Language Game Hoops

Many PhD programs have foreign language requirements. Last summer I learned to read German. This summer I am studying French. In high school I studied Latin and Spanish. In college I continued my study of Spanish. In graduate school I learned biblical Greek and Hebrew. Now in my program my colleagues teach me bits of other languages such as Korean and Mandarin Chinese. So now as I study French I am discovering that there are not only false cognates with English but also with other languages I have studied. For example: the 3rd person plural form of ser in Spanish (son) is the same as the 3rd person masculine pronoun his in French (son). Thus the fun continues.

Although this language game can often seem quite absurd, it can be entertaining in some circumstances. On a recent red-eye flight I amused my mom by identifying the languages on the motion sickness bag on the airplane. Alas, normalcy and fun are relative terms.