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being bilingual is utterly mundane for something like half the people on this planet and yet it is a mind-opening thing that's like… hard to communicate to people who literally have only ever spoken one language in their lives
no, you don't know everything if you only speak one language! no, you won't get it through translation alone! it's one of those things that you have to experience to fully understand i think. i guess there might be some incredibly open-minded monolinguals out there but
‪can you understand how nebulous all concepts are when you've only had to learn them once?‬
‪anyway that's how i paid off the original sin of being born briti— i mean what‬
i think this is what cow tools was about
‪oh, you may also find that a different language draws out a different side of your personality. i definitely gravitate to different languages depending on my mood which is interesting‬
@hikari definitely, I can feel the difference
the same applies for listening and the internal experience. the texture of thought is VERY different
for example, emily has discovered that asking me certain things in german bypasses a whole area of trauma
@scarlet @hikari related to the convo happening on private xitter rn, we personally notice a quite strong "internal mental strain/effort" whenever we try to reach across our brain's internal language barrier -- it flips our language usage (of English) very hard into the "objective outside observer who refuses to get involved in e.g. the emotions" mode
@hikari I've noticed that I can more easily express my depression in Spanish than in English, even though it's my second language and I'm far from fluent
@hikari i wonder if this is why there are so many trans people into linguistics
@hikari I want to say all translation is approximation, but I feel like that's not so much strictly true as it is a useful thing to assume.
@Catriona no, it's always approximate
@Kahanis well, none of them were designed!