More on Empowerment - Moderation and Languages

[Nino Novak]

On Wednesday 29 May 2002 11:49, you wrote:

> Now the point is: when I was a little 10 years old kid, and was learning
> French I came to the following conclusion: "French people can never
> understand the world, as in their language they never make a verbal
> distinction between what is essential (ser) and what is an accident
> (estar)". Later I assumed that,
> when I was 10 years-old I was (estava) thinking wrongly. But was I?

Artur -

certainly you were right - in so far as French people can never _completely_
understand the world in the way you (or the Portuguese) do. But, if I may ask
so - why should they? The french way of understanding the world leads them to
different attitudes - but they are not worse nor better.

All the bi- or multilingual grown up people know that thinking in one
language occurs in an absolutely different way than thinking in another
language. And neither is better, but each has very appropriate words or
semantics for certain circumstances - and in turn is deficient and
"dissallows" their speakers to address certain points or to take certain
views.

Sometimes I think that any people are absolutely unique in that aspect. No
one has the very same understanding of the complete "language" spoken by his
neighbour. Although, there are clusters of people that have agreed to use the
most common (!) words in common ;-)

To allow people to find out, what can happen when they just use their (two or
three or more) different "languages" in a synergetic way:  this opens space.

Yours
Nino

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