What do you make of Johann Von Goethe and this particular quote?

Goethe was right. Language isn’t created in a vacuum. All languages are a melange of other contemporary, and many historical predecessor languages from all around the world. English is a great example of this, but French, German, Spanish, Portuguese have also evolved to include words from numerous non-native sources. Even Hebrew, which was once considered one f the original source languages, has antecedents from Aramaic and older middle eastern languages.

So Goethe was correct. Not knowing other languages means that you don’t have an appreciation of your own language, and by extension, your own history.

Languages, in a world perspective are like living organisms. When they, like encounter each other, they pick up bits and pieces of each other through exchange of culture or ideas. Often, they must assimilate bits of the other to lend context to that new thing. To learn these new words and ideas and to know where they come from, is what makes a living language interesting and exciting.

It is amazing what you learn when you know different languages. The common roots of words. How foreign words creep into our language. So many things.

It’s hyperbolic, but it makes a good point.

There’s more to it than seeing the cross-pollination or antecedents of one’s native language. It’s difficult to gain an objective perspective on the language in which you’ve been immersed all of your life, and supplies the voice for your thoughts (and to some extent shapes them). In that sense, one knows nothing of it; in much the same way, a fish knows nothing of water.

To arrive at an objective perspective requires that you step away from your native language into a different way of structuring meaning. It’s in looking back at your own language from this different one that you can now see and appreciate what makes it unique. I’m reminded of the way that astronauts say that their understanding of Earth was viscerally transformed by seeing it from the vantage point of space.

I would say, then, that it’s the differences more than the similarities among languages that make this change of perspective possible.

Pretentious crap

I’m sorry you feel that way, @ucme. While Goethe may have been trying to exaggerate a bit with that statement, it does contain a lot of truth to it. To truly understand English, in particular, it is necessary to gain a basic awareness of the contributions made to the language by Latin, Greek, German (and Old German in particular) and other languages as well.

Please don’t be sorry, i’m fine with it, really I am.

Claptrap.

I probably had the best command of the English language in my class when this entered the curriculum. I hated it. Still detest the idea.

Does planting a cotton seed make you understand the process of producing a T-shirt more?

“Those who know nothing of cotton seeds know nothing of their T-shirts.”

Who’s Claptrap?

If you know one language you know it can express your thoughts but if you know more than one you appreciate that language also moulds your thoughts.

Claptrap