Reference no: EM133252358

It is one of the remarkable aspects of language that we can appear to take on different personalities simply by making different sounds than the ones to which we are accustomed. For those who are truly bilingual this seems so obvious as to hardly bear mentioning: they flit easily between two tongues-an English set of vowels and mannerisms flows into Urdu patterns and intonations with scarcely a ripple-though they will talk casually about "my Pakistani self" and "my English persona." But for those of us who came late to another language, it is always something of an odd experience to see and feel it happen, the moment when you notice another personality overtaking your familiar one, the moment when you become "Italian" or "Japanese." It's the moment when you stop worrying about grammar and accent, and allow the other language to possess you, to pass through you, to transform you.

When I speak Spanish, the language that I know best besides English, I find my facial muscles set in a different pattern, and new, yet familiar gesture taking over my hands. I find myself shrugging and tossing my head back, pulling down the corners of my mouth and lifting my eyebrows. I touch people all the time and don't mind that they stand so close to me and blow cigarette smoke into my face. I speak more rapidly and fluidly and I use expressions that have no counterpart in English, expressions that for all my experience as a translator, I simply can't turn into exact equivalents. To speak another language is to lead a parallel life; the better you speak any language, the more fully you live in another culture.

• Do you agree that if you know the language of another culture, you are more likely to "understand" that culture-why?
• Relate what the text says about the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis to this idea.
• Summarize the  Sapir Whorf Hypothesis from the text.