Languages are a living time capsule – forever evolving to hold human history, global culture, and emotional relevance. I’ve always been fascinated by them – the grand (and often violent) history behind how modern languages came to be, how a native language can connect us to our cultures, and how being multilingual can literally change how you perceive the world. It’s fascinating how in English, our stages of matter are simple and self-explanatory: solid, liquid, gas. English speakers view their surroundings in a way that fits one of these stages of matter, always. But if you were to learn the now endangered Native American Cherokee language, this perspective would change. You’d learn to view the world the Cherokee way: in solid, liquid, long/rigid, flexible, and living. Cherokee verbs are conjugated based on the state of the noun in question, which would involve one of these five classifications – making the classes of matter even more relevant than an English native speaker would guess. This is one of my favorite examples of how language can change perspective. 

A few weeks prior, I listened to an Ologies with Alie Ward podcast episode about linguistics. I discovered that the history of linguistics consists of so much more than just language and its history, but also sociology, anthropology, politics, and other relevant subjects. Example: the average man has a vocal pitch of between 100-150 hertz, and the average woman between 200-250 hertz. Only half that variation can be explained by physiology. 4 year old boys and girls have the same physical vocal tract, but you can usually tell the difference between a little boy or girl speaking. Even though physically they are identical, boys and girls have already been socialized into respectively lowering or raising their voices. Super interesting, right? So you can imagine my excitement when I met an actual linguist by trade in Turkey.

I met with Anastasia at a coffee shop in Osmanbey – a neighborhood in Istanbul known for its shopping scene and trendy cafes. It was a book cafe, actually, which I thought was a tad ironic. Walls lined with books written in or translated to various languages. She explained to me that she is from Uzbekistan, but is fully Russian by ethnicity. Anastasia is a linguist, who at her base views the development of language as a natural byproduct of life. 

This perspective can be reflected in her belief that modern American English compared to British English is becoming simpler – “Americans swallow a lot of words; they use a lot more contractions.” British people are not hesitant to think of more synonyms or take the time to fully express themselves within a sentence. Americans, comparatively, know how to express themselves in their mind, and will understand if they read or hear, but they won’t speak that way. Americans seem to feel as if they have to rush to make their ideas clear. Why? “Time is money,” Anastasia responds, smiling over her hot coffee – she believes it’s possible that the hustle culture epidemic in America has caused Americans to forget values outside of work or income. Arts, culture, speech: forgotten. 

In asking her about what she does for work, she explains it’s mostly freelance in the linguistics world right now. She translates, she researches. My favorite aspect of her work is collaborating with a psychologist to help him develop a criminal profile using speech patterns. If Anastasia has an uninterrupted monologue to listen to and decipher, like a speech, she can pick the person apart. She analyzes whether his/her thoughts are coherent, the way sentences are built, the choice of vocabulary. Are the thoughts repetitive or does the person easily switch to another subject? Does the person focus on descriptions or get to the main point? These are all elements that Anastasia uses to obtain information about a person’s personality, background, status – and that she uses to help build criminal profiles. 

We further discussed why multilingualism is important – something I wholeheartedly stand by, also ironically, as I am not even bilingual yet. Anastasia, who is trilingual, shares with me the different emotions she feels and perspectives she gains when she’s speaking different languages. For her, English is precise, accurate, and generally unemotional – she tries to always use the right tenses and vocabulary. The English language has the most documented dictionary vocabulary words than any other language, so finding the precisely correct word or synonym is important for an English speaker or learner. When she speaks Spanish, though, she feels light and romantic. The Spanish language doesn’t even have the vocabulary to be serious and sophisticated, it is not curated for a business meeting. Spanish is meant for the person to sensually enjoy the moment, and to not think so hard about using the “right” terms and conjugations within a conversation. Russian is a fence of consonants, but thank God for the few vowels thrown about. The Russian language is like training for something daunting. It’s not an easy flow, it’s for someone who values logic and doesn’t mind a few (or a lot of) hurdles while running on the track. 

Language is fundamentally about the way a people or a culture perceives the world. In Mandarin, the word for China means “center” or “middle”. What does this tell us about the way Mandarin speakers view themselves, their culture, and their country? Mandarin is a tonal language, meaning their vocabulary has duplicates that mean different things based on the tone it’s spoken. Intonation is crucial in Mandarin, but their grammar is extremely simple: no tenses, no conjugations, no genders. Why do they choose to focus less on grammar, when grammar is the basis of so many other languages? We are not sure about this history. But we are sure that this is why learning a second, or third or fourth, language can enhance your views and positively change the way you move through life. Languages expand our knowledge and help us read into other worlds.

My fellow American public schoolers: admit it. The two years of French or Spanish you took in middle school are long gone. But that’s okay. Learning a new language later in life isn’t about memorizing conjugations for homework, it’s about expanding your world lens. Grab some language workshop books, find an online tutor, watch foreign films. Stumble a little and smile a lot. Utilize the endless resources of language learning that we have at our disposal to stretch your comfort zone a little. I will, too.

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