Linglot

I came across this somewhere on the wide world of the Internet–I don’t remember where–and I thought it was interesting. I like things like this, maps and charts and whatnot about languages.

A while back I posted a map of the languages in Europe. This one is an Indo-European language “family tree.” Looks kinda neat don’t you think? It’s interesting how this group of languages is just a tiny branch in the huge tree of language.

I’m an aspiring medical student, and this semester I’m taking Anatomy and Physiology II. Last semester I took A & P I, but this semester’s class has a lot of terminology to learn. Something I’ve found interesting is that a huge number of the medical terms I’m learning are scarily similar to Spanish words I’ve learned.

That would make sense, though, because most medical terms are either Latin or Greek, and Spanish is derived from Latin, so the two languages are pretty similar. I’m glad I have a background in Spanish, because this class is so much easier with it.

This is why I think public schools should enforce more foreign language education. Learning a foreign language has so many benefits, and they all don’t have to do with the speaking part.

Eleena over at Voices en Español has written an interesting post about the difference between the terms Hispanic and Latino. Here in the United States, most people use the terms interchangeably for people of Latin American descent, but the terms are actually very different. I used to be one of those people who use the term interchangeably, until I read this post.

Kudos to Eleena at Voices en Español for another interesting post!