Reflections on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language

[Elliott Hammer]

Usually knowing the root of a language can help you develop some "language logic" while in the process of learning. For example, knowing that Italian or Spanish is based in latin helps because I can recognize latin root words (because they appear in English as well) and then make an educated guess about words I don't know. In Hebrew this is not the way in which history helps to learn the language. (Classical) Hebrew is very old and therefore one can't really point to its roots as a teaching aide.

In this case I don't know if I would say that learning the history of the Hebrew language helped me learn the language. BUT I think that learning the history helped me to understand more about the culture. The point of learning a language is to be able to interact with the people that speak it and that involves being exposed to their culture. Therefore, learning a language and learning the history of that language are interconnected.