Learn a language, know thyself
How the languages we learn are a gateway to self-awareness
"I’m learning a language to know myself better," she said, sparking a wave of curiosity and confusion among her listeners. How, they wondered, could language learning be a path to self-awareness? It's a question that invites us into a deeper exploration of the intricate bond between language and identity, and the transformative journey that language learning can be.
In our results-driven society, languages are often viewed as practical tools to achieve specific goals. Yet, if we pause to reflect on the essence of language—the reason for its existence, how it shapes and describes our reality—we start to understand the profound connection between the languages we speak and our own self-perception.
Understanding this connection encourages us to be more intentional with our language learning, opening us up to the ways in which our understanding of ourselves might shift, allowing us deeper self-compassion and healing.
Also Read : A Different Language, a Different You, The Healing Power of Learning French
The languages you speak shape who you are
There is a deep connection between the language you learn to speak from birth and your identity.
Language is so much more than words and verbs put together to create meaning : language is a heritage. Designed to bring unity, understanding and belonging to a tribe, ensuring their survival and their well-being, the languages we learn at birth play this foundational role in shaping our identity, acting as a lens through which we see the world and understand our place within it.
This influence manifests in several key areas:
Cultural Identity
The idioms, the jokes, the sayings, and the stories passed down through generations in a language carry with them the values, the beliefs, and the historical contexts of a whole culture. Growing up with a particular language embeds these cultural elements into our identity. Regardless of us being conscious of it or not, it influences everything: our moral values, the way we celebrate, the way we mourn, and the way we love.
Social Connections
The very first reason why babies learn to speak is to form social bonds with their love ones. It comes to no surprise then that the languages we learn to speak as children often determine what our social identity will be like : the way we interact with others, the groups with which we identify, the roles we take on within these groups and even our body language!
All these elements contribute to create a sense of belonging, and they do follow a code that is intertwined with language and culture.
Self-Expression and Communication
The words, the expressions, and the structures that are available in the first languages we speak shape how we learn to express our thoughts, our emotions, and our identities. We must keep in mind here that even when words have their equivalents in another language, they often don’t carry the same connotation, which means we’re getting slightly different meanings or interpretations. The languages we learn to identify with will often give us the first layer of understanding to our inner world.
Perception and Worldview
As I’ll explain more in depth here below, the languages we grow up with can also influence our perception of time, space, color, and even relational dynamics. This shapes not only how we think about the world but also how we interpret our place within it, affecting our worldview and, by extension, our identity.
Multilingual Identities
For those like me who grew up with more than one language, you may agree that each language you speak highlights different parts of your identity. In my experience for instance, French was associated with school, social life and administration, whereas Italian was the private language of family and domestic life. Different languages activate different aspects of the self, depending on the context. Still today, I’ll use Italian to tell my non-Italian-speaking children that dinner is ready…
Identity and Language Loss:
I’ve heard so many people tell me how they feel that a lost language is like a lost part of themselves. The loss or diminishing of a birth language, whether through personal choice, assimilation, or external pressures, can lead to feelings of loss or change in identity. It’s fascinating to think how differently we could grow as people depending on the languages we identify with. For instance, who would my husband be, if he hadn’t been forced to forget his Djiboutian language in order to fit in with his new adoptive country? Wouldn’t there be a part of me that would be lost if I hadn’t been taught Italian as a kid?
As you can see, the languages we learn at birth are not just tools for communication; they are integral to the construction of our identity. They gift us with a cultural heritage, they shape our social interactions, and they influence our cognitive processes. They provide us with the means to express who we are.
Becoming aware of how our mother tongues shape us helps us keep this awareness when learning new languages, bringing with us a sense of curiosity to how we can grow, change, hold a different view of the world and adopt new identities along the way.
The languages you speak shape how you think
The idea that the languages we speak shape how we think is rooted in the linguistic relativity hypothesis, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
This concept suggests that the structure and vocabulary of our language influence our perceptions, thoughts, and cognitive processes.
While the hypothesis initially proposed strong deterministic effects—implying that language defines our thoughts—modern interpretations suggest a more nuanced relationship. Here's how language can shape thinking:
Categories : different languages categorize the world in different ways. For example, some languages have multiple words for what English speakers call "snow" or "rice," reflecting different types and stages. This can affect how speakers of those languages perceive and interact with the world around them.
Colors : research shows that the way languages categorize colors can influence how individuals perceive them. For instance, if a language has distinct words for light blue and dark blue, speakers of that language are quicker to distinguish between these shades compared to speakers of languages that use a single word for blue.
Direction : some languages use absolute directions (e.g., north, south, east, west) rather than egocentric spatial terms (left, right) to describe locations and directions. Speakers of such languages are often more aware of their orientation in geographic space than speakers of languages that rely on relative positioning.
Time : the way languages express time can influence how people think about it. For example, English speakers might think of time as moving from left to right, reflecting written language direction. In contrast, speakers of languages that are written from right to left might visualize time's flow in the opposite direction.
Gender: languages that attribute gender to nouns, like French, can influence how speakers perceive the objects or concepts those nouns represent. This can lead to different associations and characteristics being ascribed to objects based on their linguistic gender.
Action and responsibility : some languages, in their structure, place more emphasis on the agent performing an action (agentive languages) while others may focus more on the action or its effects (non-agentive languages). This can influence how speakers of those languages perceive causality and responsibility.
Future and savings: interesting studies have suggested that languages that have a distinct future tense (as opposed to those that use the present tense to refer to future events) might influence economic behavior, like saving less for the future, because they create a psychological distance between the present and future selves.
Language certainly influences thought, although of course you’re capable of thinking about concepts for which your language may not have words : the influence of language on thought is just one aspect of how we interact with and interpret the world around us. Let’s not forget that culture, personal experience, and individual cognitive abilities also play significant roles in shaping our thoughts and perceptions.
Still, knowing that the languages we grow up with impact so much of our perception and understanding of the world and of ourselves, I can’t help but wonder what happens then, when we add new languages to the palette of perceptions available to us?
The languages your learn shape who you become
Reserved in French, direct in Italian (influenced by southern-Italy manners), outgoing in English, matter-of-factly in Dutch, passionate in Spanish, laid-back in Portuguese…
As you learn several languages, you may feel like you’re developing a personality disorder. I promise you you’re not. Rather, you’re revealing parts of yourself that you didn’t know existed until then. I like to call this “identity gain”, as with every new language you learn to speak comes the opportunity for profound transformations in how you see yourself and interact with the world.
This process of identity enrichment occurs through several avenues:
Cultural Expansion
Learning a new language opens the door to understanding another culture from the inside. When you let yourself be immersed in the languages you learn, you gain a deeper appreciation of its perspectives, its traditions, it’s values. You start considering your own through a different angle, perhaps even adding to your cultural vocabulary, adopting some parts of it as your own. I love to see my personality as a kaleidoscope of everything I’ve learned, experienced, questioned and finally chosen for myself. Letting yourself embody a new language, it's like adding new colors to one's palette of self-understanding and expression.
Bridging Identities
Whether you were born into or you’ve created your own multicultural background, learning the language of your heritage, or the language of your current residence helps you bridge multiple aspects of your identity. I’ve been living in Portugal for almost 6 months at the time I’m writing this, and interestingly learning Portuguese has sparked the desire to dive again into Italian - one of my mother tongues. As if expanding forward into something new was also calling me to reinforce and expand backwards into something that shaped me at the origin. This is true regardless of your lifestyle : every new language you learn reminds you of the languages you already own, tightens your bonds, refreshes your perspectives and understanding of the language, and therefore of yourself. It allows for a more integrated self-concept that honors both roots and present experiences.
A New Lens on the World
As we’ve discussed today, each language you learn offers unique ways of categorizing and interpreting the world. Learning a new language has the power of changing and enhancing your perspective on life. It allows you to see and think about the world in ways that you hadn't before. As you let yourself dive into this journey, bring awareness to what happens inside of you. You’ll see it too : your expanded worldview becomes an intrinsic part of who you are.
As such, language learning is much more than the acquisition of a communication tool: it's a transformative journey that can significantly enrich your life and your identity. It allows you to explore new facets of yourselves, connect with broader communities, and navigate the world with a plural, enhanced sense of self and purpose.
Each language you speak is an opportunity to meet yourself
I love the image of languages being like little mirrors of a disco ball. Each language acts as an independent mirror, reflecting a part of you that is unique and that was perhaps hidden before. Each language shows you who you are, what you believe, what you desire, what you value through a lens that is specific to that language. Not completely different from the other lenses, yet not exactly the same. Just as if the mirror had shifted to a slightly different angle.
Take a step back and you get a whole picture, that reflects you, your unicity, but also our very common humanity. I think this is why I love promoting language learning so much : in reality it’s not so much about the languages that I care, it’s about the call for more unity, more mutual understanding, more compassion in our world, across borders and differences.
But there can’t be mutual understanding and compassion if there isn’t self-understanding and self-compassion first. And the languages you learn are an exceptional opportunity to meet yourself, free of judgment and cultural pressures.
Like we said before, the first language that we learn, we learn to belong to our family, to our tribe. It’s an instinct of survival: if we speak the same, if we eat the same, if we act the same, then we’re together and we’re safe. But how much conditionings do we take on for the sake of survival. Who would you have become if you hadn’t been raised the way you were raised? What would you have believed? What would your interests be? Would it be the same? Probably not. Yet, would you still be you? Absolutely, yes. The same essence, but through another identity, another expression.
Learning a new language allows you to gently break the codes of what was expected of you so you can join the wonderful adventure of discovering this essence, of trying out new thoughts, new habits, new beliefs, without any risk. You can almost perceive every language as a “land of neutrality” where you’re allowed to play and consider yourself through different perspectives without fearing anger or rejection from your loved ones : they don’t speak that language.
What is fascinating when we allow ourselves to explore ourselves in the languages we adopt, is to observe what happens when the inner judge is on vacation. And do you know what happens? Vulnerability, Truth, Honesty, Clarity.
I still remember how a few years ago, I was journaling in Italian - something I hadn’t done in quite a while - and discovered that although I was putting a nice smile on my face, I was in fact quite sad because I missed part of my family - a family that I had recently broken ties with because of toxicity. At the time, I was still with a lot of anger, and I would never have allowed myself to recognize the truth. That despite being absolutely sure that I had done what needed to be done, still a part of me was sad and was missing them. Vulnerability, Truth, Honesty, Clarity.
That journaling session in Italian allowed me to understand myself better and to welcome all the emotions that were present within me. With self-compassion then, I led myself to accept the complexity of my experience, bringing more acceptance and healing.
Not every journaling session in a foreign language will lead to breakthroughs. Sometimes, it’s just about tightening the bonds we have with a language, or quickly bringing clarity to the list of things we have to do that week. However, knowing that this is one of the available tools that you have, as a language learner, for a deeper relationship to yourself is such a gift.
Conclusion
Exploring a new language is like exploring new facets of yourself. It offers a neutral ground for experimentation, free from judgment, where you can adopt different perspectives and discover aspects of your identity that had been unknown to you before.
Through this journey, language reveals itself to be more than a mere tool—it becomes a bridge to understanding ourselves and others on a deeper level, an avenue for self-expression and growth.
In essence, every language learned and spoken is an invitation to expand our understanding of ourselves and the world. It prompts us to consider who we are, who we might become, and how we relate to the mosaic of cultures and perspectives that make up our global community.
My advice to you as you take on this journey is this:
Try.
Consider using the languages you know to reflect upon yourself and upon your life. Consider how you feel about things, when you look at them through the lens of a particular language.
Consider how you would allow yourself to feel, who you would allow yourself to be, in this sacred space, this “land of neutrality”, this language that doesn’t know you yet but is ready to reveal parts of you to yourself, without a biais, without a judge, without a threat.
What are the parts of you that have been yearning to come out, to be expressed, to be explored?