Response to foreign language in States

[Elizabeth Boylston-Morris]

As  a young woman getting a BFA at the University of Georgia I took the three
courses in Latin that were part of the curriculum. Later, while getting a
graduate degree at Smith College and a postgraduate degree at Columbia University
I never took a foreign language course, and used the Latin that I had learned
only sporadically to recognize an esoteric term here and there.
Traveling around the world I was always in the company of a polyglot person
or two and never felt the need, or the desire, really, to know another
language.
And then, in 2000, I made my first Camino pilgrimage, alone, by bicycle, all
the way from St. Jean's and learned, to my everlasting surprise, the full and
limiting extent of my  language poverty.  I got by with the help of some
Italian, German and Dutch pilgrims who spoke some English and quite a bit of
Spanish.
For the past three years I have made a concerned effort to learn Spanish, and
although I am quite far from achieving fluency, what I have learned has shown
me how very much of the Camino I missed during that first pilgrimage, and the
second, by not knowing Spanish.
Ancient Chinese philosophers said that "one has as many lives as languages
one speaks". Indeed, it is so, and then some.
In the midst of my third  pilgrimage the Camino  has now acquired new
dimensions, new hues, new meanings and new feelings by virtue of being able to
understand something of what is said, written, and sung all  through the 500 miles
in Northern Spain. Not least, the friendliness and openness of the local folk
has multiplied ten fold following my attempts to communicate in their language.
I do not know whether it was the times, or the social pressures of being a
young Southern woman, or the defined career paths, that kept me from
understanding, as a student, that knowing a language other than one's  own opens a
magnificent and enriching window on  the world. Neither I nor my college peers were
encouraged  to take courses in foreign languages other than the then required
Latin.  I now know that such lack of encouragement is a serious educational
shortcoming, and not only culturally.
Greetings from O Cebreiro where the fog in the early morning forms  a beauty
that must come from another world.  Or does it?
Liz










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