Technology has made exploring the BIG WORLD without privileged class income a lot easier . And it has made studying any foreign language a lot more fun than you might remember in FIRST YEAR FRENCH or FIRST YEAR GERMAN or even FIRST YEAR LATIN. I have been familiar with Google Translate for years . As a student of Western Civilization I wanted to have at least some basic familiarity with the major European languages , especially those derived from the all conquering LANGUAGE of the Empire of Rome - ancient Latin . While studying Spanish at the Community College of Rhode Island a hundred years ago I had this inspiration for making vocabulary study more interesting . At the Rhode Island College Library I browsed a Spanish Dictionary itself written in the Spanish language. Just like our better English dictionaries it showed the mostly Latin derivations of everyday Spanish words in brackets. This habit of browsing in dictionaries meant for native speakers became quite mesmerizing . It made vocabulary learning in the Romance languages more interesting and there were numerous connections between common Spanish, Portuguese , French , and Italian words AND the more sophisticated English language words -the king likely to appear on a SAT college entrance test Finally, out of curiosity I looked for an All-German dictionary . At first German words seemed impenetrable -even though early English was more closely related to German than to Latin . But it became clear that the Germans were very good at building words with strictly GERMAN roots. I won't pretend to know more than I do about any language . But I know that technology has made it a lot less tedious to learn the basics of any language that really interests you. But YOU must supply the needed CURIOSITY . What I discovered last night while sitting on the steps of the Knightsville -after my routine " Twilight Walk " is pictured below : Knowing very little German I went to an on-line German tabloid . A " camera " icon at GOOGLE TRANSLATE enables you to instantly translate the headlines and story summaries. I tested the translations on Spanish and I concluded that translations were at least fairly good. This device would seem right out of Science Fiction in the 1950s and 1960s. And just possible in the 1990. One revelation from this marvelous GOOGLE TRANSLATE tool. : " PEOPLE ARE ALIKE EVERYWHERE ! " . I recall a Twilight Zone episode ending on that sad note.