Language: The Culture of Words

There is no more basic component to a culture than that of its language. Language defines who you are and what you do. Without language, we would have no communication....How could we!? Yet while language brings us together as humans, it also divides us as cultures. On the obvious level, different cultures have different languages. One needs to understand these languages in order to be accepted in a culture. You wouldn't very well expect to speak French in China now would you? Yet language shapes our culture in more sudden ways. Each culture has certain words that are untranslatable into other languages. Thus even when translating, some of the meaning of the word is lost. This culture of language creates a boundary that separates different parts of the world, its an unavoidable facet of human life.

On a much more minor scale, I too have experienced this language of culture. Growing up in a Jewish family, my grandparents were rather fluent in Yiddish. While this proficiency disseminated throughout the generations, my parents still used quite a few Yiddish phrases. As I result, I too picked up a few of those terms. Because of TV culture, many of these terms, such as meshugganeh and chotchkie, are easily understood and translated in English. However, my grandparents, being the "interesting" people that they were, apparently manipulated the language to create their own words. Just right now while googling information for this blog, I became acutely aware that one of the words my late Zayde used to call me, tottyshein (it supposedly was an endearing term for a small child), isn't even a word at all! Thus, absolutely no one out of the small culture that is my family would understand me if I used that word!