The Limits Of My Language
The Limits Of My World
By Sang Nguyen
What do you mean about “the world”? How do you think about your language’s limitation in connection with the world’s limitation? And why do I ask these critical questions? This is due to the fact that speaking only single language, you just know and might understand people in your community only so that all various ways of thinking will be formed in only single perspective, but not multi dimension. Then your world will be restricted.
It is said that if your communication is restricted in only single language, your world will be limited as well. How do you think? From my point of view, it depends on the definition of “a world” from different types of people. For some, they simply think in the metaphor way that “a world” means a place where includes all people from their home country only with the same language and the same culture. However, others think that “a world” means a place where it should be as its English definition, a planet that we live on from different societies, institutions and ways of life.
So, if you belong to this community with the world meaning involving all people across continents, you do not only study one language to converse with your hometown’s people, but also study the second language to communicate with international people. Consequently, learning a new language will warm your mind up for more opening to welcoming cultural differences. This can create more opportunities for you to access diverse resources to comprehend about the real complex world besides your own community.
Take for an example, as a Vietnamese person, your culture is much less affected by your native language, your way of thinking so that you follow collectivism culture rather than individualism culture as people from the west.
So, when the individual demand is strong, you still cannot break that cultural collectivism to do your own project individually without any intervention in a group of people from your familiar community.
And it is even worst if you do not know how you can adapt this in your own community by your native language nor use another language to express yourself or expand your worldview, your experience, your opinions to more and more people.
As a result, learning a new language will absolutely open a new door for you to describe and express yourself in the way you want. Therefore, you can break any limit to explore your potentials to adapt as many things as you want to discover the world of your inner self and outer self.
To what extend do you agree or disagree me with this opinion?