Languages and cultures have long fascinated me. The ways different languages employ different phrasing to convey same human feelings has always stoked my imagination. It is a reflection of human diversity. It also outlines the ability of the human mind to bring a range of perspectives to the same emotional moment.
I have long believed that humans should achieve emotionally critical command over at least one language, especially to the point where they can communicate their emotions with ease. I have observed that the inability of a person to express and communicate his true feelings creates imbalance in the emotional framework of the person. This is something I have continued to observe across cultures and ages. Those who have evolved a good command over one or more languages and are able to communicate his mind, come across as more self-assured and emotionally grounded.
Lake of Emotions
Learning one’s mother or father tongue is the simplest and most natural path to build command over expressing feelings early on in life. Learning the parents’ language plugs a child into the spectrum of emotions, expressions and engagements – a spectrum richly colored by journeys, experiences and feelings across generations. This lake of emotions is a pool of feelings that has flowered and withered in different stages of their parents’ lives. It is a whole universe of connectedness, belonging and emotional bonding. The emotional universe of a mother’s language is possibly the most natural way for a growing human to give linguistic shape to his mind and body sensations, enabling the person to give it roots by borrowing from the richness of the shared culture.
More often than not, however, when these young people embark on their quest to acquire a language that is globally competitive (a language other than their mother tongue), they do not have access to the lake of emotional expressions, the immersive milieu or social setup in which micro-interactions and micro-expressions take place.
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