It was last March this year when my sister took me to Tapella in Greenbelt 5 for lunch. It’s a restaurant serving Spanish dishes. Tapella, of course, comes from tapas and paella. Tapas are a wide variety of appetizers. We are more familiar with paella. It is a rice dish also of Spanish origin or more specifically, from Valencia. I do not know if Arroz Valenciana is the same as Paella Valenciana.
I do not remember the name of the drink that my sister ordered for us. But it reminded me of the summer drink that was served for lunch and dinner at the Salesian house in Salamanca where I stayed for one summer to study Spanish. The beverage was not sweet but I was assured that it helped make the summer heat bearable.
Why was I studying Spanish? You see, if you are taking a master’s degree at our University in Rome you have to know two international languages. Filipino and English do not count. So in addition to Italian I had to learn another language. I was told that I can study Russian, French, German or Spanish.
Why on earth would I study Russian? French? I would love to but I was scared by having to learn how the pronunciation. German? My sister warned me that it was a complex language. The syntax was such that you have to wait until the end of the sentence to get the meaning. And words seem to lengthen endlessly. And I found it strange that there were a lot of words inside the sentence that were capitalized.
I chose Spanish (or maybe it chose me). Because Spanish and Italian are both Romance languages (that is, derived from Latin), I surmised that I would find it easy to learn Spanish. They say that two people will find no difficulty in talking to one another with one speaking in Italian and the other speaking in Spanish. In fact while resting at the plaza major in Madrid, I heard two men conversing, one in Italian and another in Spanish. Also, having been a former Spanish colony, Filipinos have learned a lot of Spanish words and so I thought I would feel at home with the language. Finally, I didn’t think pronunciation would be a problem. In fact I discovered later on that the only sounds I needed to learn were the two variations for “LL” (for example, paeLLa).
Language is commonly associated with words both written and spoken. But language is not limited to words. We also communicate with our bodies and thus, the term body language. Embracing a loved one who has just arrived may communicate the message: “I am so happy you’re here.”
In St. Augustine’s Confessions, we find the phrase: “cor ad cor loquitur.” Centuries later John Henry Newman used it on his coat of arms. It is translated as “heart speaks to heart”. There is, therefore, such a thing as language of the heart. And it is this language that Don Bosco insisted that his Salesians learn if they hope to succeed in forming the young into upright citizens and good Christians.
If you are an educator or a parent, you may want to learn more about this language of the heart. Please visit >> http://happynun.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/education-is-a-matter-of-the-heart-don-bosco/
No comments:
Post a Comment