Tell To Teach
Rudolf Steiner often spoke about the mutual influence that language and the people who speak it exert on each other. Languages tend to have certain tendencies in their melody, their vowels, their consonants, etc., which are a direct reflection of the personality of that particular group of people. At the same time, people acquire a certain condition, a certain nuance by the way they speak. How we see the world is manifested by the way we express it in language, both by meaning as well as by the melodic, rhythmic element. In that sense, we can say that languages and their folk have a determined temperament, and in speaking it, we become “it”; its vibration permeates our soul. When we speak only one language we only experience that one-sidedness of soul, but when we learn a foreign language we greatly enrich our experience of life and our world expands. This helps develop an understanding at the soul level of other people’s ways, and we are more willing to see things from different perspectives. How often have we not found that certain things are more readily conveyed in one language than in other, even not in our own native tongue? Language becomes the lens through which we see the world. This makes us aware and tolerant of differences, and we find no fault or advantage in one or the other. Through languages we round up our soul.