“Language functions in society as our longest bridge, yet as our tallest wall as well.”
We act as though everyone knows English, and that’s far from reality. My father immigrated to the United States from Finland in the mid-1970s and faced numerous struggles throughout his adolescence all due to the present language barrier between his community and himself. Growing up in a poorer part of New York City, he attended the UN school, in which he was able to gain English proficiency quickly, but was never fully afforded the same fundamental understanding of a native English speaker is given. Throughout his youth, he was an excellent student in applied sciences and mathematics, but often found difficulty in the humanities. Upon application time for colleges and universities in my father’s senior year, his final SAT score sat somewhere around 1000, all because of his inability to communicate in a language that society chose as “normal.”
I use my father’s example because I think his ability to succeed in a reality that was perspectively at odds with him shows that a difference in language capabilities does not necessarily mean a difference in thought. All too often as someone who was born and raised to speak English as my primary language, I subconsciously associate language that I can’t understand with insignificance, and I think that we all do this to an extent. When in reality, good ideas have no predetermined language. If we consider some of the greatest concepts society holds value today, most of them were originally written or implemented in some language other than English, or potentially no verbal language at all. Think Aristotle’s concept of Telos, Pythagorean theorem, Montesquieu’s delegation of power, or new artificial intelligence. In this way, we often see language as a barrier between people. At the same time, a shared dialect or way of speech can be one of the strongest forces of community among a population. With respect to literature, poetry, music, film, and more we not only value what is being literally communicated to us but how and why we understand a piece of work’s message and are able to appreciate it. More importantly, a shared language between two people acts as a bridge between them. The ability to express one’s ideas clearly is one of the greatest aspects of independence that we internationally value. Conversely, if two people do not share a spoken language, there arises an intrinsic barrier between them, preventing them from expressing desires and feelings on a fundamental level, along with thoughts and contemplations on a developed level. It is in this way that language functions in society as our longest bridge, yet as our tallest wall as well.
I found inspiration for this project, learning Mandarin Chinese, upon thinking about what I would consider the farthest thing from me was; I wanted to escape my comfort zone. So naturally, I chose the other side of the globe. I landed on Chinese compared to other languages within the Eastern Hemisphere for a number of reasons: it’s widely spoken, it’s paired with a deep historical background, it’s hard, and it’s undervalued.
- It’s widely spoken
- Wikipedia estimates there are roughly 800 million native-born speakers of Mandarin. Therefore, learning Mandarin Chinese compared to a more localized language such as Japanese or Korean, while equally interesting, would allow me to connect to a large community of speakers, and the idea of large-scale community connection was an important goal of mine when deciding on a language.
- It’s paired with a deep historical background
- Chinese civilization itself has lasted roughly 5000 years, with Mandarin dating back some 3000 years to my understanding. Additionally, I found China’s history and current front on the world stage particularly interesting. China is the largest manufacturing economy in the modern age, while still being a country that is under a communist regime. This Orwellian double-truth fascinates me to the extent of my knowledge of the country, and I think learning the language will also allow me to learn about the culture and history of the nation itself. At the top of the website you’ll notice that along with language lessons, I also have history lessons, and that is because I think in order to fully embrace a new language, a key aspect of how that language functions in society is with respect to the culture, historical and modern.
- It’s hard
- Chinese is commonly regarded as one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn. This is inherently due to Chinese’s employment of tones, which is a concept not present in Germanic and Romance languages, though something I will go over in one of my first lessons. Additionally, I wanted something new that I could view as a challenge. I currently study Spanish in school and have gained proficiency at it. For this reason, I wanted something that appeared totally unfamiliar to me; I wanted to throw myself into the deep end of the swimming pool.
- It’s undervalued in American culture
- As Americans, I feel as though we often look upon Chinese as a subordinate language to our familiar English. With China as the greatest producer of our consumer electronics and entertainment products, along with Chinese being the butt end of middle school jokes (“that math problem looks like Chinese to me”), it seems clear to me that subconsciously we look upon China as a working-class population, and this inherently undervalues it in society. It is clear to me that China is more than just orange chicken and iPhones, but my privilege often leads to a narrow worldview, and I think that if all else fails, embarking on this academic journey will allow me to widen it.