Effect of Language on Our General Knowledge
Many eons ago, there were people who built a tower in rebellion against God. Upon seeing this, God decided to curse them. From that moment on, they would all speak different languages.
Suddenly, this thought came to my mind: my current work gives me experience and the chance to have conversations with people of different nationalities. Based on these conversations, I came to the conclusion that people who know English have better general knowledge than those I've met who speak just one language.
It would be easy to conclude that people who speak more languages are simply more open-minded, but when you meet a person from Britain, for example, and a person from Italy, the person from Britain will have much better general knowledge about everything and will be capable of creating a much better flow in conversation. So, a person whose mother language is English and only knows English has a lot more information than a person from Italy who only knows Italian.
So, my assumption is that knowing English gives you access to more information and more knowledge, leading to a better general view of the world. Having better information or more information will lead to shaping your view better in all areas, better prediction of future happenings, etc. Or, in simple words, you will be in step with time.
In this writing, I will not talk about how different languages shape our brains in different ways and how every word is one feeling that is called upon when saying the word. So, when we do any type of translation, it can never be a good translation. It will be impossible for us to translate or transcribe feelings with different words because every word has a different feeling or a different sense. This heavily influences our brain and how we will think, as well as how much we will be able to think creatively. Knowing different languages can surely help, and all people who know different languages will tell you that when they speak one of them, they are different people in this language. But like I say, I will just touch on this but not talk about it in this writing. Let’s just conclude this thought with every language being both a savior and our own prison, like the idea of Orwell in the book 1984, in which they invent “newspeak,” a language in which it will be impossible to create any word that is unwanted by a tyrannical government. I'm not implying we are living in Orwell's tyrannical idea of the world, I just want to say our language, in principle, functions in the same way as newspeak, making it impossible for us to think outside of our brain's language program.
Every language has its own “doors.” Let’s say these doors are impossible to reach with another language. Knowing multiple languages gives you the possibility to open these thought “doors,” but that is it. I hope you now understand why I compare it to a prison.
This information I found on the internet doing research. Most of the research done on this subject confirms this claim: 46,736 academic journals are published worldwide every year, with over 75.04% of them published in the English language. If we take this as an example, for you to learn something accurate and current, you will need to know the English language. Chinese, which is on the rise, may surpass English. If that happens, for you to have accurate information, you will need to know Chinese.
I presume that what I’ve told you here most of you already know, and it’s nothing new. Maybe someone will be inspired and understand the importance of learning a new language, or perhaps just brainstorm some ideas that are not fully on the same subject I was writing about.
Empty your mind so there are no words, only images.
