Carrying on (somewhat) from yesterday’s post... I’ve been thinking lately about something. It’s hard for me to put into words because I don’t really understand it myself, however I was essentially thinking this...
Different languages have different structures, and different words for describing things. Language is just putting labels on experiences. Everyone does it differently. It must have an impact of how we perceive the world around us and how we deal with and process our own feelings, thoughts and emotions. Putting a label to something is confining it in a way. A basic example is colours, different languages have different words and amount of words for colours, in English we say green, but there are thousands of shades of green, no matter what though, we call it green. We limit our perception of that colour to one singular colour. It’s so hard to explain. Other languages such as traditional Japanese, say blue, blue traffic light, blue leaves, because originally until English, there was no word for green. Doesn’t that blow your mind!? This is just one example of how language shapes ones experience (linguistic relativity or Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, look it up it’s amazing). Anyway my point was that I have an underlying feeling, that I can’t quite understand or grasp, that when I speak Japanese or Korea (both grammatically and structurally very similar) I can express myself better and the world makes more sense to me. I don’t know I must sound crazy, especially since I’m not fluent in either. But I feel as though I interpret the world in a deeper or more profound way. That’s why I think I’m so motivated to learn them so well. I never felt this way with Italian. I can speak Italian without having to think about English but never once have I had this feeling of an enriched experience or whatever.
I know I must sound completely out of my mind but, if you’ve made it this far, have you ever felt this way or do you understand what I’m trying to express? What’re your thoughts? 🥰