Gift of the Sacred Dog by Paul Goble

                                                                                    Sacred Dog

The gift of the Sacred Dog is a book written by Paul Noble, one of his many that sing of the Native Americans, or The People. 

 

 

How the horse came to the New World is fairly well documented.  Spanish and French explorers shipped them over early on in their conquest of the New World.  

Some horses either escaped or were left behind.  These horses became the mustangs, the wild horses that filled the plains and dominated history for the Native Americans.

But, questions niggle at my brain:  what did the indigenous tribes think about the horse?  Did they realize what the horse would give them?  Did they view the horse as an extension of the Spanish, as an animal to serve them, or what??

The book, Gift of the Sacred Dog, grants the reader a better answer about the horse.

Horses by Picasso

The horse benefited the Native Americans, allowing them to survive and prosper.  At least for a while, anyway. 

 This celebrates the beauty, nobility, and power of the horse, one of God’s creatures. This praises the strength and resilience of the People who honored such creation. 

 

 

Potato vs. Potatoes

Languages are peculiar, different, exciting, embarrassing...and everything else.  Some words move easily from one language to another, since those are was are called "Romance Languages".  Latin was the primary source, and words morphed from Italy to Europe, and onward. German comes from middle Europe initially and then also morphed with other languages that shared their own Indo-European source.  

This is all well and good. We love to hear from where our existence developed and the words that sprang out of that.

So here are a few languages, introducing a vocabulary as well as the formation of the word.  

I confess that I put these out there because these are so creative. My husband lived with a German family when he was attending a German language school in the late 1960s. Here it is nearly 50 years later, and he still remembers a lot.

Our oldest grandson (8 yrs)  in Switzerland has announced that he speaks four languages: British English, American English, German, and Swiss German. Dang, he does!  

  In 30+ years ago, when we lived in Ireland, our children learned English and Irish Gaelic.  Our oldest was 10 yrs. old, and wasn't required to learn the Irish. Our son was in 2nd grade and daughter was in Jr. Infants (young Kgt) He became quite fluent, so much so that his teacher wanted him to skip a year.

Anyway, the song above is one of the most used and appreciated country songs. After hearing the uniqueness of the Irish language in song, it is easy to fall in love with Ireland, the Irish, the Gaelic language, the food, the ale, stout, ....

Languages are crazy amazing.