The alluring thing about languages

I love writing in Swedish. I love writing in English. I wish I knew every language there is just so I could write in each and every one of them and find the differences between them.

Each language is a culture of its own. A history. A glimpse of the minds that make up society.

The best part of the English language: how many words there are. There are words for just about anything, and so many nuances to all of them. Traces of colonization can be found everywhere, from the very basics of the English language (podcast tip: the History of English), which are really just English meshed with whatever invaders that set their eyes on the British isles, to the modern version of the vernacular that can borrow words from whichever culture it wants to just because of its might as a sort of lingua franca of today.

Then there is Swedish. A language that doesn’t have many words that signify differences in class. That invented the word lagom (you should all just start using that word, really!) that so much signifies everything in the Nordic cultures in one tiny word. Lagom – laget om (around the whole group) – you take a sip of the communal glass/bowl in the precise right amount so that nobody gets left without. Nobody can take a too large sip of the ale or bite of the cookie – everyone glares at the people that ”think they are better than other people”.

Swedish also has another wonderful word that you all should just start using – tolkningsföreträde. It means who has the right to interpret a certain word or sentence. Black people should get to say what the norm should be about talking about black people. Gay people should have tolkningsföreträde about how they should be treated. And so on, and so on. A very Swedish concept that everyone could do well to imitate.

I love writing in both these languages, and I love it when I accidentally end up on trying to find a word for a concept that only exists in that one language. Because that is what separates us, what makes our cultures unique and those concepts – those are the ones we should teach others about.

Every culture has its own valid view on things, and we could do well to peek through the eyes of someone else for a short while, if only through a different language and mindset.

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