The curse of language

This word came from the grammatical language, and the grammatical language is the sound. The term is taken from the Greek word "logos", meaning "the word". Today there are about seven thousand living languages. The living language is the language that is still circulated among a number of people, while the dead language is the one that has vanished from the tongues and is no longer spoken by anyone, such as Greek and Greek, although it was one of the most powerful languages ​​in ancient times. Simply, language is the term used by every people. But is it really that simple?

Language is the curse we cannot live without. She wears several garments, and it is either by voice, by gesture, by touch, or even by looks and sometimes by dancing! Just as we find verbal and written language, we also find body language that reveals much that a person does not say in other ways.

"We are all prisoners of language, like a fly in a bottle!"

I still remember this phrase that the professor of philosophy said two years ago, and how we all laughed at this strange analogy, and we imagine our heads on the bodies of flies hitting the walls of language whenever we try to escape from it!

I did not feel the impact of that phrase until I converted it into the Arabic language in my head, as I used to do at the beginning of my era of learning French, English and Spanish. Then I realized that I can't master a language unless I think about it! And my relationship with languages ​​began to change as I became more proficient in them.

Language is the use of speech to express ideas. If we take a small child for example, we see that the more vocabulary he acquires, the more he is able to express what he feels or wants. Therefore, the more languages ​​an individual masters, the more his perceptions expand and his ideas increase. That is because the language often goes along with the environment in which it is used, so we find different languages, dialects, and usages in different countries and regions. We also find varying levels, so if we compare the language of a young man from the popular neighborhoods with the language of a professor at the university, we will inevitably notice a big difference, in terms of the words used and even the tone of voice.

Language sometimes constitutes a constraint, so what we see that it is easy to express it absolutely freely in one language, it is very difficult to express it in another language. This is not due to the absence or lack of vocabulary, but rather because of the ideas and beliefs that society imposes on language, or rather on the way of thinking.

As for the relationship of an individual with his mother tongue, it is a complex and strange relationship. In most cases, we are not able to fully express what we feel unless we use our mother tongue, especially when we are very angry or happy, when the mind stops thinking logically and acts more spontaneously, so it does not have enough time to choose one of the other languages ​​that it masters. Because that requires more concentration, so the mother tongue comes out spontaneously. As for love, one language is not enough to express what we feel, yet the word “I love you” comes out in the mother tongue more true, deeper and more effective, especially when the two parties speak the same language, meaning that it brings them closer together, and becomes a means of love.

I feel the weight of the disappointment that comes after a person is unable to translate his thoughts because of his lack of mastery of the language and how the feeling of alienation is ugly in the absence of the language closest to the heart.

Languages ​​developed after the emergence of writing, which also came as a means of communication, documenting and preserving speech. With the passage of time, language became a strange power, so many used it as a weapon during wars. That is because the impact of words on the soul is sometimes more severe than the impact of bullets. One word is enough to break a heart or make it happy. The word is the most frightening thing for any dictator! George Orwell portrayed this in the novel 1984, where "Big Brother" censors people's thoughts and feelings. What is interesting is that he forbade them from using words or thinking about things that might push them to revolt, because any dictator knows very well that a conscious, thinking people is impossible to enslave.

How do we access the worlds of other languages?

He who cannot learn other languages, cannot be denied knowledge of them! The translation came as a solution to enable us to see different languages ​​in other languages! Translation is not a new thing. The verb "translate" first appeared in 1539. In ancient civilizations, any educated person or scholar had to master the translation. There are different types of translation, some of which convey the meaning and suffice with that, and some of them are literal. The beauty of a text may be lost after its translation, and sometimes the opposite may happen, and we find that the translated text is more beautiful than the original text and is closer to the heart.