creating and destroying; built flying cars & autonomous vehicles, now building roc.camera, writings: july.rocks

when living as a nomad in europe across a bunch of countries last few yrs, i always wondered how much of the “feeling” in words i was missing when they spoke into google translate

also found it interesting that sometimes there would be three similar english words that all translate to the same word in the other language

Language is alive - it’s a living reflection of the speakers of that language, their wants, their desires, their needs, their hopes and dreams and history and past. 

Of course it’s one thing to explain it; but it’s another thing to live it - and I do think a good amount gets lost in the translation

That’s why I think it’s great when dead languages, or languages that were suppressed (or still are today) but survived: Basque, Hawaiian, Ainu, Galige, Maori, Tibetan, Tatar, Kurdish etc etc

Living a language means feeling its soul. Translation can only scratch the surface.

Words can connect us, but living the language reveals its true soul.

This is one of those things that I wish we talked about more. Language literally (heh) shapes our worldview. E.g. emotional intelligence increases as we learn more words that describe emotions.

I wonder where we’d be as a species if our capacity for learning languages wasn’t as good as it is. I really think it’s what sets us apart.