Un año atrás no entendí nada de español, pero ya pasó un año y tengo otro idioma para ayudarme en el futuro, en cualquiera parte de mi vida.
(A year ago, I couldn’t understand Spanish at all, but now that a year has passed, I have another language to help me in the future, in any part of my life.)
Likely most readers would not understand what the first sentence means but there are another 5 billion people that don’t understand this sentence. Just consider that for a second.
The world is both divided and connected by languages and the way that people communicate greatly affects culture and their own personal backgrounds, so one of the first places to start when trying to understand culture, is the language.
We are so fortunate to be native English speakers. This language that is so natural to all of us is a struggle for so many but also such a key part of global communication, business, technology, and more. As you can see, over 1.5 billion study English compared to the 14.5 million that study Spanish, the drastic difference is easily explainable when we see how the English language is applied to Global culture, but does that lessen the importance of the cultures that associate with Spanish or Japanese or any of the other 7,102 languages that are spoken throughout the world? Not at all.
When I left for Argentina I only had one year of Spanish from 8th grade under my belt, I essentially knew nothing. So, when I arrived in Rosario, I was a little confused, well a lot confused, for many months. My host family and friends didn’t speak any English so I was forced to learn quickly if I really wanted to be committed to these relationships! It was a long process of trying to understand very simple things as I pushed myself to remember vocabulary, understand verb conjugation, pronounce sounds I had never even heard before, and comprehend what others were saying to me but even more so, how they were saying it. Connotation and tones give a lot to conversations and when you can’t depend on understanding the words spoken you rely on understanding the ways they move their heads or their arms, the way their voice rises at certain conversational points, or how their facial expressions reflect their feelings.
In my experience, language is more than just words, it is a form of communication and when you begin to understand it better you begin to understand the people behind it even more.
Language and Culture in Society
At my fifth month mark on my exchange, I dreamed in Spanish, and it freaked me out! But from that point on I felt more and more like a native in Argentina. It didn’t matter as much to me that my accent still needed (and needs) a lot of work or that I looked like a foreigner, I felt more comfortable because I could understand the place that was becoming my second home and I could understand the people that made it feel that way.
Understanding another culture, another country, another population is no simple task and it is one that is never finished but the process of doing so is made so much simpler once the language is understood.
So, stretch yourselves and tap into that part in your brain you didn’t know you had and learn!