Language  &
Society

Why do we sound like different people in different countries? After my cousin noticed how differently I speak to my friends in Milan, I started paying attention to the way my voice, humour and behaviour change between Italy, Dubai and the US. Maybe changing with our surroundings doesn’t mean we’re being different people. Maybe it reveals how much of who we are is shaped by the cultures, languages and people around us.

Growing up somewhere else might not have made me a completely different person, but it could have changed almost everything I think of as “me.” After listening to psychologist Dorsa Amir discuss how children learn and create culture, I started wondering how much of our personality, habits and assumptions are really ours, and how much we inherit from the world around us.

This is probably the question I keep coming back to. We often talk about languages as if some are naturally more important than others. English is a global language, some languages are considered useful for business or international communication, while others are described as rare or endangered. But useful to whom, and important according to what?