Seeing the world through language.

@QuickJazz

Now this is something I've thought long and hard about. Do we think in language, or create a language to communicate our thoughts? In certain cultures, and reflected in their language, there is no concept of an individual 'owning' something. The need to describe that situation never arose.

I was born into an English speaking family and only began studying Spanish at around the age of 12 or so. I was fortunate enough to go on a three-week 'retreat', over the summer, where we were prohibited to speak English. This was definitely a 'jump start' for me to becoming bilingual. I clearly remember the first time I dreamed in Spanish and waking my teacher to tell him about it. (I look back and think how fortunate I was to have a group of teachers that were happy to be woken up by a 16 year old student who was excited about dreaming in Spanish!)

Later, (I'm talking about late 1980's) I studied a few programming languages and realized the similarities that all programming languages had to do and carried that over to how spoken & written languages all had general similarities. (I actually learned more about English Grammar studying foreign languages.)

I ended up studying Humanities at a tiny part of a larger University in Oxfordshire, England. They were quite 'old fashioned' by today's standards. Aside from the 'normal' Literature, Art History, and Philosophy classes, I was required to take four courses in 'Rhetoric'. I have to admit that I had no idea what that was.

During these classes, we listened and, when possible, viewed speeches, very often not in English. We analyzed Gorbachev, Castro, Reagan, Hitler just to name a few. Our professor re-enacted speeches by Ancient Greeks. It is amazing when you are forced to just listen to the musical quality of the speeches and get 'caught up' in the emotion and not the actual 'words'.

I did end up studying ancient languages (Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and Tamil mainly). I was the one that chose Sanskrit and Tamil because of my religious inclinations. Before the super-high resolution photographs and Internet, doing the actual translations of Buddhist & Hindu scriptures was quite involved. (Now I can do it while in a bathrobe!)

The further I went back, the more I realized that the knowledge desired and the questions posed, changed very little. Buddhist & Hindu scriptures gave (what I believe) some universal truths. That's just me! I'm not recommending it for anyone as your mileage may vary!

I get to speak Spanish almost daily-- I teach bilingual Special Education. As much as possible, I continue to work on translations of religious texts into English & Spanish.

I still dream in Spanish from time to time and I often will come up with the 'proper' word in Spanish and have that 'tip of the tongue' experience.

I believe a changing point was hearing the rhetoric in languages I didn't understand by master speakers. Gorbachev taking off his shoe in front of the UN council was pretty darn cool to watch before YouTube. Castro's speeches and Hitler's, were (for lack of a better term) hypnotic. I have to also throw in my appreciation for Che Guevara's amazing ability to use language as 'music'.

I think I've gone far enough off track to create another topic! I hope I haven't bored anyone too much.

@QuickJazz

My main language is English and I am learning German at school! I find that I don't use German much but I'd love to go to Germany some time and put it to good use!

I mean, it's great to see how language can make the person to feel better. Me myself, my husband and our son moved to Africa last year (Nigeria to be exact), due to new assingment, and faced lots of challenges, race included. We are French, so it was easy to see us from the other site of street as we totally white. Our son was bulled a lot and he was really upset utill we found him an activity and sent him to English courses at https://upskillstutor.com.ng/tutors/english/ - it didn't solve all the problems, but at least the kid got somehting to do. And he actually leard english quite well with them.

My mothertongue is Italian. I also speak English, French and Spanish. Of course, Italian made it easier to learn French and Spanish (as it would to other Latin-based languages), but I find that it also has an impact on the way I think, because of its complex structures and rich vocabulary. I find myself creating very weird and difficult sentences in English, that I could make a lot simpler if it weren't for my Italian brain

Okay, so I know mostly bits and pieces of other languages.

My mother tongue is German, I've had English for years and years, so it's basically my second mother tongue at this stage. I studied Latin and Spanish in school, so I'm fairly alright with those languages as well.

I had 3 semesters of Japanese in an evening school, so I knoe bits and pieces of that and I sat in Russian classes at school for a year, because I had a free lesson in between, so there are some bits and pieces as well. Then Itried to teach myself Chinese and Arabic, which again I have bits and pieces of. I successfully taught myself Norwegian. At the moment I'm doing an Irish course.

Yes, languages are somewhat a hobby of mine. They don't affect my everyday life really (except for English since I live in Ireland). It's handy to know bits and pieces and I love to make connections between all the languages.