Five language concepts that have shaped my mindset.

Language may not necessarily change the way that we think but it can certainly influence the way in which we look at the world and life.

It is often a contentious statement to suggest that language actually changes the way that we think. Some academics will argue that it does not whilst others will argue that it does. This area of linguistics is something that fascinates me and I’m always looking into different theories. Although I am still learning so cannot weigh in on this debate, I do recommend the book Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher to get an insight into the complexities of it.

I have been reflecting on this a lot and would like to share five language concepts that have shaped my mindset.

1. To have an age

In romance languages, you are not your age, but rather you have your age. When I was teaching Spanish to secondary school students in England, they struggled with this concept a lot – “I have twelve years” rather than “I am twelve years old”. So what is so special about this? In a world that is increasingly deterring any kind of aging, it’s good to remember that you are not your age but rather your age is an indication of how much of this life you have already experienced. As I am approaching the big 30 and with all the fuss around that, thinking about it like a Spanish speaker brings a lot of peace. I have 30 years of life – what a privilege and I hope to gain many more.

2. Defining the feeling

There are often moments in life where you feel a certain way but you can’t quite put a word to it. However, sometimes you can, it just doesn’t exist in your language. When I was studying Portuguese at university, we had to become very familiar with the word saudade which although doesn’t have a single word translation into English, it does have a definition that we can all identify with at one point in our lives; a bittersweet nostalgia for something that once was and can never be again. Once you realise that languages have words for those feelings, you realise that you are not alone and you finally have a way of putting into words what you feel. There are so many of them; in Dutch there is gezellig, in Danish hugge, in German shadefraude, in Brazilian Portuguese cafuné, the list goes on…

3. Words with personalities

When I first thought about words with personalities, I thought about masculine and feminine nouns; how some languages will use feminine adjectives to describe the moon and others will use masculine adjectives depending on which gender the moon is in their language. I also thought about word order and how sometimes you are given the noun to visualise before being given the adjective. However, this is different, those are surface level characteristics and I want to go deeper.

I am a huge fan of etymology. We all know that words have origins but what about when words have stories or personalities? I discovered this when a Hebrew speaker told me about the nature of the word “emet” (אֱמֶת). What makes this word special, she explained to me, is that it has a moral within it. “Emet” contains the first, middle, and the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet because the truth encompasses all things and endures from the beginning (א) to the end (ת). Even more special is the way that the word is written, because the letters have a base. In English, when someone is lying, you say that that person “doesn’t have a leg to stand on” but in the case of “emet”, it stands on its own feet. You might be wondering if the lie also has a story and it does! Lie, or “sheker” (שקר) shows the letters are written from the end up. Visually too, the lie has only one foot on the ground which is why all lies fall. This concept has definitely made me think twice about telling lies.

4. Verb values

When learning new languages, you suddenly realise that not every verb can be directly translated and therefore used to express the same thing. Whilst this is certainly the case with prepositions (for example the difference between depending on someone verses depending of someone as it goes in many romance languages), I want to look specifically at translating verbs in relation to their nouns. Coming back to Spanish, instead of making a decision, you take one. Instead of paying attention, you lend attention. The value doesn’t lie in the verb itself, but rather how the verb influences the noun. Thinking about how a decision is either something that you can create in contrast to something that already exists or that attention is something that you’ll always get back verses something that can be given away at a price, can affect the way in which you use those actions.

5. Love

Last but not least, there is love. Learning to love in various languages is a truly beautiful thing. This can be connected to my second point of defining a feeling but I do think that love is its own category. It isn’t just defining the feeling, but rather it is defining the level of the feeling. I find it tragic that in English, we only can only love. I love ice cream/I love to eat; I love my friends, I love my partner. Compare this to Spanish where you can love an object or an activity me encanta el helado/ me encancta comer; we can love a person casually quiero a mis amigos; and we can love a person deeply amo a mi pareja. However, I will say that at least in English we do have “like” as a level below “love”. If you ever wonder why your French boyfriend might struggle to express a deep love despite the romantic reputation of French, he can only express his love as “I like you” (je t’aime) in the same way that he may like football (j’aime le foot). Worry not, at the very least he can tell you that he adores you (je t’adore) which is certainly a lot more intense and passionate than English’s all compassing “I love you”.

There are so many more examples of how language concepts have influenced the approaches that I take. The more I learn about other languages, the more perspectives of the world that I can gain.