Importance of language

We talk, we listen, we think, for all this we need a language. Everyone speaks some language, but here I want to convey the importance of knowing more then one language, not only more then one but the right one.

I know three languages, well obviously English, and you can evaluate my english skills from how I write, but English is my third language, I also speak Swedish and Russian, both better then I speak English, and what I have noticed is following:

First there are obvious translation issues, namely that some words simply do not exist in another language, and one has to try and convey the meaning when trying to translate from one to another.

But then there are more fundamental differences, namely, there are some concepts that do not exist in other languages, and there is no way to make a person that only understand Swedish (for example) to understand what you are trying to say.

This is of course what this is all about, we do our thinking in a language, and only being able to think in a language that does not have certain concepts, then those things do not exist for you, you can not reason with what you don't know, and you can't know it because your language simply does not support it, and if you don't have this concept then you can not evolve language and your understanding of the nature in that direction, certain things will forever remain unknown to you.

I think the implications at this point are clear, hence let's move on to languages.

First I thought that it was due to number of words, that one language just had more words hence one could express more things in that language, but this showed to be no completely true, when it comes to number of words English seems to have the most, then Russian then Swedish.

Though I noticed over the years speaking Swedish, English and Russian on daily basis that I often find myself unable to translate things from Russian to Swedish while I always could translate from Swedish to Russian. Swedish language do have words that do not exist in Russian, but it is always possible to translate meaning of these words, while there is simply no way to translate certain things from Russian to Swedish. Same thing goes for English, though, more is possible to translate from Russian to English then to Swedish. That is, what I noticed is that Russian is the most expressive language, then English and finally Swedish.

As an example so that you can experience it first hand try to translate:

упереться

Google translate will give you following translations to English:

Pierce

Stretch

Press against

Stretch against

Non of which translate the correct meaning of the word, but this is not the point,

the point is that I wen to a linguist at a university to ask for the meaning of this

word, that person tried for a very long time to find a way to translate what it

means, but finally gave up agreeing that there is no way to translate precisely what

it means.

I thought, how can this be? I sat down and thought about words and languages and I found out that the biggest problem is not only in words that are impossible to translate, but also in how those words are used.

For example the word above "упереться" in its primitive form means something like:

Pushing against something and being unable to move, for example driving into a garage you can "упереться" into the wall.

But it can also be bent to mean other things, for example:

уперся/уперласъ means a man/woman in the same way as a car can't get further in the same direction physically (would be fun to see), logically, or most common that the person refuses to admit being wrong in an argument.

But there is also упертыш,which is the same thing as above (with argument) but if you want to say it in a more condescending way, if you want to show your annoyance with the person not admitting being wrong. (Though it is probably not in the dictionary)

And so on.

Perhaps you could pick up from the example above how it works, and perhaps even learned new concept you never knew before, hence this is the key to the expressiveness of the Russian language, taking one word and being able to bend it to apply the meaning to other situations, and also transforming it to say it in a nice way or condescending way e.t.c. Hence you find yourself trying to translate from Russian to Swedish or English that and the meaning, the concepts, the representation of the natural world, the expressions of feelings are simply not there in many cases.

Hence the key is not number of words, the key is how the words are used in order to represent the world, and more freely words can be used and bent the more you can represent with those words, hence Russian language is perfectly suited for writing poetry, songs, stories e.t.c. because you can really express so much more.

The reason for this is that the Russian language is what is called Synthetic, that is where a word can have meaning of a whole English sentence, hence the problem described above arises when trying to translate from Synthetic languages to what is called Isolating language that you need sentences to explain all nuances of a single word, and in many cases not even that is enough.

This post was about making an educated choice when trying to learn another language, since you read this you already know English, and to you, or if you are too old to learn a new language then your your children, I would recommend to learn a Synthetic language. I would recommend Russian, since first of all it is widely used, and second of all I can not speak any other synthetic language, hence can not promise same expressiveness in those, but other synthetic languages are following:

Spanish, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, German, Italian, French, Roman, Russian, Polish, Czech, Navajo, Nahuatl, Mohawk, Quechua.

And for people speaking any of the above languages, I would recommend English, but that is pointless since you are already reading this.

Illusion of reality.

Every time something is said there are several ways to understand it, and that creates much confusion is the concept of reality being an illusion.

When it is said that we live in an illusion many smart people would say, "well jump off a building and survive then". The problem with that is primarily that those people are not only smart but they know they are smart, hence they jump to a hasty conclusion that they understood what is meant by "reality is an illusion" and therefore feel competent to remark about jumping of a building, thinking they are even more clever because no one else did same stupid remark, hence everyone else are even more stupid since they did't even managed to make such a simple argument such as jump of a building.

The main thing is to understand what a person is saying before starting commenting. There are few out there that literally do claim that nothing exists it is all an illusion, you can walk through walls, jump from high places and survive e.t.c. but those people are very few, and if you find such person, argument "then do it" is valid.

What needs to be understood is that when it is said that reality is an illusion, what is meant is not that nothing exists, but that people live in an illusion. That is for example, you do something, let say play a game, watch TV, work, or anything else, and you loose touch with the reality, you kind of wake up from whatever you were doing and are surprised about how much time has passed, hence you were in whatever you were doing, away from reality, and woke up from it.

In the same way as above, we do things every day without thinking, without knowing why we do them, we do it because we always have done them, because we need to do them, and so on. This is just the same thing as get caught in a game, TV or work, just forgetting about anything around you, until you stop and realize for example how much time has passed, or that you are hungry e.t.c.

Therefore it is said that reality people live in is an illusion, because they are trapped in it, doing things they no longer know why, having problems they don't know why, e.t.c. what one needs to do then is to wake up. Hence when people are talking about reality being an illusion one must start thinking, and perhaps even learning.

Reasons to pursuit awakening are many ranging from simple things to glorious experiences that you will chaise you whole life, whatever reason there are few practical ones that can be seen as the least you can get, even if you don't get unity with universe or whatever else some guru promise you, and those will be illustrated with a game example:

First of all, you can play for hours and loose, get frustrated and angry. To improve your game you can try different things as you play and it might even improve you game, but you can also leave the game illusion, sit back and think about the game, in order to realize what you are doing wrong.

In order to improve your game, you realize as above what you did wrong, but don't go back to playing, but first now when you know what is wrong create a plan how to make it right from where you are in the game, hence sometime you can continue where you were, just making it right from now on, sometimes you must load a saved game loosing some progress (in the wrong direction), and sometimes you have an unpleasant realization when you must abandon everything and start a new game.

Sometimes you might stop playing, think about the game and realize that there is no way to play it much better then I did, that was a perfect game.

Other time you might stop playing and realize that you wasted many hours and really are behind in you work that you need to do, and shut down the game altogether.

In short, to make an effective change, you must realize what is wrong.

To be happy with what you do you must realize that it is right.

To do so in a game, you must stop playing and think about the game.

To do so in life you must wake up from the illusion.