All My Little Words or a Reflective Vocabulary

"Not for all the tea in China,

Not if I can sing like a bird

Not for all North Carolina

Not for all my little words"

- Magnetic Fields

It is English, not Esperanto that is gaining ground as the next Latin. Or is this a mild understatement? Should I perhaps suggest that English is stronger than Latin, the former having gone further than the latter language with the advent of technology and world travel? 

And yet English, how similar to Latin, both having gleaned from other languages. For instance, without Greek, Latin wouldn't have had the strengths nor the extensive vocabulary. English without the French influence would be far more similar to modern day Frisian.

And travel. Without the Roman Empire, without the conquest of the various caesars and their Roman legions, so too Latin wouldn't have reached both the shores of the Atlantic and the Black and Red Seas, nor the northern climes of Great Britain and the desolate deserts of Africa.

The same too with English. Without the combined economic business muscle of the United States, Britain and the (former) Common Wealth countries, it wouldn't have the universal appeal it has garnered today. Even with China and India leading the world in terms of population and, may I dare say, innovation in some fields, schools throughout Asia are desperate for English teachers. 

I meet many people who say they love English and I have learned to love it as well. It is like your hometown, you have to travel away from it to appreciate it. You begin to see the sights that travelers see and with new eyes, recognize how special they are.

So, too, with words. After traveling to Europe in 2012, I came home to truly think about words. Before the trip, I didn't regard my mother tongue as especially beautiful. I always through French, Spanish and Italians as the romantic contenders for the loveliest of languages. But while away, I had spoken in other languages, a bit of Dutch and a great deal of German. I had also studied Russian before my trip. I began to take note of words, their musical sound, their meanings, associations and even revelations and started to collect them as a means of further appreciation, reflection and wonder.  

In English, for instance, I have always loved 'diaphanous'. I picked this one up in high school. I had a wonderful Grade 12 and OAC teacher of English and every morning she put a poem or a stanza or often a simple quote on the blackboard. Along with my mother, a fellow writer and editor, Mrs.F. too helped forge a passion for language and rhetoric. It is through her I became acquainted with the word for 'delicately hazy' and 'nearly translucent'.

Then there is 'gleaming' and 'twilight' ('gloaming', as well, another word for 'dusk'), 'azure' (the latter having roots in Middle French) and 'ineluctable' which is a poetic way of saying 'unavoidable' or 'inescapable.' The word has always struck me as sad and when I looked furthered into its Latin roots, ēluctā (rī) means to 'surmount, to force a way out or over'. I now imagine the 'in'-prefix as a chain having broken the spirit of the word, that it is no longer free. 

Then there is 'elude' and 'elusive', obviously related. As with 'diaphanous', I feel the two words have a 'surreptitious' quality, that they escape from our lips like near silent-thieves.  

From 'elude', I make the jump into French, loving the word 'étude' and 'nocturne'. The former is a gentler word than our English 'study'. It brings up pleasant memories of classical guitar lessons, works by Fernando Sor and J.S. Bach and of course, first hearing Frederich Chopin. The same, too, with 'Nocturne'. We have 'nocturnal' but normally you don't think of musical pieces and paintings (ie. Whistler's works), only owls and wolves hunting at night.  

I also like the French word 'flâneur' made popular by the 19th century poet, Charles Baudelaire. The term is often blankly associated with our English 'stroller'. Then and, as of late, it has accumulated other connotations such as 'lounger' and 'loafer' and even 'dandy' to some extent. But I like the more philosophical aspects to the word. While taking art history courses in university, our professor described his own youthful wanderings in Paris, reading the French poets of the mid and late-19th century, breathing in the cultural atmosphere of the Left Bank and Montmartre. He himself had been a 'flâneur', both a part and apart from the crowds surrounding him. The word, for me, suggests detachment. One can belong to the moment and yet regard it as passing and inconsequential. As Rilke wrote, 'be ahead all parting'. The 'flâneur' embodies such a notion. 

Other French words and borrowings include silhouette, Arabesque, chanteuse, danseur and rêve, the latter adding a tender if not restless dimension to 'dream'. The hard 'r' in 'rêver' reminds me that even when we are asleep, we are still awake in ourselves. I often think of the word 'revive' and how when we dream, we are re-introduced, or born again into our unconscious self.

In German, I like 'traurig' (sad) just as much as 'tristesse'. The 'tr' sound either followed by 'ow' and 'gk' in German or the second 't' and long 'ess' in French add more substance to an emotion that is more than just 'sad'.

I also like 'Sehnsuch' ('yearning' and yes, also 'aspiration' and 'desire') and 'versuch' (try, attempt) which both suggest immanent 'search' and 'trial'. The poems of Rilke offer up to the reader the emotional underpinnings of 'sechnsucht'. It is a word that transcends mere 'longing' and implies the spiritual. 

Then there is the German word 'Nebel' (fog) which is reminiscent of 'nebulous' in English. I also prefer 'sleep' in Deutsche, 'schlafen', with its cheerful 'schl' beginning and 'fen' ending that is both amiable and like the sound a sleeper makes deep in R.E.M.

'Love' is a 'lovely' word in English and I also enjoy its many translations: Liebe (German), liefde (Dutch), amour (French), amore (Italian) and Láska (Czech). I especially appreciate the way you say 'I love you' in Dutch, Ik hou van jou (Ik how van yow) and in Russian, Я люблю тебя (Ya l-yoo-bloo teb-ya). 

I should mention my Opa as well. Though I didn't necessarily learn Dutch from him nor my father, only picking out the odd words (and curses), I did garner an appreciation for the language. There is in Dutch the untranslatable 'gezellig' (kghe-zell-ik) which brings together concepts of 'coziness', 'familial comfort' and 'joyful conversation'. While touring The Netherlands, I learned this very gentle and tenderly complex term. 

The Dutch also have 'slappe lach' which describes the kind of laughter you have where you just can't stop laughing. A laughter where you almost stop breathing, it hurts in your gut and you literally 'slap' your knee. Google translates it rather blandly into 'giggle' (as if describing the Big Bang as a 'sneeze') but it is more than just chuckling to yourself. 

Then there is the word 'aardig' which is rendered into the innocuous English 'nice'. I myself have always had a problem with 'nice' and when you look at the word's history it has meant everything from 'stupid, foolish' to 'extravagant' to 'elegant' to 'slothful', 'luxurious', 'unmanly' and 'thin'. Jane Austen once wrote in a letter to a friend, "You scold me so much in a nice long letter... which I have received from you." It's truly hard to say if she was being kind or sarcastic or perhaps guarded in her meaning of the word. But as for the Dutch, it is associated with 'aarde' (earth) and 'aard' (nature). So if you describe someone as 'aardig' in Dutch, you are saying they are earthy, or 'salt of the earth'. (I also think of aardbei - 'strawberry' in Dutch).

Then there are the Slavic words. My mother's side is Eastern European, a mixture of Ukrainian and yes, Russian. Some of these words, like 'gezellig' are nearly impossible to translate without using a paragraph to pin down a meaning. For instance, there is 'тоска' (toská). I will hereby provide Vladimir Nabokov's explanation as he is the master in describing the word:

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.” (Source: introduction to Happy Moscow, Platanov)

If one Googles 'toska' multiple pages and even Tumblr sites will be made available all dedicated to describing or illustrating the word's complexity. Perhaps there is such a public devotion to the word is because it best explains if not adamantly describes the moods and emotions of some of the greatest Russian novels, stories, plays and poems. If you read Ivan Turgenev, let alone the lesser known Andrei Platanov or Ivan Bunin, the verses of Anna Akhmatova you will experience 'toska'.

Not as a popular but intriguing is Стиоб (stee-ob) which means 'an approach to life that takes no person or words serious' (source: Russians: The People Behind the Power - Gregory Feifer). Like the 'flâneur', the word suggests a mindset of detachment and even stoicism. Our English equivalent would be 'water off a duck's back'.  

Growing up, I heard also a lot of Polish from the neighborhood kids. Like Russian and Ukrainian, I continually find it to be a beautiful language. Though, when reflecting on my early teen years, I cannot recall any single Polish word as I was too often bewildered and bewitched by the beauty of a few of its speakers, namely Marzena, her sister Anna or their friend, Dominika. Their words were a means to look into their eyes, that when they spoke to each other in their native tongue, I could listen and watch them. And yes, be lost.

Yet a Polish word I came across recently fits my life perfectly and my mindset: 'pokój' (pah-kwee). It means both 'room' and 'peace'. As a reader and a quiet soul, I have often associated these two things in English. If there is a religion I uphold it is the one of a placid interior, a place to think, write and read and research. My room has always been my chapel or cathedral, sacred, sacrosanct. I believe like the philosopher and mathematician Pascal, that 'all human evil comes from a single cause: man's inability to sit alone in his room' (source, Pensées). 

One must ineluctably still leave one's room. One has to go out into the world, find friends, have a good slaape lach and be in the realm of the gezellig and aardig. We are drawn out by our sehnsucht and yet we experience toska at times. Yet the 'room' is a place where one is settled, it is the place of return, of sleep (schlafen), dreaming (rêve). 

Along with Pascal's maxim, I too adhere to the Russian saying that 'visiting friends is good, but home is better.'

Pokój is better still. 

The Poems I Have Carried (With a Translation of 'Du im voraus' by Rainer Maria Rilke)

In my late teens, I discovered T.S.Eliot's 'The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock'' Perhaps it was less a discovery and more of an inevitable introduction. My mother was taking a first-year English course at the university. She had just moved out of the family house, finding an apartment on a street that shared her name, Elizabeth. 

It was really my mother who presented the poem to me and I read the poem over and over again, the afternoons I went to see her in the summer or in the autumn evenings after school. I recall the leaves from the oak outside her window falling against the pane in the early dusk. It was her great anthology of English literature with the Constable painting on the cover. It was the first poem that awakened me to poetry. In school, whatever we read before was a means to a passing grade. In this book, I had found the first true relic of myself, a kind of first key. 

Sure, there were other poems by Browning, Whitman, and Tennyson but for someone in his teens, I felt that Eliot's poem was like a calling or perhaps, a reflection. It seemed to take on a kind of burden, that the narrator was encumbered by his own missteps and hesitation and inability to fully express himself with others, whether with his loved one or those he sat down to tea with. Yet he could relate to the nameless reader. 

I seemed to live in this poem and felt the October described, the sawdust restaurants, the evenings, seeing the arms with shawls, the women coming and going, the quiet, sepia streets that billowed. 

And also in that volume, a year later, I found Lord Byron's 'When We Two Parted' I would come back to that poem time and time again as I would Eliot's. Instead of a grander epic, only a handful of stanzas and the Great Romantic had managed to tell a tragic tell through suggestion and supposition. Who were these two who had parted and why? Well, it somehow didn't matter because the parting and the seeing each other were just as painful.

I reread the poem after breaking up with a girlfriend. I hadn't loved her tragically and soulfully but I felt our separation had a solemn meaning to it. I didn't know what to expect from her at the beginning of our relationship and the ending itself was anti-climatic. And yet I felt in some way I had let her down or not given any of it a chance, that my mind had rushed past any possibility because there was not enough for me. Or was it really, I didn't allow the 'enough' to build? I turned to Byron's poem for sympathy.

Then, when I got into wine, I had to find my Arthur Rimbaud again. 'The Drunken Boat' is the only poem I know so far that can capture the sense and wonder of inebriation, to feel you have been farther than you have been sober, that whatever thoughts you've had, they are untethered, wilder and limitless while inebriated. There is a sense of the countless in the poem, that things go on, that the horizon is just a 'word' and a 'misrepresentation' of what is. It also suggests the melancholy associated with too much wine and too much of a night. The narrator seems to recognize by poem's end that the careless and easy, godlike curiosity of childhood is richer than the one of a drunk. I feel, after every reading that the poet peaked at nineteen years of age because he knew all poetry and the poets who wrote were just offshoots of ego, that nothing could quite compare with the focused and seemingly vast imagination of childhood, that growing old, to quote Rilke, "has served no purpose."

Yet still, poetry is the lost imagination of childhood in adult life. A philosophy professor once said you are not too old to have a second childhood. Of course, this professor had three Ph.Ds and three divorces. So either he reverted to the childlike because he couldn't grow-up or because he couldn't handle anything else. 

Still, I find myself quoting him now and then, believing every time I embark on another poem, I am somehow still a child, finger painting this time with words. 

Other poems I've loved include the little known ''Black Marigolds'. Like with all great works of literature, they find you, no matter how esoteric or different. I discovered this poem at the end of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, a mere few stanzas.

The original was written in Sanskrit by the 11th century Kasmir poet, Bilhana Kavi. Caurapañcāśikā or The Love thief is an epic poem some fifty stanzas long, a loving tribute to the woman Bilhana had an affair with. Considering his love was a princess and the father a tyrannical man, the author was imprisoned and given a death sentence. Fortunately or perhaps not, there is no real certainty whether the execution was carried out.  One story goes the king was so moved by the poem, he lifted the sentence. Another, that was he infuriated still and sent the poet to his immanent death. Like with Schroeder's cat, both possibilities play out in the mind of the well-reader.

Yet, whereas Eliot, Byron and Rimbaud are household names in the households of people familiar with the greats, the author of 'Black Marigolds' shares his talent with perhaps his most tender of translators, E. Powys Mathers. I have read other renditions but Mathers wins me over. It is the repetition of the words 'even now', his version of the Sanskrit 'adyapi' which suggest memory or looking back.

The entire poem is worth a read and it always difficult to find one stanza to isolate, to suggest as the true pinnacle or quintessential moment. It is like life: beautiful moments that cannot be remembered without the others. So yes, cannot extract a single part of the work that doesn't move me. And yes, fifty stanzas, surprisingly there is not one weak link in the chain.  

In Spanish, I love Lorca's "Horseman's Song" or 'Rider's Song' a quiet and tragic poem about a man doomed. We know nothing of his future or his past, we know what he knows and that he feels his death is coming soon. He is on his way to the Andalusian city of Córdoba but his arrival is uncertain. It is spare and perfect.

So too is Pablo Neruda's''Tonight I can write the saddest lines'. Without a doubt, one of the strongest poems about loss in that it doesn't attempt to be anything more than a simple testament. The poet remembers the bare things, his language is direct and gentle. It doesn't try to offer up allegories and metaphors, it doesn't try to challenge the reader with similes and strained references to other poems or works of literature. It is just one person saying that they have loved and that love is no longer there. 

And then perhaps my favourite poem, one I have rendered here is by the German Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. To call him German, it would seem to limit him. He was born in what we would now be the Czech Republic. He lived throughout Europe and yes, he wrote in German but his ideas have the universal to them. Whereas Heine, Eichendorff, Morike and a host of other German authors embody their German and regional culture, Rilke transcends the local. He is not affixed to one place like Prague or Munich. In this he is like Hölderlin or Goethe, a poet that crosses borders and looks to the timeless and eternal. He shares with these two poets and humanity in general this affinity with the search for the divine. 

In one sense you could call him a metaphysical poem, in other, he is a Neo-Romantic like Stefan George but labels aside, there is yearning to the majority of his work and 'yearning' (sehnsucht) doesn't belong to one period in time or literature. One could attempt to analyze Rilke by looking at his life, donning the Freudian-cap. Perhaps there was no satisfaction in his life. Perhaps his marriage wasn't fulfilling but as Rilke once noted, one 'must live the question' and 'change one's life.' So all attempts to determine Rilke truly negate him.

Here is my translation, one I continue to work on, never quite feeling, just like the poem itself, it is complete.

Du im voraus

verlorne Geliebte, Nimmergekommene,
nicht weiß ich, welche Töne dir lieb sind.
Nicht mehr versuch ich, dich, wenn das Kommende wogt,
zu erkennen. Alle die großen
Bildern in mir, im Fernen erfahrene Landschaft,
Städte und Türme und Brücken und un-
vermutete Wendung der Wege
und das Gewaltige jener von Göttern
einst durchwachsenen Länder:
steigt zur Bedeutung in mir
deiner, Entgehende, an.

Ach, die Gärten bist du,
ach, ich sah sie mit solcher
Hoffnung. Ein offenes Fenster
im Landhaus—, und du tratest beinahe
mir nachdenklich heran. Gassen fand ich,—
du warst sie gerade gegangen,
und die spiegel manchmal der Läden der Händler
waren noch schwindlich von dir und gaben erschrocken
mein zu plötzliches Bild.—Wer weiß, ob derselbe
Vogel nicht hinklang durch uns
gestern, einzeln, im Abend?

You, just beyond,

lost beloved, never to arrive

I’m not even sure which songs will please you.

I’ve stopped looking for you in the coming

Wave of the next moment. Yet these great

Images in me - ever widening the landscape,

Cities, towers, bridges  

Unsuspecting turns in the path

And the lands forever trembling

With their intermingling gods -

All of it rising up against me and this meaning:

You, my eluding one.  

Ah, you are the gardens

I’ve seen with such

Longing. An open window

In the country house – and you nearly

Stepped out, pensively, just for me. Streets I found

You had seamlessly passed,

And sometimes the mirrors in the merchant shops,

Still joyously spinning from your reflection became startled

With mine, so unexpected. – Who knows whether the

Same bird sang through us

Yesterday, entirely alone, in the evening.

A Childhood of Names

Growing up, I assumed everyone's last name was something unique and yet cryptic. Whereas a first name was given, something our parents used to call us in at night, for our teachers to say to get our attention and our friends to differentiate us, I always assumed the name of our families were more mysterious. One simply couldn't understand them or decipher their meaning. Still, they were badges and honored. Sometimes they were the origins of nicknames. 

I think I was raised in a unique time, though I am certain everyone thinks that of their childhood. However, in my hometown of St.Catharines, there was an interesting mix and medley of Dutch, German, Italian, Polish and Italian families with the already established English-Irish-Scott variety. I liked that some of my neighbors could speak Italian or Polish to their children, that on Sunday, instead of going to church I went to visit my Dutch grandparents where my father and opa shared Dutch jokes and humor. Language floated and circulated around me, offering this cultural weave I only began to truly appreciate years later when I moved away. In a sense, I think I have always been searching for that world of European diversity and beauty. 

In the summer of 2012, I embarked on an European adventure and towards the close, landed up in Haarlem, the birthplace of my grandmother. While sitting in my hostess, Ellen's garden, sipping wine, I talked about my last name, how in university I met a German professor who suggested it was the Dutch diminutive of 'brothers'. For instance, in German, you have Haus for 'house' and then Häuschen for 'small house' or cottage. Similar, I had wrote about 'cookie' in a previous blog, it being the diminutive of  koek or cake in Dutch.

Ellen then went inside and returned with a heavy, hardbound book. She flipped a few pages and then handed me the burgundy volume of time stained, rice paper pages. I read and wrote down the following:

Broer   m         -s

Broertje; gewone, alledagse vorm voor broeder, bet.

1; ook: naam voor een jongen die zusters heeft: mijn _ is twee jaar ouder dan ik; (iron.) vergeet je grote _ niet gezegd tegen iem. Die dreigt, maar die men niet in staat acht tot optreden, voor wie men niet bang is; _tje o - s kleine broer: (zegsw.) een – ann iets dood hebben er een hekel aan hebben; als een – op iets likjen zeer gelijsoortig zijn

Ellen helped me with the translation and the main points are as follows:

"Broertje, someone who might live in a convent, a monk or a brother, a mason or a member of a community. Broertje' or 'Broers' could be a brother or someone you don't know in the street (I thought of the term, 'hey, buddy' we use in North American when addressing someone we haven't met yet). Also, a notary which I found fascinating."

I returned to Canada with a new found appreciation for last names, if not an insight. I thought of my family, the various aunts who had married and taken the last names of their husbands. My Aunt Connie, for instance. I knew Van Egmond referred to the town of Egmond, now Bergen in Noord Holland. But what about Van Wingerden, the surname of my Uncle Paul, married to my father's sister, Marleen? Well, I learned it was derived from the Dutch word for vineyard or wijngaard or 'wine garden'.

Dekker, though is a fairly common name. I have seen that name on bus benches and billboards all my life, specifically for real estate agents and repairman; and it's a name you'll typically find in telephone directories in both The Netherlands and Canada. While in Holland, however I learned that 'dek is a covering and the origin of our word 'deck'. So, it only made sense that a 'dekker' was actually a 'roofer' or 'thatcher' (which explains good ol' Margaret's name, the late and former PM of Great Britain.)

It amazes me how often last names which appear obtuse and relatively obscure, once seen through the lens of another language become common. In high school, for instance, there were Millers and Stones. I later learned that Müller and Stein are the German equivalents. There was a Steenhuis in a one of my brother's classes. Steen is stone in Dutch and huis, well, one doesn't need to guess is 'house'. So 'Stone House.'

If we continue with the German theme, I grew up alongside people with the name Neufeld (New Field), Bergthaler (Mountain Valley), Thallmann (Valley man) Zwanzig (Twenty), Braun (Brown), Schneider (tailor/dressmaker), Herzog (duke) and Herweg (way here).

And then were was Julie Giesbrecht, a pretty but quiet, blonde-haired girl in grade seven. She sat beside me and little did I know then that her last name was derived from Old High German: gisil or hostage/pledge and berht for bright/famous. 

As for the English names, there were the obvious ones likes Wilson, Elliotson and Johnson, Counsel and Smith. But then I knew a Stacy Colby. We used to call her 'Colberger' in Grade 4 as a tease. Then after my trip in 2012, I went online and researched her name. Her name is Germanic, Old Norse but from Norfolk and Cumbria. Colby or koli, a person who was swarthy as in 'kol' or charcoal may have originally worked in a forge or simply been of exotic origin. 

I think now also of a Sam Powell. Powell translates into the 'son of the servant St.Paul'. Then there was Matt Graham and his name could be taken to mean 'grey home' - ham being short for 'hamlet' or village or homestead (hamstead). Also, Graham could refer to someone of the Grantham, Lincolnshire-area of England.

In high school, I knew a Lindsay Peats. Many today know the American actress, Amanda Peet. The names are certainly related as 'peat' may refer to organic matter - so someone living on the land. But also 'peat' or peete, in contrast could pertain to a 'spoiled or pampered child.' 

Then there were the many Polish and Ukrainian names. I was friends with a Zaluski. Zalew is Slav for 'flooded area'. My mother, when she was young fell in love with a Sadowski ('from the orchard' or from Sadow, a town in Poland). I knew a Kowalsky (Kowal, 'blacksmith'), a Malinowski (malina, raspberries, so 'dweller by raspberries') and Woźniak (a 'driver' or 'chauffeur' as in carriages). 

And like 'son' in English/Scandinavian or 'sohn' German, -icz, -wicz, -owicz, -ewicz, and -ycz typically mean "son of" in Polish. And with a -k- as in czak, -czyk, -iak, -ak, -ik, and -yk, it is the diminutive. 

My Slavic grandfather's original name was Bulbuck which originally could have been 'Vulbuck'. Either way, his name could have meant 'son of a bull' or a 'farmer of cattle or oxen.' (Буйвол - buffalo or вол oxen).

As for the Italian names, I remember Pace (peace), Mantini (which could either be derived from Mantione, a maker of mantellos or 'capes' or someone from Mantua in Lombardy), and Fontana ('spring', 'well' or the obvious 'fountain').  

Then there was a Christina Prantera who lived down the street for me. I have looked up the name and have come up with no hits nor meanings. Though, I have wondered if the name is actually Latin-based. 'Pran' means dinner and 'terra' is earth. So could her name suggest a cook or someone who prepared feasts? It would only be fitting. Her father owned a restaurant and later, after working in hospitality, specifically in hotels, Christina started her own pizza joint. So one might be attempted to suggest, even occasionally believe that our names hold the meanings of who we are and sometimes who we become.

My Life Through the Lens of Classical Vocabulary

Despite not having taken Latin or having the luxury (or ill-luck) to not be born in a century where the school system taught Ancient Greek, I did find myself speaking a bit of Greek and Latin without truly recognizing it, that is until years later. 

For the longest time, whenever I said 'butter' I was also speaking a bit of Old English (butere) which was derived from the Latin butyrum which in turn came from the Greek boútȳron. Or that when I chewed gum, the word to describe my Hubba Bubba and Bazooka Joe originally came the Latin, cummi which derived from the Greek, commi.

In school, we had to spit out our gum. Sometimes we got a warning or in the worst case, a 'detention' (from the Latin stem dētentiō - to detain). But chewing gum wasn't my thing. I enjoyed the various 'topics' (Latin topica in the plural and topiká from Aristotle's work meaning literally 'things'). For instance, I have always been drawn to maps and perhaps this derives from my passionate study of 'geography' (geo - earth, graphy - lines, so 'earth description or writing'). In high school, Mr. P., a mustachioed Italian with a flare for hand gestures taught us about The Netherlands, my father's home country and about Russia, the birthplace of my mother's father. 

Though I didn't truly enjoy it, I was very adept at 'mathematics.'  In Ancient Greek, máthēma actually means 'that which is learned' and 'what one gets to know'. Yet in our modern usage it is applied to the study of numbers, space, structure and so forth. I have always found it fascinating that a word begins with one specific meaning and finds new or an additional meaning when it is borrowed.

For instance, when you walk the streets of Europe and see a 'cathedral', the original word, kathedra meant a 'chair' or 'seat'. In my mind, and I'm certain in the thoughts of others, we most likely see a grand, often opulent building with a steeple or two. We discover the beautiful architecture and within, typically wondrous works of art, whether sculpture or painting. Of course, when we get back to basics, the cathedral is the 'seat' of the Bishop, or epískopos which means overseer or guardian. 

Then there is the word 'Catholicism', katholikismos which is Greek for 'according to the whole'. For me, growing up, Catholics were the Italians and the Polish neighbors. I never thought of them as Christians until my father's friend pointed out that they all belonged to the same source group. Christians, up to the age of ten in my mind were Baptists, Lutherans and Evangelicals as well as Mennonites and Dutch Reformed. 

Yet Catholics represent the western part of the old Roman Empire. So while the Italians, Polish, Austrians, French, and Spanish worship Christianity 'according to the whole', the former Eastern part of the Empire or Byzantine section became Orthodox (orthos - correct, doxa - opinion). (A side-note, the word 'Byzantine', which describes the architecture, art and culture of Byzantium also means 'scheming and complex' when applied to politics and methods).

The older I became, though, the more words I spoke and many of them of Greek and Latin origin or Greek-Latin mixes. I talked on the 'telephone' with my friends and girlfriends (tēle - far, phōnē - voice). I watched 'television' (Latin, visio - sight). I played 'video' games (Latin, vidē- to see). When home video cassettes became available, my father did his painstaking research and bought a Betamax (Bḗta - the second letter of the Greek alphabet). Sadly, despite my father's effort to invest in a quality product, Sony lost to VHS in its sales war due to marketing (from Vulgar Latin, marcātus, for traffic, trading). The high resolution, however of our first VCR was superior hence the 'max' or 'maximum' (Latin superlative of magnus or great) of the Betamax applied. 

In high school, I found myself drawn to the 'arts' (Latin ars, skill or craft). I already had a certain 'talent' (Latin talenta, plural of talentum derived from Greek tálanton balance, weight, monetary unit) for the guitar but also for writing and drawing. I also enjoyed painting (Latin pingere to paint).

For fun, I also enrolled in drama class (Greek for 'action' - derived from drâ (n) to do + -ma noun suffix). We learned about the history of the 'theatre', even the origin of the name, théatron, Greek meaning "a place for viewing". Interesting enough, 'tragedy' or tragōidia translates into 'goat' trág (os) 'song' ōidḗ (this latter word also finding its way into English as 'ode'). It is believed that a goat was the prize of the playwrights in Ancient Greece or that a goat may have been sacrificed during or after the piece was performed. 

Tragedies were performed for purposes pertaining to 'catharsis' (katharsis) wherein the audience felt 'cleansed' and 'purified' by viewing the sorrows and misfortunes of others. While the characters (so too, a Greek word, charaktḗr meaning a graving tool, its mark, equivalent to charak- base of charáttein to engrave) bemoaned their fates, the audience members felt 'pathos' for them. In other words, they 'suffered' along with them.

I asked our drama teacher if 'apathy' and 'pathos' were related. They were as apatheia means the 'lack of emotion'. Then, when I took Ancient History, my grade 11 teacher further explained it was actually a philosophical concept before it came to its modern use in English. For the Stoics, for instance, thinkers like Zeno of Citium and later, Seneca and Epitctus in the time of the Roman Empire regarded 'apathetia' to be the pinnacle of their thought. Then, it was preferable to exist in a mindset emotionally unmoved, to be distant and untouched by the passions. Whereas Aristotle, writer of Topika (or 'Things'), wrote in his Ethics about finding a balance, the Stoics said a laconic (Greek Lákōn a Laconian, people known for their verbal austerity)  'no' to feeling completely.

(And, before I get to the end here, as for 'comedy', it is derived  the Greek - kômo (s) - merry-making  and aoidós -singer.)

From high school to university (Latin ūniversitās or totality, equivalent to ūnivers), I went on to study 'psychology' and 'philosophy.' Many of us know the former word means 'study of the soul or mind' and the latter 'as love of wisdom'. I also joined a 'photography' (phōtos - light, and graphé meaning lines or drawing) club and when I was sick, I learned about different 'therapies' (therapeía - healing) on my journey to wholeness. 'Psychotherapy' being one of them and yes, one could translate it as the 'healing of the soul'.

Of course, wine has played a large and beneficial part in my life. I have always believed in its healing as well as 'social' (Latin socius - or companion, comrade, partner) properties. I considered getting into 'oenology' (oinos - wine) and becoming a winemaker but I think I would rather become a teacher of English and sip the Dionysian drink after a long day.