Language Is a Powerful Tool

     Language is one of the coolest and most powerful tools we have in all cultures around the world.  Language shapes the way we think, express emotions, how we relate to others and so much more. It carries shared history and social identity in many ways. In one of our very first classes you taught us how humor is something that looks different between cultures and I remember thinking that was so cool and that had never crossed my mind prior. Another thing that caught my attention was when we watched that video about how language shapes so much of a person and culture, and the example i'm thinking about is when it talked about how in some cultures they don't have words that represent the future, and I could barely wrap my head around the thought of that but the more it was explained to me, the more it made sense to me. Just by not having specific words to separate the present and the future completely changes the way people live, like when we talked about saving money, harms of smoking, or exercise, we saw that they were living their lives now in a way that will also benefit them in the long run because they don't see the difference between now and what is coming, they just think why not live my life the best I can now because that's where my two feet are. and that is only one example, there are many many more.

    One of the reasons why I think language carries so much cultural meaning is because language is one of the biggest differences between cultures. It's important to have these differences that can reflect the uniqueness in a culture's values, communication norms, and the different ways of understanding the world we all live in. It is so important that we do not judge other cultural languages just because they are different from our own because that can easily lead to harmful assumptions and misunderstanding. This reminds me of another thing we learned in class and that would be ethnocentrism, which is when we think that our culture is superior to somebody else's culture. This is harmful because... well it's just not true, and also because it can lead to discrimination and prejudice towards others. The reason it is so important to continue to learn about all the different languages across different cultures is so we can be more aware of our own biases and appreciate the diversity of human expression in all of its forms. 

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