Do Languages Change Your Mind?

What comes first, thoughts or languages? Spoiler alert...

Thoughts come first!

While that's something interesting to know, it isn't the topic this time. Have you thought about the difference between you speaking Chinese and you speaking English? Let's make a bet right now. You, speaking English as a second language or just as much as you can, become more polite, humble, and reserved when NOT using your mother tongue. This happens everywhere in Taiwan.

This tends to happen in Asian countries, and of course, more in Taiwan because the Taiwanese people have always loved foreign cultures, especially Korean, Japanese, and those of the west. It's worth mentioning to point out that many of us have strong feelings for things and people from English-speaking countries. Our education and the expectation of parents may be the root of this. You could see how on one end, the receptionist in a shop is talking to the people in the queue impatiently that there are no more seats but on the other end, when someone asks the same question again, chances are that the receptionist changes the language and become less aggressive. However, make no mistake that if the person you speak English to feels insulted for reasons such as lack of confidence, or feeling inferior, the situation may escalate but if you're white, you're pretty safe. The point is, we're quite nice to foreigners in general but nicer to certain foreigners.

Thoughts come before languages but since we already developed languages, they shape the way we think. As the example above shows, we use a different mindset when speaking English and that's for certain. The question is that why are we usually nicer when speaking English? Other than the fact that we're prone to favor some nations over others, could it be more?

In the previous article You English = Your Kid's English, it read about the concern a father has for not being enough to teach English because he's not a native speaker. Now we turned our topic this time. The reason we are nicer when we speak English is that we are not exposed to foul expressions as much as the natives do. The same way applies to us in Chinese. We could be very expressive AND aggressive when we're speaking Chinese, couldn't we? Since the textbooks we use are always so nice, polite, and robotic, without any real-life experience of using it, we become nice, polite, and robotic when speaking English, which on the surface level, may not be so bad.

What we learn dictates how we think; who we learn from will determine how we use it. Say that you have an interest in healthy living. The person you follow on Instagram writes about it and you've been reading it. Your vocabulary is limited by the things the author wrote. However, once the author becomes a speaker and talks about the philosophy of healthy living, you will quickly be heavily influenced by it. You learn the mannerism, the expressions, and the charism.

There you have it. If you would like to become someone you like, you'd better learn from someone you could look up to because he or she is someone you gradually become. Choose someone honorable, admirable, and decent. Um... try Andy? 😅

#education