Balmy

Yesterday was a wonderfully balmy day. I went for a long walk in the gentle breezes, sunlight, and tepid temperature. It is unusual for such a day to occur in December in this part of the country so it must be savored immediately. I have a right to declare it balmy because if you look up balmy in the dictionary, you will find my picture. I am the poster boy for balmy!
Speaking of dictionaries, who would have thought that the making of the Oxford English Dictionary could be such fascinating reading? A good read, full of mystery and murder and tenderness and pathos. When I was in elementary school, I used to go to the library and read the big dictionary that they had on a lecturn but I never thought that I would enjoy a book about the making of a dictionary.
The English language, the lingua franca of mankind. Such a beautiful thing it is. So reflective of the English themselves. Tender, moving, ribald, thought provoking, and unorganized, it is so much English. Many years ago I wrote a paper on language and how it affects the people that speak it. There was a dual perspective to the paper. The first was the supposition that the language affects the conduct of the people. The Germans don't just open a door, they knock open the door. The second was that the people effect the language. The French, with their gentle ways and incisive intellect, can call you a dirty bum and a miscreant in ways that will make you think that they are giving you an award. A long time has passed since they were considered the most feared warriors of Europe. Even their name is a derivative of their most feared weapon.
I have spent much time studying languages, how they are different and how they are related. There are many mysteries of history hidden in those relationships. There are so many questions that arise from those topics. How can the Finns and the Basques have a common languge bond? DNA research has proven that mankind came out of Africa and settled the world but language seems to have originated somewhere near India and spread from there, in an Indo-european centered context. Mankind coming from a land of fangs and massacres and disease and language coming from a land of peace and thought and structure. This is a massive generalization but it is worth some thought. What would Linear A tell us of a people that had no walls, depended on trade and their brains to get along. People with very little resources in their native land but able to build a society that valued personal accomplishment and realized that religion was no business of men and found a way to let men rule the secular environment and women rule the ecclesiastical. Each had a value and there was no schism between the two. There is not much of them in Linear B, which was a gift of the Dorians when they came knocking on the door.
Those same Dorians became the Greeks with their incredible concept of xenia. Then the Romans with Latin and its love of order and the Romance languages with their hodge podge of thought, and English which encourages a long haired, sleeping gnome to sit up in the late hours of the night and ponder such arcane concepts. What a different world we would live in if xenia had suvived the transitions.
All of this compost heap of thought has come from the fact that I am finally reading Euripides.
That is all the news from Sesquipedalia. (Oooh, the OED is such a joy and any Scrabble player would love to lay down the last word in the OED and might finish the game with the first). Now Johanna, try to deny that my self evaluation was correct. The proof is before you!