My love for languages...

This unavoidable quarantine that has been imposed on people the world over, has some perks too. It seems to have brought out the best in people, as far as creativity is concerned. In our day to day hectic schedule, we hardly find time, to nurture our hobbies and our interests, and somewhere along the way, these get put on the back burner of our life. Just like most people in the world, I have been busy trying to learn new things, new arts, and also trying to catch up on some long pending reading as well. However, sometimes, one's love for certain things, always remains constant, despite one's busy schedule. One such love, for me is, is my love for languages. With all the free time on hand, I was thinking about the new things that I have learnt in the past 2 months, and I had a sudden realization, that I have always found time to nurture my love to learn new languages, and to improve my vocabulary of the languages I already know. This urged me to, after a long hiatus, to write a brief post on my love for languages.

I recently came across a quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein, which beautifully describe the love of a polyglot for languages, like so:  

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." 

It is true that a language provides an insight into the culture of people who are native speakers of the language.  My love affair with languages began right from my school days. Being from a country, where the first language, of majority  of the population, is not English, has its advantages. You inculcate a habit of being adept in speaking in more than one language, right from a tender age. Contrary to the belief of certain non-Indian countries, India does have good schools, where the primary language of instruction is English. English was always my favourite subject to study in school, and my mother also inculcated a habit of reading in me, which made my English more refined. The people who know me, know that I hail from Maharashtra, a state in India, where the primary language spoken is Marathi. Being from a household, where even the day day to Marathi spoken, should be chaste and grammatically correct, I can say that I have a good command over Marathi as well. Hindi is the national language of India, and being conversant in Hindi, is nothing surprisingly, for an India born and brought up in India. But I did not want to limit my world of languages to these three languages, to which I had easy access, and was always on the lookout to expand on my skills in other languages as well. The people who have lived in Pune, know that Pune is a city where people love to learn foreign languages, and there is no dirth of foreign language courses offered as  as part of the education system. I had the opportunity to learn the German language, for a brief period of 2 years, during my college education. However, I never got the chance to further my knowledge in this language. As a result, my vocabulary in the German language is currently limited. 

My legal education took me to the United States of America, a country where there are numerous non-native English speakers. I remember once being asked by someone, while there, "How are you so conversant in English, since English is not your first language?" This was a moment of pride for me. However, once I started working in the United States, I realized, that being conversant in English was never enough. I realized my limitations in languages, when I could not converse with people who were native Spanish speakers or Cantonese or Mandarin speakers, and were not so conversant with English. I had colleagues who could speak English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, as well as other languages, which I had never dreamt of learning. 

As luck would have it, I was brought back to my native country, shortly after this realisation dawned on me. I have always found Spanish to be a fascinating language, and I decided to start learning this language. This imposed quarantine has however interrupted my education in learning new languages, but where there is a will there is a way. I am currently keeping myself busy learning Spanish on a very useful phone application called Duolingo. 

Hopefully,  when we all are out of this predicament soon, I am considering pursuing my passion for languages more seriously, and you never know, I may start learning German as well, from where I left off. Since I cannot travel the world right now, I am expanding my world by learning a new language. As rightly said by Ludwig Wittgenstein, I wouldn't want to limit my world, by limiting my love for languages. Hope you all are doing something that you love, as well!

Be safe, be healthy! Te veo pronto!