I never knew language could play such an important part of my life, never knew language would hinder my friendship, restrict my love affairs. prevent myself from growing. in short never knew i could only understand people who spoke my language. I am referring to the language we use on daily basis. the language we use to communicate what we feel .have you ever thought about, how restricted we are by this medium.
I have a good friend, who is Chinese. Its recently that I came across this issue of language as a barrier. she tries to speak in English and I try to learn mandarin. There might be hint of love and mutual admiration thrown in this, but we still struggle. After 8 months of staying together, yes we understand each other, but there have been moments when I see myself hoping that one day we would be able to talk in a language that both of us know. To communicate in a medium which would not limit our conversation. obviously the fact that English is the common language, does help a lot, but still, there have been instances where words have failed us. we just stare at each other or maybe each other's helplessness.
we could have been lot closer, we could have shared a whole new world, we could have explored so many different ideas. but we sometimes dnt understand each other, however hard we try. we are limited. and however hard we try, we are very well aware that, the other person is lot different from what we understand her to be.
it does hurt me to acknowledge the fact that, i might even love based on this language barrier, all this idea of true love would also be limited by my knowledge of languages. the love has to be expressed within this medium, and ill only be capable of understanding this expression of love.
this acknowledgement itself came at a high cost. the very fact that I had to struggle this far to make a good friend, kind of describes my situation. but there is an element of sweet romantic tragedy to it too. Ill be never be able to know my friend fully. Ill always have a limited picture of her. ill never know her completely . maybe i dnt have to .
I have a good friend, who is Chinese. Its recently that I came across this issue of language as a barrier. she tries to speak in English and I try to learn mandarin. There might be hint of love and mutual admiration thrown in this, but we still struggle. After 8 months of staying together, yes we understand each other, but there have been moments when I see myself hoping that one day we would be able to talk in a language that both of us know. To communicate in a medium which would not limit our conversation. obviously the fact that English is the common language, does help a lot, but still, there have been instances where words have failed us. we just stare at each other or maybe each other's helplessness.
we could have been lot closer, we could have shared a whole new world, we could have explored so many different ideas. but we sometimes dnt understand each other, however hard we try. we are limited. and however hard we try, we are very well aware that, the other person is lot different from what we understand her to be.
it does hurt me to acknowledge the fact that, i might even love based on this language barrier, all this idea of true love would also be limited by my knowledge of languages. the love has to be expressed within this medium, and ill only be capable of understanding this expression of love.
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