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There are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around in the world, and still people do not understand each other! Why is that? Even if people can speak several languages, this does not mean that they can understand on another. Language is more than just learning to speak—it is much more. The purpose of International Mother Language Day is not only to promote linguistic and cultural diversity, but also solidarity among people. UNESCO promotes its global day of observance on 21 February each year and points out that “every two weeks a language disappears taking with it an entire cultural and intellectual heritage”. Because every language shapes the way we view the world.
Snow isn’t just snow
This is something that people learning a foreign language are acutely aware of. When in Rome do as the Romans do. Foreign languages not only have different vocabulary and terms, but also different meanings for words. While people in Central and Southern Europe usually only talk about “snow”, people in Sweden, for example, have around fifty different words related to snow. Language also allows us to reason about reality. Is it the kind of snow that can trigger an avalanche or the snow that can be used to build an igloo?
Lingua materna
Language describes the environment that the speaker must have discovered beforehand. And because this starts even before birth and is often initiated by the infant’s mother in the first few years of life, we generally refer to it as “mother tongue”—without overlooking the fact that it may not always be the biological mother, of course, but also a close caregiver. The term mother tongue dates back to the early Middle Ages and first appears in Latin as lingua materna. Science speaks of the first language—the first language a person learns when growing up—and of the heritage language. A heritage language is a language someone learns in the home as a child, without it being the dominant language in the region.
Faith, love, and hope
Some words from the Bible ABCs seem to be universally valid. But just as snow is understood differently depending on where you live, familiar Christian terms are also understood differently: eternity, soul, God. Interpretations differ.
Faith
How many denominations are there actually? Several world religions are in competition with each other and there are dozens of animist religions. Christianity is the largest family of faith, whereby “family” should be understood in the broadest sense. The two billion Christians in the world do not all believe the same thing. Even what should characterise Christians and distinguish them from other world religions is no longer believed without question: that Jesus Christ is the Son of God—very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father. So even the creed (I believe) is as different as the number of believers.
Love
It seems that love has become a difficult notion. Even the biblical context has been pushed into the distant future and now feels remote: “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13: 34–35). Jesus Christ, if you believe in Him at all, insists on the fulfilment of the double commandment of love of God and love of neighbour! And where has our Christian love and our love of neighbour gone? Just as small languages gradually disappear, the language of love is also slowly being lost. Loving your neighbour and others and strangers as yourself is one of the commandments that are constantly being broken.
Hope
And what about hope, which, as everyone knows, dies last? Hope’s focus is on the invisible, the unthinkable: “For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?” (Romans 8: 24). As Christians, it would be in our own best interest if we were to adopt a bit of an “escapist” mentality now and then and distance ourselves from reality.
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Photo: NKCoolper – stock.adobe.com