What are the Effects of Language Diversity?
Society
I’m a self-made polyglot.
The notion of culture was abstract, because I come from a small Chinese village, the opposite of what one’s imagined for diversity.
I travel little and seldom get to converse with real speakers. I learn my languages almost completely by myself, with only books and my laptop. As I teach myself languages, I have no crossover with, I seek to transcend those limits. My languages allow me to peek into “truths” from other worlds and stories forbidden in my mother tongue, but sometimes the gap feels insurmountable. If those truths can be translated into any language—is my effort only to overcome my own limited access to information?
I gradually realized this thinking oversimplifies the complexity of “truth.” As my languages constantly challenge my thinking with radically different versions of the same story.
I grow conscious of how one’s interpretation of reality could be unconsciously distorted. Language in theory is impartially unbiased. However, language in use becomes entrenched in the culture it speaks for. Moreover, often embodying pre-programmed prejudices. As a result, the discrepancy makes us prone to remain blind to the other sides of the truth, until we adopt new languages, become culturally flexible enough to shatter old thinking.
My understanding culminates during my summer in Latvia, studying linguistics alongside graduate scholars speaking different languages. After lectures, we’d meet again in a small bistro to continue debates on language, then to politics, philosophy and everything else, until early mornings. In those nights, every torn-apart stereotype, every eureka moment, acute shock, distress, shame as our cultures directly clash, weave into a piercing realization: my education is to earn such privilege to see and translate more truths than those inherently given. I want to know as much as possible to act on the world. Luckily, I’ve found language to be one way to achieve this vision.
Written by Luxin Sun
Society
What are the Effects of Language Diversity?
