Hello and goodbye
Jambo! Or should I say bonjour, guten tag, dzień dobry, holà or malo e leilei. These are all different ways of saying hello. This is the action for today – to learn how to say hello and goodbye in different languages. So, today I am greeting you all in Swahili, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Tongan!
I didn’t know, until I started to look at this, but there are over 2796 languages in the world today and it would take a very long time to greet someone in all of them!
So maybe I should just settle for saying Saluton! That is the way of saying hello in Esperanto. The basic rules and words of Esperanto were proposed by L. L. Zamenhof at the end of the 19th century. Within a few years, people started learning it and formed a worldwide community. Since then, Esperanto has been in use (and freely evolving) just like any other language.
Language can often be a barrier to people getting on together – although sometimes it feels to me like this is an excuse rather than a real reason. It is sometimes the same for us as Christians that we think we can only ‘talk’ to people of the same exact beliefs as ourselves, and other Christian groups – Methodists, Catholics, United Reform Church, Baptists etc are somehow so different that we don’t have anything in common. This is why I am really happy that our Fresh Expressions group here in the diocese is thoroughly ecumenical. We are all talking the language of God and redemption – to us, our universal language.
So, goodbye, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, do zobaczenia, adios, po’uli, Ĝis revido. Or, in any language – God go with you………
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