Alternate Reality Within Hand‘s Reach
Channel: Tiško kanaliukas
Date: 2021-06-27

A brand new world opens before you when you learn a new language. In the 7th episode of Tisko Channel  Diana Guogienė speaks about how language shapes the culture and mentality of those who speak it. At first she takes examples from very distant cultures from us – Australian, American natives as well as Alaskan Eskimos. 

The language of another Australian tribe reveals that descendants of Europeans tend to perceive processes as things. In a native Australian language it is impossible to say “wave“ as a thing – for them it is always a movement of water. They have trouble differentiating separate waves, for them it is one restive seam. But if they need to speak of a separate wave, the best they can say is “that waving“. 
 
Then Diana Guogienė moves on to draw attention to European languages and how they shape distinct cultures. For example, it is not possible to say in English  “this wine spilled for me“, while in Spanish people would rarely say “I have spilled wine“. 

To conclude with, to learn foreign languages, especially of very distant people, is to open an alternative universe before us. We need not search for aliens from other planets to encounter an alternative world. Learning foreign languages will do that too. 

Animation by Anthony Francisko Shepperd