Amateur, and worth every penny.

Wikipedia, be it unreliable, badly cited and lacking in basic grammar, is a wonderful tool.


For the last few days, I've been conducting personal research in the domain of "autodidactism." That is, people who learn things by themselves and master skills without, or largely without the aid of formal schooling.


Looking at wikipedia's "list of famous autodidacts" you see people from Adolf Hitler (educated in libraries after early years) to Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, and Julian Assange (whose mother kept him out of school with the conviction that it would "inculcate an unhealthy respect for authority in her children and dampen their will to learn"). Or the lady I'm most interested in at the moment, Kato Lomb.


She taught herself TWENTY ONE languages.


I'm currently devouring her book about how she acquired languages, and various truths to autodidactism with regard to linguistics. One of my favorite lines is "Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value."


This is incredibly true.  Being an amateur doctor, engineer, or lawyer is of little to no value to society. Being an amateur musician, artist or writer, while giving enormous pleasure personally and to those around you, is not concretely "of value" to society.


By contrast, being an amateur in a language can build friendships and bonds, aide in difficult situations and open different doors. Trying to ask in broken french where the bus to get to the airport is is better than staying silent and missing your flight.


"We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly."

And my favorite line in the book...

 "The only thing of interest is learning.

…An exciting game, a coquettish hide-andseek,

a magnificent flirt with the spirit of humanity.

Never do we read so fluently and with such

keen eyes as in a hardly known, new language.

We grow young by it, we become children, babbling

babies and we seem to start."

In addition to my studies on languages, I've also been exploring various means of independent schooling. I was raised for 12 years in a Montessori school, which was an excellent experience but by no means the far end of alternative schooling. Picking up some fairly radical ideas, which will undoubtably clash a little bit with formal schooling next year.

Or a lot.

Finally one last think that I've found fascinating (pardon my rampant enthusiasm). English is a language which sits on the cusp of two different groups, Romance and Germanic. This is because as a base, English was a German language thanks to the Nordic invaders. However, grâce aux francais and William the Conqueror, we have many words in common with french.

Here the crazy stuff begins.

It is easier for German people (in general) to understand less educated people because the vocabulary is more "germanic" in origin. Whereas it is easier for french people to understand well-educated people. Where less educated people would tend to use "begin" (a german word in origin), highly educated people are more likely to use "commence" (a french word in origin).

You also see this strongly with our multiple names for animals that we eat. Whereas we raise cows, sheep, goats and pigs (generally germanic), we eat beef, pork, veal and steak (of which the french equivalents are boeuf, porc, veau and steak).

Nighty night, I've reached the point in learning where I'm having trouble seeing words clearly.