you dream in a language that I can't understand.

understanding reality through the lens of language

For as long as I can remember, other people have been an immense source of intrigue. Sonder is what they call it—the feeling you get upon realizing that every individual you see has a life as full and real as your own. As far back as my memory allows, I recall sitting in the back seat of the car, looking into others’ cars, wondering where they were going, where they’d come from, or how their day had been. I’d watch as we traveled down the same road, only to separate when they took a left, and my mom took a right. They lived their lives, and we lived ours—a similar reality, yet separate. This was easy to understand for younger me because, although we shared the same road, there was an inherent distinction: I was in my car; they were in theirs.

Life, to me, had always seemed singular and linear. There was only one truth, one way things happened, and as long as I was capable, I believed I’d remember it that way. Then came the discovery of multiple points of view, perceptions, and emotions, and, of course, things became a bit more complicated. My intrigue about others evolved from simple observation to a form of education—I wanted to understand why and how different narratives could occur. Some might call this curiosity nosiness, but younger me couldn’t help it. My family jokingly said I had “wolf ears” because I could pick up on nearly any conversation happening around me. I remember flashes of closed doors and small smiles as they lowered their voices to whisper, knowing my eyes were keenly trained on their lips.

Moving to Amsterdam as a child made quiet observation all the more challenging. I only knew how to observe in English, but outside of school, all I could hear was Dutch. At times, I felt locked out, unable to partake in this version of life. I was used to coming home with snippets of conversation I could relate to, but now I’d hear quick bursts in a language that wasn’t mine. I learned Dutch quickly over the four years I lived there, but toward the end, I sometimes felt like I was missing subtle nuances or hidden meanings. We were saying the same things but hearing them differently. I feel that way now when I watch non-English shows on Netflix. I’ve watched enough Turkish dizis to turn to Duolingo, hoping to rid myself of a dependency on subtitles. The little I know reveals just how lazy the translation can be, making me wonder what else I’m missing. Native Turkish speakers might experience a different joke, a sharper, clearer plotline. I don’t want just the general gist; I want to be fully immersed in the story—I want it all.

This idea of differing takeaways due to language reminds me of the famous novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote Lolita. I confess I haven’t read any of his work, but I know this story: when writing his memoir, he did so in three languages—English, French, and Russian—each containing subtle differences in memory and detail. Having completed the English version, he found that writing in Russian unlocked certain childhood memories that English couldn’t, leading him to revise the English text to better reflect these memories. Before the revision, each audience would have known a slightly different version of Nabokov, all of which were true. Here lies the notion of a singular, linear reality. It’s said that different languages stimulate different neural pathways, leading to variation; perhaps it’s not a question of divergence but of understanding that one reality. What is it about English that limits Nabokov from fully accessing his history? Is it simply that English isn’t his native language, or do languages possess qualities that shape how we interact with our thoughts and perceptions? Nabokov’s experience may allude to a larger phenomenon: language as the lens that subtly shapes how we remember, perceive, and relay reality.

a little glimpse of my favourite place in Amsterdam - the Concertgebouw

I came across a hypothesis that addresses this while reading The Idiot by Elif Batuman. (No spoilers, please—I haven’t finished.) The protagonist, Selin, introduces the concept of Turkish evidential markers, linguistic structures that subtly influence how people view truth and perception.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: a hypothesis, first advanced by Edward Sapir in 1929 and subsequently developed by Benjamin Whorf, that the structure of a language determines a native speaker's perception and categorization of experience.

Turkish Evidentiality: a verb inflection that indicates the source of a past event; the evidential marker specifies whether the speaker witnessed and/or personally carried out the action firsthand or received that information non-firsthand, as in hearsay or inference.

Of course, I am beyond intrigued by this concept. If you were to tell me something you allegedly witnessed, let’s say Harry stealing an apple, and I were to pass this on to someone else, I have two options. I could either say, “I’ve been told Harry stole a bike,” or “Harry stole a bike.” Most times, we lean toward the latter, setting that event in stone , even if we can’t be sure of the truth. If I were to converse in Turkish, I wouldn’t have a choice but to convey reality as it was: indicating that I had not witnessed this event, only heard about it. Certain research shows that by the age of three, Turkish-speaking children use evidential markers, which means that strong ideas of literal truth are instilled so young. Something similar can be seen in Spanish, where a sentence about breaking a vase might translate to “the glass broke itself,” possibly shaping how Spanish speakers perceive accidents and the concept of blame. Think about the real-life impact such linguistic markers could have, far beyond my accurate understanding of Kara Para Aşk, eyewitness testimony being one of them.

If you’ve ever spent enough time with me, you’d know how often I express my dissatisfaction with the amount of English words at my disposal. That may be in part due to my own limitation, but the more I look into it, the more emboldened I become in my opinion, often marveling at words in other languages. The most common example people think of is the multiple different kinds of love in Greek, but did you know that there are fourteen different “flavors” of love that don’t have a direct translation in English? What about the multiple words for snow in the Inuit language, defined by the categorization of texture, or time being encoded with an ordinal instead of a linear value in Hopi culture?

If I had more time on my hands, I would dedicate more of it solely to mastering languages because if there was a superpower that most resembled perfection, it would be polyglotism. It’s not that I think other languages are better than English or that one is the best, just that they’re different. I think the unfortunate thing about translation is that there will always be misfires. As much as languages have structure, the study of linguistics is as much an art as it is a science, and there is a quality, an inexplicable magic that refuses to be reductive. It is my understanding that languages are cultivated in different ways, for different purposes, and therein lies the difference.

Take, for example, the differences between Australian Aboriginal languages and English or Russian and English. When a group of five-year-old Native Australian girls were asked to point east, they got it right every single time, even when blindfolded. When a group of US professors were asked to do the same, they pointed in “every possible direction.”¹ The reason might be the use of cardinal points in their languages. Their language reinforced an “absolute point of reference” into all directions they gave, thus giving them better spatial awareness. Another interesting observation is the difference between cup and glass in Russian. While we categorize the distinction based on material, they categorize it based on shape.²

me discovering linguistics as a field of study

Do you see how quick it is for me to get enthralled by this idea of different realities, which should be more aptly described as multiple perceptions? Don’t even get me started on the different traits we attribute to languages, e.g., the popular romantic Latin-based languages. Of course, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis. It’s not concrete nor is it a rule. There have been several counterarguments, one of them being The Language Hoax proposed by McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia University.

He uses the term “the language hoax” to describe what he sees as an overemphasis on the influence of language on thought. While acknowledging that language can create small, measurable differences in perception, he contends that these differences are ultimately insignificant and do not fundamentally alter how people process life.

It can be incredibly difficult to study the effect of language. If you hope to somehow completely isolate it from culture and its effects on our thoughts and perceptions, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I’m a STEM student, so I felt the need to draw in an antagonistic point, but I do believe there is some body to the Sapir-Whorf theory; it certainly mirrors certain elements of the way I think about the world.

So there you have it, a thorough explanation as to why I wish I could acquire all languages discovered and undiscovered overnight, fueled once again by the very thing that inspires most of my essays: never-ending curiosity. So now not only do I think about the different lives people lead, I think about the way they perceive and remember these experiences. How would I, having English most readily at my disposal do the same ? Perhaps committing to others means accepting their are shades of their experience I won’t be able to reach, so if they dream in a language I can’t understand that makes it all the more special.

1. Lera Boroditsky experiment on spacial relativity & linguistics

2. Yu, A. (2014). How Language Seems To Shape One's View Of The World. NPR. [online] Available at: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/01/02/259298236/how-language-seems-to-shape-ones-view-of-the-world [Accessed 19 Dec. 2023].