It’s Greek to me

Ok, I just couldn’t resist another line from Shakespeare. This one I love in it’s context in Julius Caesar. But that’s not what this post is about. I just started Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and I am really enjoying her use of words. It’s not a book to just whip through though. Tonight I’m tired, so I’m not going to comment much, but I just wanted to share a paragraph that made me laugh – because it reminded me of some students I teach who grew up speaking one language at home, spoke another language at school, moved to the United States and are now learning in English and I’m trying to teach them Shakespeare. Sometimes I feel like I’m swimming through layers of language barriers and by the time the student “understands,” it’s not at all what I started out saying.

From chapter one of The Age of Innocence:

“…an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.”