My love for languages stems from the many languages spoken by my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. The languages they spoke were either learned out of necessity or learned out of pure curiosity and interest. Let me share with you a little piece of my language family tree:
I will start with my mother’s side of the family. Her language roots go back to Czechoslovakia and Italy where her great-grandparents spoke Czech, German, and Austrian on her paternal side, and English and Italian on her maternal side. On both sides of her family, her grandparents managed to hold on to bits and pieces of their family’s native languages. But with the immigration to the United States, many of those languages were forgotten as English became the family’s primary way of communication. My mother, one of the most confident individuals I know, decided to end that cycle and picked up French classes when in school. She even spoke French on occasion to my siblings and me when we were growing up – I will have to remember to thank her for that.
My father’s side, also seeded in Europe, spoke several different languages. His grandparents lived in Poland and spoke both Polish and Yiddish with possibly some knowledge of Russian as that was another popular language in the area at the time. Brace yourself for this next generation because my paternal grandfather and grandmother knew more than just a few languages… They grew up speaking Polish and Yiddish then learned Russian and Uzbek and then learned French and English. My grandfather also spoke Hebrew and multiple other languages for work purposes. Europe was an unsteady place to be at the time that my grandparents lived. Therefore, they often moved from country to country resulting in the absolute necessity to learn another language in order simply to survive. Before immigrating to the United States, my grandparents gave birth to their third child, my father, my walking encyclopedia. Born in France, my father grew up speaking French and was forced to learn English after they moved to the United States. Throughout his schooling and young adult years, my father continued to speak French and English and picked up Spanish along the way.
Let’s end this language family tree with myself. I grew up speaking English and then began studying French in middle school and throughout high school. Outside of school, I attended Hebrew school and learned how to read and write Hebrew. When college rolled around, I had to goal of becoming a doctor. That dream changed when I fell in love with a Classics course my freshman year. As a result I picked up a Latin major, the degree with which I graduated, and I also studied Greek for a year in my undergrad. One day, I hope to be fluent in all of the languages that I have studied.
Looking back at my language family tree and the languages that I have studied myself, I realize that languages are pretty important in life and in cultural identity. While the grammar rules and rote memorization will sometimes be annoying and repetitive, there is something exhilarating in learning a new language as well as learning about its history, which could be your history.