I've been thinking a lot about languages recently. Could be because I work in a department that offers over 10 languages. Could be because I miss studying and want to learn new languages. I've only gotten as far as the alphabet in Russian, but I love that moment when something that used to look like gibberish to you suddenly makes some kind of sense.

When I was in Ohio last weekend, I went to Mass with Mom. On the way there we were talking about her mother, who understood Czech but refused to speak it with her parents. Mom was saying how sad it was that Granny denied her heritage, and didn't pass it on to all of us. Then we get to church, and Mass was in Latin. Mom grew up with Latin Mass, but she refuses to participate when they do it now. After a while I leaned over and pointed out how similar she is to Gran. Mom just said, "I know," and continued to stage her one-woman protest. The funny thing is that I love Latin Mass. I can understand almost every word. Some combination of taking Spanish and French, singing Latin songs in choir, 20+ years of Mass in English, and a healthy knowledge of English vocabulary makes it work. There are some words/phrases that seem so obvious to me that I truly forget that not everyone knows the meaning of "agnus dei."

As I've been trying to re-learn Hebrew, I've been struck by some of its more fun features. Hebrew is often written without vowels. In theory you should still be able to understand what's going on, as most Hebrew words are based on three-letter roots (three consonants). So the same three letters would make up the verb "to eat" and the noun "food." I also love how concise Hebrew can be. You would say, "I happy," not "I AM happy." Or "studied," not "I studied." But what I've always found most fascinating is that the present-tense first person is conjugated based on gender. If I say "I read," it would be different than if my brother said, "I read." The SNL "It's Pat" skit wouldn't be feasible because you would always know the speaker's gender. I would like to write (or read) a study of how that affects self identification of little kids, of transgender individuals, etc.