I need my classical learning library.

It's so frustrating to be away from it. It's just one shelf in my living room, but those twenty-five books were important. An interlinear Bible. A workbook on writing Hebrew. Greek flashcards. English Grammar for Students of Latin. If ever, o reader, you move away from your books into a smaller apartment, leaving your library in storage, and in doing so think it more important to bring the family photos than a second grade textbook imported from Israel written entirely in Hebrew, tell yourself NO! NO! Think of what happened to me, and act brightly.

Storyteller and I have been wading wide in language learning. He does, when annoyed, ask why he has to study four languages. The answer of course is that he does not have to study four languages. At various times he has asked for each of these, then decided not to continue when the process became difficult. I'm making him stick with them because they are high value subjects. You get a lot of bang for your buck when studying foreign language. (Anyway, today he is clamoring to do Hebrew instead of every other subject, fickle boy.)

He is making all kinds of interesting comparisons between the Hebrew, Greek, English, Latin and Spanish we are dabbling in. He asked what a sofeet is when he was copying the Hebrew alephbet. I reminded him of sigma, how it's a different form depending on where in the word it is found. Sofeet means the form used when the letter is at the end of the word. We made a comparison between the la and el he'd been reading about in Spanish and the placement of ha- before words in Hebrew.

I can't help but think something has gone deeply off kilter in our lives and the evidence of it is these five language books in our schooling box. It is fun, though, low pressure, just a page or two at a time. We are currently alternating days of Greek, Hebrew and Spanish with days that have English and drawing instruction. (Latin is everyday, as is math and music.) We are experiencing that gentle burn and overall vigor that comes with just the right amount of daily exercise. Our studies are connecting.

This morning, instead of going over Latin with the Storyteller as he ate breakfast, I went into a different room. He has made a very stinky cheese bagel. Before I noticed he was done eating, he had begun copying the Hebrew alephbet, giving running commentary on the letters. Part of that was the great gimmel mystery. In Greek, the first three letters are alpha, beta and gamma. In Hebrew, the first three letters are aleph, bet, gimmel. In English, our third letter does not ever make a G sound. Our third letter is, in fact, a useless letter, since we can use K or S to make its sounds. So where did it come from, and how did our G get placed so far back in our alphabet?

I feel self conscious about all of our language learning, even with close friends and family. The cultural perception is that an education made up of classical language is a silly and useless habit of dead white men, a way to exclude anyone who isn't smart enough, who can't buy the time of teachers, or who are forced by poverty to study only things that can help them earn money. When real folks like us -- people who are dull and broke -- pick up these languages, bystanders are either confused (if they trust us) or amused by our weird sideways method of trying to look cultured.

Recently an acquaintance gave us a fleece, a big bag of raw wool. I'd been felting with wool I bought online, and having such a good time with that I figured I'd love to do a whole fleece worth's. Plus, processed wool that's ready to felt is expensive. A fleece is $5. If I could learn to process it, I'd be set for life. Now that I'm learning to wash and card, it seems like a good idea to learn to spin. Maybe then I'll learn to knit.

Learning classical languages is just like that. It's like being a vegan foodie or cloth diaper collector or coming to Waldorf teacher training three years after you fell in love with watercolor painting. It's a compelling, absorbing, accidental fascination. First there was Hebrew, and it was easy and fun and interesting, so when Latin came along, well, it just seemed like it might be the same. Greek followed along, but we couldn't leave Spanish out. Maybe you need to have experience being enslaved by ducks in order to understand.