…or a linguist, or an anthropologist. I teach English, and studied it, and I would like to learn more about other languages. Greetings and goodbyes are universal, in that not only do they apply to all languages but to all people. Pets meet us at home. Strangers in a store greet each other. People who speak two different languages have ways to say hi. Because of that, I thought I would begin with “hello.”

Just taking the English language alone, there are an impossible-to-know-them-all number of words. These words can be combined in near infinite different ways. They can be expressed orally, on paper, on a screen, or with our hands. Every day we add new words as we discover new things or feelings that need to be expressed. Generations alter the language to fit their era.

What this makes me wonder about is how these pieces fit together. What are the histories of certain idioms? What are the reasons we have different sounds in our languages, a different pace to our speech, different alphabets and different methods for writing? And, since there are so many ways to say welcome and farewell, I would like to start there.

I plan to publish here, as well as emailing a newsletter via Substack. Please subscribe to receive updates, as they will not be on a particular schedule (at least not for right now).

Thank you for your support, and goodbye for now!

Sincerely,

Brian