I had a privilege of communicating with people from different cultures...I must say it’s quite a challenging task. Every culture has its own set of rules which interferes with effective cross-culture understanding. The same words can mean different things to people from different cultures, even when they talk the "same" language. When the languages are different, and translation has to be used to communicate, the potential for misunderstandings increases.
Being an Indian myself and knowing the fact that India within itself has some hundred different cultures and languages… but only after having stayed in Tokyo
First day was as usual a lost day… I lost the way to my apartment from the station…With no undue biases; I must say Japanese people are very helpful and kind. Finally their helping attitude helped me reach my apartment. That was a moment when I felt so helpless for not having known the language and realizing the importance of it
The other incident where I forgot to take my id card and the problem I faced only to get a day pass done for the access to the client’s office made me go through another feeling altogether… I was irritated rather annoyed...and I was like why do we need so many languages at the very first place to communicate...
I was reading a book Twilight sometime back where it was mentioned; Animals are better than us as they only need telepathy in any language…but we humans are dumb clucks who need to make an uncouth sound known as language… Different languages weren’t enough to handle. Additional to it we have an accent which just changes the whole language as if you not hearing English but Hebrew…Well does accent add beauty to the language or an attitude which creates a layer of distance between the two people communicating…the later seems more pertinent here…
We software people have to also worry about different set of languages too...the so called Artificial Languages..People tend to learn different languages to up market themselves…though majority of them only learn; how to say “Hello World” in different languages…Its strange but these Jacks do have a great career in this world provided they have a mastery over other things…
We do have a concept of Auxiliary Languages to overcome the language barrier…but again it’s not one but many and then we would anyway have to learn those languages… If we have to learn why not then learn a language as and when required and be proud by calling our self a “Multilingual”
Well then if there lays so many problems with so many diversified languages around; why not then be an animal...Well I wouldn’t mind but then which one would I prefer to be?? Ah!! Why not my own Chinese zodiac a “Rooster”; at least my basic characteristics traits would remain the same…to mention few of them; they are Frank, Intelligent, Amicable, Trusty…and the list continues…he he he
I read an article of a sociologist who was studying "Hypothesis of Linguistic Relativity", which basically says much of a person's reality is based upon their language…if there was no diversification of language in the world, our ability to understand things and "broaden our horizons" would also be limited.
As a German scientist once said “The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world”…So with little pain for a lot of gain;its better to have unlimited “Our” languages to have an infinite “Our” World…What say??
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