I have always seen language as a primary means of illustrating and translating thought.

I myself am not multilingual. I probably should be, being half-Norwegian, but I have only dabbled a bit in the Spanish, French, and Italian languages, only enough to learn and forget the basic mechanics fairly quickly. Despite this lack of exposure, I did have enough to form a hunch that differences in one’s language of origin have a distinct effect on an individual’s psyche.

I first got the idea from my mother. She moved to America from Norway 25 years ago, and is now completely fluent in English. She has explained to me that ever since she has adopted the English language, it is difficult for her to go back and express herself in Norwegian, simply because there are not parallel words in Norwegian to express the thoughts she wants to convey. There just aren’t as many Norwegian words as English words, and my mom now finds herself restrained when trying to communicate with her family, yet before she moved to America, she had no way of anticipating these linguistic differences.

I can be hard for many people to comprehend the fact that many words don’t directly translate between languages, but I had a feeling that there are many languages that contain words to identify ideas that other languages have no term for. What if there are certain words in our language, which define and relate to concepts that other regions haven’t even begun to fathom, and therefore can’t actually be recognized and translated into concrete thought, and vice versa?

Okay let me try and break that down. Not even an hour after I tried to explain this to someone, I stumbled upon a concrete example in my psych textbook — “East Asian languages have no term meant to capture the idea of feeling good about oneself.”

This is kind of a big deal. I checked it out a bit further. It has much to do with the social differences between East-Asian and Western cultures. East Asia has a distinctly interdependent culture, a culture in which individuals tend to identify themselves as part of a collective, rather than as an individual. They have relatively little personal control over their lives, but do not seem to mind or really know the difference. Western cultures, on the other hand, are more independent. People tend to think of themselves as distinct social entities, tied to each other by voluntary bonds, but still essentially separate from other people. In independent cultures, it makes sense to speak of having preferences, beliefs, and abilities that are characteristic of an individual across social situations. In interdependent cultures, on the other hand, you are literally a different person depending on whom you are interacting with. Naturally, this should have an effect on your interpretation and understanding of your existence and its characteristics. Furthermore, if East-Asians do not identify themselves with constant attributes, then the idea of having a sense of self-esteem, an overall positive or negative evaluation of these attributes, does seem a bit farfetched.

Anyway. I hope that made some sense. So do certain languages not possess a particular term becasue they haven’t recognized the concept, or do they not recognize the concept because there is no term to describe it? I think both contribute to each other. Those born into a particular language will develop thought processes that parallel that language. You think in your language of origin. My mom speaks nothing but English except a few times a year when she communicates with family, but she still thinks primarily in Norwegian. Most of us think in English. We use our language to interpret our experiences, and a difference in language may result in a difference of interpretation. If this holds true, that may mean that our personality and logic may have been completely different had we been born in a different region. That’s some crazy shit.

On the other hand, new words are created through new experiences, and as cultures continue to influence each other, languages are influenced as well. For instance, the Japanese have now adopted a term for self-esteem, but it is simply borrowed from the English language — “serefu esuttimu.”

So this idea is nowhere near being concrete. It’s just something I’ve been pondering from time to time when I get bored. If you have thoughts, I’d like to hear them.

[NOTE: I turned a slightly more politically correct form of this as my psychology paper, and it was returned to me with a big fat ZERO, and a note saying "did not follow instructions/topic." I contacted the professor, and he allowed me the chance to resubmit. So I did what the rest of the class did... wrote up a quick one-pager about how their ex-boyfriend or girlfriend did (insert shitty behavior here) and how it demonstrates (insert blatantly obvious social psychology theory here). I got an A.]