Communicating in a different language is a gift. Whether we travel for work or pleasure, or stay in our own country, understanding one another without the barrier of language enhances our lives and that of other.
According to Nelson Mandela.
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
- BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
- DEVELOP YOUR SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL CIRCLES
- You’ll Discover a Sense of Connection with Local Cultures and Histories.
- IT HELPS TO MAKE SENSE OF EVERYTHING.
- You’ll Discover Elements of Your Personality You Never Knew Existed
Studies have shown that when native language is spoken, emotions and feelings play a more active role in thinking.
On the other hand, when one speaks a foreign language, he or she tends to be more logical and not to use emotions and feelings in decision-making as much as in the native one. I guess this situation is related to how languages settle down in our minds. We are more emotional in our native language, because we experience every emotion and feeling in the early stages of life in our native language that we get used to speaking and thinking in without any difficulty.
Hence, we create an emotional connection between us and our native language. Quite the contrary, we learn a foreign language generally systematically by studying its grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and so on. Our minds establish a kind of scheme while speaking, listening, or reading and approach to it analytically. We try to constitute a proper and meaningful usage and understanding of it, especially in early times of learning. Along with this, considering that ideas are conveyed by means of language, this situation forces us to shape our thinking so as to be more logical in virtue of speaking in a foreign language properly.
Furthermore, there is no strong emotional bond between us and a foreign language, and this prevents a big emotional intervention or distraction. This is why speaking a foreign language can be very different from speaking our native language. Saying or hearing bad words in different languages, for example, can affect a speaker quite differently. Using or hearing of those sorts of words in his or her native language could make the speaker more serious, whereas in a foreign language he or she speaks, it could not due to an analytic focus on the language and the lack of emotional attachment. Therefore, it can be claimed that people can feel and understand better emotionally when they speak their native language.