And Parra

A few nights ago, I was watching a Portuguese stand-up comedian, Andrés de Freitas. In one of his comedy sketches, he said that English gave him a sense of freedom because all his trauma happened in Portuguese. He even pointed out that in English he can casually say “I love you” to a stranger, or engage in humorously exaggerated dirty talk, things... See more

Let’s further consider the plausibility that the relationship between language <> thought <> culture is not linear or uni-directional, but instead a virtuous cycle.

What we can say with absolute certainty is that speaking more than one language makes life a whole lot richer and more interesting, with more dimension and insight. We might not gain a whole new persona, but we do gain glimpses into something else.

More recently came the struggles of pretending to understand bullet-paced conversations at the start of my year abroad, which slowly but surely became less bullet-paced. And finally — the moment I had longed for — I was able to connect on a deep level with others in this third language. I was pleasantly surprised to see that these connections grew... See more

I would go so far as to say that even books and films change personality when presented in different languages. Things do get lost in translation. Some things are humorous precisely because of the way the language is used to express them — they wouldn’t be funny in translation. This is why literary translation is a true art, and also why dubbing... See more