So, the question was: why in hell should one bother learning foreign languages? Especially the more exotic/useless varieties (Latin, Greek, Wolof, Sumerian etc.).

I mean, everybody speaks some English nowadays, right? Well: everybody except Japanese people. But neither do they speak Greek, French or German for that matter.

Being able to read great national authors in their own language is a nice perk. While some stuff can be translated more or less accurately, certain literary styles just cannot be appreciated in any but their original language. And if you think I’m being a snob here (which I am, but that’s not the point), just tell me how you would picture a translation of Hunter S. Thompson, Douglas Adams or even William Blake in a non-English language. Hell, even William Shakespeare sustains severe damage when translated (take the word from someone who once had a copy of “Romeo y Julieta” in his hands). Conversely, not speaking German considerably reduces the Kafka-reading experience, not to mention the whole German Romantic Poetry thing (but whether this is a loss altogether has already been established as highly debatable). Being able to read the untranslatable work of Boris Vian or Pierre Desproges would justify all by itself tediously mastering the aggregate of exceptions, illogical constructions and dusty idioms that has been collected under the misleading name of “French Grammar Rules”.

I should add that, imnsho and experience as an underpaid translator/student, the difficulty lies essentially in cultural issues (especially when humor is involved) rather than actual language issues.

But let this not become an entry on the art of translation.

No matter what abyss of snobbery I am ready to sink to, I will not bring myself to claim that the work of classic Latin or Hellenic authors can only be fully savored in their respective dialect. I mean, look at Homer’s (no, not him, the other one) famous soap opera: it’s just been made into a movie by a bunch of Hollywood guys, and it is doubtful these people can read plain English to begin with, let alone archaic Greek dialects… Does that make it any less of a quality movie?
Does it?

Well ok, bad example. But you get my point: do you really need to know about homeric epithets or dactylic hexameter in order to fully enjoy all the blood and latent homo-eroticism filling the Iliad? I think not.

Then why? Why bother? instead of leaving these dead languages in their grave and focus on more useful skills such as how to make portable bongs out of Pocari Sweat bottles or shave your cat efficiently.

The answer: because it entitles you to do precisely what I’m doing right now. Brag about it!

Of course, why would anybody subject themselves more or less willingly to such an unrewarding task, if not for the possibility every once in a while to rub potential interlocutors in the filth of their own ignorance.

Unfortunately, nowadays, the shame that ought to fill these people upon discovering this unforgivable gap in their proletarian education is often replaced by mock disbelief, harldy hiding a certain snarling contempt for such vacuous occupation.

Which is why it is all the more important to seize even the smallest of occasion to flaunt one’s knowledge in such obscure topics, even if that will most surely drown any entertaining evening in an asphyxiating miasma of pedantry. Beside, as we all know culture is like butter (the less you got, the more you spread it).

Anyway, two days ago (seriously, you didn’t think I could spread such pointless ranting over two posts without at least the excuse of some personal anecdote to laboriously hang it to. did you?), such a golden occasion arose. When my friend, in reply to some disparaging comment, gravely threw in the discussion:

In the words of Julius Caesar: Et tu, Brute?

I could barely contain my excitation at such a huge opportunity to rise to new heights of nitpicking pedantry:

Julius Caesar? you mean Shakespeare, right?

The condescendance with which he started pointing out the alleged historical veracity of this quote quickly disappeared in a frozen smile when I unleashed that devastating truth upon him:

What History? I thought you were referring to Shakespeare’s imaginary narration of this famous moment… Because Julius Caesar never said that.

Ha, never fuck with a hellenist, I thought, while nervously playing with the trigger of my dictionary.
I was gonna spare this fool’s life, when he dug his own grave in one short misguided attempt to protest:

But everybody knows these were Julius Caesar’s last words, seconds before his own protégé gave him the fatal stab.

The impudence, the insolence.
Was he somehow trying to defend his position against the might of my argumentation?

How could he have said that? when it’s a well known and documented fact he never spoke Latin in private. Having been raised by Greek slaves like most of the patrician gent in Rome, he quite naturally used the Hellenic idiom when conversing with very close friends or relatives such as Brutus.
Roman historian Suetonius, whose writings provided Shakespeare’s material, is categorical: Caesar, upon recognizing Brutus, exclaimed “Και συ, τεκνον” which literrally translates to “you too, my offspring?”, as it is no secret that Brutus was, in fact, his illegitimate son…

And that, my friends, is how you brutally turn an otherwise light and cheerful evening into a heavy discussion on the finer points of Roman History.

How could you ever doubt the merit of an intransigeant and rigid traditional education in humanities after that.

One of the consequence of the posh European boarding school education I received, along with a natural caution toward catholic priests and a deep-rooted aversion for ties and other imposed uniforms, is that I spent an insanely high amount of time studying languages that were obviously not intended for me to speak (otherwise the Almighty, in his infinite wisdom and great powers, would have had me born somewhat closer to Rome, or the Acropolis, a few milleniums earlier).

While the quantity and diversity of languages placed upon our little heads already sounded like a lot to us enlightened worldly junior citizens, it would have sounded like sheer madness to your average Texan, to whom “foreign language” abilities merely means understanding people without a twang. And while most Americans are quick to point out the possible use of Spanish to order your domesticity around in the Land of Opportunity, I must admit it’s becoming harder by the day to find such use to say, ancient Greek or Latin. It’s a shame too, since at the rate things are going in the US, legal slavery should probably be amended back into the constitution soon enough, and I’ve always fancied living in a patrician mansion surrounded by domesticated exotic felines and nubile servants to whom I would quite naturally speak Greek or Latin exclusively…

Anyway, yea, the point of learning languages: well, I clearly remember that, every year, each teacher would devote an entire class to convincing us of the well-founded interest of whatever language they were teaching. Of course, nobody really cared, and in the end, the fact that German was bound to “become the universal language within the economical behemoth that the European Union would unavoidably become by the year 1990”, was completely overshadowed by the fact that our young Bavarian teacher sported a pair of mammary glands seemingly capable of sustaining Switzerland’s chocolate milk production for the next decade… ah Frau Serin, how we missed the way you bent forward to rectify that misplaced umlaut on our notebook… especially when your successor, Frau Wagner, turned out to be some kind of hairy troll straight from the Black Forest, whose love for that oxymoron called German Poetry might have been forgivable, if not for her near-complete deafness and ensuing strident level of speech.
Ich weeeeeeiiiss nicht was soll es bedeeeeeuten, daß ich so traaaauurig bin, ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten, das kommt mir nicht aus dem Siiiiiinnnn

Our Greek teacher was this adorably effeminate dandy, whose perpetuation of certain stereotypes, linking this brave antique civilization of fierce warriors with an inclination for the love that dares not speak its name, ought to have been outlawed by the cliché police… He was certainly more entertaining as a teacher than his predecessor, a former catholic nun who, incidentally, was also a doctor in comparative literature, studying parallels in the work of French poet Gérard de Nerval and Japanese author Junichiro Tanizaki. Was she a riot or what.

All these people all had very elaborate arguments on the philological use of these two essential root languages and assured us that learning any other Indo-European languages in the future would be laughably easy (damn, I’m sure glad I picked Japanese, the one language furthest removed from that language group).

But let’s be serious, the reason why we endured endless hours of declensions, vocabulary lists and grammar nitpicking, was certainly not some kind of hypothetical career move involving the ability to read Cicero or Plato in its original text…

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