanish takes everything I've got.  Because I want to do it right...  I want to get between and underneath the words.  It feels like moving to another country with a beautiful but difficult landscape.  Many surprises in the topography.  And I must find a way to make a home here.

I have dreams in which I sing the new words which were given as homework for the day.

As with anything, it helps to have a good teacher.
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Tagged with: Spanish, learning language, the experience of language

Afrikaans

Posted on Mar 12th, 2008 by Melinda : Start Here Melinda
Having grown up in South Africa, my home language is Afrikaans.  It is a modified, simplified, and then re-complexified form of Dutch.  This process have been going on since 1652 when the first Dutch colonists established a provisioning station at the Cape of Good Hope, now Cape Town.  The first bunch of people who thought it was important enough, decided to name this new language after the continent in which it took its new form, and from which it received much of it's added vocabulary.

My husband and I moved to California ten years ago.  His home language is English, but he understands, and can speak Afrikaans with some felicity.

The point of this post, is to note that my retention of my mother-tongue has been slipping.  Increasingly, during the fortnightly calls to my parents, I find myself at a loss for words: searching for the correct Afrikaans words - words which used to flow through me like a river.

I don't want to lose this precious thing: a living language with forms of expression found nowhere else on the planet.  Being able to express something is a little like giving birth.  It is making a kind of life possible for the thing expressed.  What shall I do?
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Tagged with: Afrikaans, learning language, the experience of language