logos 'speech' + -phile 'friend, lover'

Romans 11:34a


For who can know what the Lord is thinking?

Car qui a connu la pensee du Seigneur?

Τίς γὰρ ἔγνω νοῦν κυρίου

quis enim cognovit sensum Domini

For some (not yet fully-known) reason, God made me a logophile. I have a deep, deep love for words. I think there is something lovely about orthography and syntax. I enjoy skimming through texts in other languages and trying to puzzle out the meaning. Verb conjugation and noun declension make me giddy.

It started my sophomore year of college, after my summer of salvation. I took a course on French linguistics and was instantly hooked. This class was followed by more phonetics courses, some serious novel reading, and random minor obsessions over various literary and linguistic topics.

Until this year, my love of words and language has found little practical application in my daily life. Sure, I've read (a lot), and have whimsically studied this and that, but my logophilia (I think I made that word up) has never had a serious impact on my life. This year, however, I'm swimming in it. As part of his third grade education, Chase has been learning French, Latin and Greek! And I've been learning, too!

The French is a familiar friend to me, having studied it from my freshman year of high school until I graduated from college. I've been surprised to find how quickly the language has come back to me. I remember the vocabulary and grammar and even the cute little teaching helps that I received from different French professors along the way. (For example, my high school teacher helped us to remember the names of the acute and grave accents by drawing a picture of "a cute grave" and placing the accents above a curved tombstone).

Latin and Greek are new and fresh languages for me (though ancient and dead), and I am loving every linguistic morsel. As a bonus, I get to learn along with Chase. Our study of Latin and Greek is less like a teacher-student relationship and more like a couple of friends trying to crack into a locked safe. Chase loves helping me with my Greek writing and pronunciation and I love helping him come up with ways to stuff all that information into tidy categories in his (endlessly stuffable) mind.

Someday, I will understand why God placed this odd love of words in me. Perhaps Chase (or I) will grow up to become a Bible translator or scholar. Maybe we'll just be able to turn a nice phrase or put an abstract idea into words so that someone can understand it in a new way. Whatever the purpose, may it be to the glory of God.

Romans 11:36

For everything comes from him; everything exists by his power and is intended for his glory. To him be glory evermore. Amen.

C'est de lui, par lui, and pour lui que sont toutes choses. A lui la gloire dans tous les siecles! Amen!

ὅτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι᾽ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα αὐτῷ ἡ δόξα εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας ἀμήν

quoniam ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipso omnia ipsi gloria in saecula amen