There are thousands of languages and cultures different from your own to learn about and embrace - Being able to talk builds a rainbow like bridge between disparate peoples. Fleeting - ephemeral - magical
About half of living humans are at least bilingual. About 20% of Americans are and most of those are bilingual because their mother tongue is different than English. Native English speaking Americans seem to avoid learning how to talk with their fellow humans.
Most estimates say that there are about 7,000 living languages in the world today. Sadly, that is a lot fewer than there were a generation ago — and the trend continues downward. However, this post is more about how much there is still left to learn in this finite world we briefly inhabit than it is to dismay over things we have little ability to fix/control. Today, we have so many more opportunities to communicate directly with people/cultures that were unfathomable even 20 years ago.
I am talking about learning new languages and learning about cultures different from your own. I am a polyglot!
Ever since Covid confined many of us to our own homes (day in and day out) I took time to reflect on what I always wanted to learn. I’m nearing retirement after a long career in pelagic fisheries
Me, trying to talk to an oceanic white tip shark in the central Pacific Ocean
and working with people from many different language and cultural backgrounds. I now have a rekindled passion towards learning new things about cultures that were previously unreachable when I was younger.
US Peace Corps Bardiya Nepal circa 1988- me with my jivan sathi
A lifetime ago..., I joined the US Peace Corps and served in Nepal. I also met the love of my life there and we have been together ever since. I learned the Nepali language and embraced the culture while living there. My village was also about a 5 minute walk from the Indian border — and ever since then, I always wanted to learn Hindi.
Life happened in between and I spent about 30 years researching fish in the Pacific Ocean, raising a family, coaching soccer- the usual, and did not even try to learn Hindi or any new language (except dabbling in Hawaiian from time to time)— then-
Covid — confined me to my house and I finally embarked on an adventure to learn Hindi in earnest. I found myriad free resources available to do so. Today, you can access tutorials and guidance that would have cost thousands of dollars to obtain just a few years ago.
This is a golden time for polyglots!
This amazing time of free access to learning material has led me to study Hindi, Urdu, and now I am starting a new project to learn Persian (Farsi).
We live in a huge world full of wonder and opportunity, making the effort to talk with one another is paramount to the future of mankind. No matter how many languages you learn, you will only be scratching the surface of what you could learn to talk to each other — For me, this is all the more reason to try!
Below is a plot of my personal language learning journey and reflects how hard it will always be to able to talk to each other.
