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.