No, I don't think any of that is a big enough deal to somehow change your entire view on the world. Also a lot of people do these things, so even if it was super special there is plenty of people that would understand it.
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
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Considering more people in the world speak multiple languages than only one – multilingualism is the majority – no, we very much don't experience existence from a point of view no one else can understand.
Definitely. I always speak Vietnamese with my parents at home, because that's their mother tongue and it just feels much closer than speaking French.
Growing up as an immigrant is a unique experience, at one point one of my previous girlfriends said "you should stop with your immigrant things". I knew it was over (for other reasons too, but that was one of them)
My current partner also grew up abroad, so she knows what that is like to be a foreigner in another country. We also live in a country where none of us are locals. But we're both fine with that, because we know how it is.
Experience existence...? No, nothing open minded people could not do. I think it's rather related to broaden your view, get out of your bigger bubble so to say.
See what you take as given can be totally different. So it's absolutely important and worthwhile to be abroad but I don't see it in the way you asked.
Also my thoughts are not in any language, that's just the input/output filter, so to say.
Yes because I come from a rural region where most people can only speak French, and I'm the only one of my family that can speak multiple languages. Sometimes it feels like I know different worlds unbeknownst to them.
No because the languages that I know are not rare. There's millions also speaking those languages so my perspective and experience is far from being unique.
Fluent in three languages. Mathematically speaking, there are enough people with my specific migration route (or even language combination) up until the point I left the US that there should be lots of ppl who think the same... But yes I do feel like my PoV can be a bit unique
The various forms of neurodivergence I have certainly don't help... like for example I don't have an internal monologue, which changes my PoV a lot. Actually the neurodivergence probably shaped my PoV even more than the languages; I never really fit in even at where I was born
Diversifying your means of understanding can feel really rewarding(and challenging).
As for missing something…I think we overestimate how much language shapes thinking. Most meals are just a version of pizza.
Pizza or stew.
Speaking from my own personal experience, recall and exposure as a whole give a definitive perspective on the human experience, as well as contributes to those you exonerated along the way.
As a whole I've found it isn't a huge difference as a single event in the grand scheme but it can really add up over time.
Spouse is Kenyan and I have learned a fair bit of Swahili. My spouse is fluent in English, Swahili, and their tribal language which I know basically none of.
I never could have imagined how much it would help me understand them better by understanding their language. It has profoundly changed me as a person.
Language is not purely functional, it is woven into who we are and how others perceive us to be. I started learning to simply participate more with them and their family, now I am experiencing my brain be rewritten.
As a person who only spoke English well into adulthood and then is rapidly learning a very different language and culture, I feel like I have a POV that nobody else in my life understands.
Thanks for asking :)
Yes.
When talking with the average American back home, there are lots of things you can sense they don't notice and don't seem to think about, especially if they've never even travelled.
From small things like always being cognizant of time zone differences and phone number country codes you use, to bigger things like seeing how crappy American restrictive zoning laws, suburban hellscapes, and car-centric society are.
Also, from the weeb perspective, going from needing anime subtitles to almost not needing them is pretty interesting.
Also, from the weeb perspective, going from needing anime subtitles to almost not needing them is pretty interesting.
Japanese too hard. I gave up. 😭
Japanese speaking and listening is still harder than reading and writing for me, and I'm guessing it's the same for you, since you already know 漢字?
I can hear some Japanese words because Cantonese (and sometime Mandarin) has some overlap sounds with Japanese.
In Steins;Gate for example: Japanse pronounciation for WW3 (第三次世界大戦) is "Daisanji sekai taisen", Cantonese is "Daisaamchi saigaai daaizin", so when that character said those words, I was momentarily confused, like: why is there Cantonese in my Anime?, but then I realized, both probably derived from the same common anestral language, probabky some merchants traveled from the 粵 (Yue) region of China to Japan or vice versa, and that's probably how these pronunciations influenced each other.
Aye, that's it.
You can hear it in some words like 日本, as 'nippon' and 'Japan' both feel closer to the Middle Chinese pronunciation than they are to modern Mandarin's 'rìběn'.
Also, I hear Chinese students unintentionally (or half-intentionally) slip in Mandarin pronunciations all the time when they forget the Japanese pronunciation that is very close.
Absolutely! A lot of an country's or region's culture and history is reflected in their language. In their expressions, vocabulary, loan words, etc.
If you mean that "thinking" in another language influences things like your outlook and even reaction to things... you'd be correct. It's been studied and documented that with every language you learn, you also get something of a personality upgrade that comes with being able to understand and convey concepts specific to that language.
It's not exactly as elaborate as gaining an whole new pov, but it's nonetheless similar.
Learning a second language sorta unlocked a new 'personality' for me, it's kinda weird and was pretty huge. My third language didn't seem to change much? Though it might be because it was german and I don't feel like I will ever truly master it
I’ve studied Spanish (I’m basically fluent), a bit of Japanese on my own in high school along with a bunch of random false starts in other languages like German (and a stint learning Esperanto).
It wasn’t until my 30’s when I started learning Mandarin that my brain was like “holy shit, this is different!”
I tend to prefer Asian languages because they make more sense to me — all the conjugating and irregularities in European languages just make me crazy.
Definitely. I spent several years living in a South American country, one that is considered almost "high income" for the region. Uruguay. Now back in the States I still recognize how much less we USA folks could live on if our society was not so pushed by constant consumption by the corporatocracy's propaganda.
Learning to think in another language. Learning how even everyday things like doors and locks are different. Feeling distant from yet also slowly growing into that new to me culture
Smaller space, more use of renewables for heat, cooking, electric generation. Smaller cars than the giants on US roads that everybody here seems to "need". Yet many of those very small cars are indeed USA street legal if Hyundai/KIA, GM, etc imported the Brasil-Made Chevrolet Onyx, the Argentina-made small Chevrolets, the South American KIA Picanto, VW "city car" the Volkswagen Up! (Already on EU streets in an even smaller version)
Grocery stores with more home made and store made products. Yet without the massive duplication we have of entire aisles of breakfast cereals, soaps, etc. There was a reasonably broad degree of consumer choices but not the overwhelming and ridiculous amount here.
People shopping in small amounts for what they need that day. Rather than huge hauls from Costco?
And the universal and affordable healthcare. Which was not the single-payer free-at-service nonsense that some US politicians claim everywhere in the world' has. (Dear Bernie, NOBODY in the world has that!) Paid out of your local social security tax equivalent if employed, or about $60 US per month to buy into it if neither employed nor on benefits. Small "ticket charges" for physicians, labs, imaging, and about a $40 US ticket charge for the hospital ER. ZERO charge for hospital stay and all labs, tests, etc during that stay.
Mandatory voting with real competing parties and coalitions of parties. Military used almost only for UN peacekeeping.
There were frustrating times, and I personally had family reasons to return. But I still miss it, and sometimes envy those of my Uruguayan friends who could afford to travel to the US and my US friends that could afford homes in Uruguay while keeping a home also in the US.
One learns in ones bones that the US way is not the only way.
Brazilian here, your point about cars is very nice, but, as much as compact hatches are still the biggest sellers, Brazil has unfortunately been suffering very hard with the whole "SUVfication" bullshit. It's to the point where some car manufacturers will just make a small hatch family car slightly larger, give it like 3 more inches of ground clearance, somewhat bigger wheels, and then call it an SUV, and all the soccer moms flock to it like lemmings (this is the entire philosophy behind the Renault Kardian. It's literally just a Gen III Dacia Sandero with different body panels and lights that is a little taller off the ground).
The grocery thing is probably the universal experience when moving from a country where the average person has a high disposable income to low. There are simply more choices.
The grocery thing is probably the universal experience when moving from a country where the average person has a high disposable income to low. There are simply more choices.
I mean, if you are traveling as a tourist, things seem cheap, but to a local who works there, maybe not.
Westerners always say China is very cheap to visit, but as a former Guangzhou resident, when I was a kid, my parents had to work all the time and I rarely got to spend time with them. And we lived in a very shitty slum neighborhood. Locals don't really share the same experience.
I think the people who are on work visas are just doing English teaching, very comfortable job, or maybe even some "White Monkey Job" that pays a lot.
Most Chinese people cannot teach English... so there's that...
Wait I thought this was about Brazil and the USA. I know there are shopping malls in some big tier one cities that are primarily aimed for tourists and that’s another story but I meant local grocery stores outside the big cities and then compare that between Brazil and USA or some other lower disposal income country than the US
I love visiting China but I don't really see much of a reason to want to live there
Tbh I don't even feel safe re-visiting, unless I get magically body-swapped into a white dude or something.
From what I've heard, ethnic Chinese holding foreign citizenship still effectively gets treated as Chinese. I'm more likely to get exit-banned than some random white dude.
Also, I kinda feel sus about my parents. They jokingly threatened to send me back to China because "The West" is becoming "harmful" to me... I'm like... bitch what you mean... you literally brought me here, the fuck?
I read some news about involuntary psychiatric treatments and I'm just terrified af. I'm pretty sure they have connections back home.
My fear is that, and to be clear, this is just my own fears, not saying that this will happen, but I fear that my parents could get me exit-banned and bribe some corrupt doctor to declare me insane or something and force involuntary ECT or someshit like that and wipe my memories of their emotional abuse/neglect. But again, that's just my fears, I hope they aren't secretly that controlling/manipulative.
Here in the US, they are nobodys, they don't have the Guanxi to do weird things, so its harder for them to weaponize the government's tentacles against me. Things have to go through the courts and unlike China, they can't just do involuntary treatments without a court order.
Sometimes my mom forgets we're in the US and still try shenanigans with the court system, I've seen it first hand, fucking crying in court because she got an unfavorable judgement. Bruh, shenanigans don't work here. (not unless you're part of the 1%, which we are not)
From my experience"from what I've heard" stuff can be unreliable, although in your circumstances, sounds like you're best playing it safe. There were cases in China of children being institutionalised for BS like videogame addiction. There's also the chance though that they fixed that problem. For example, I was warned against smog in Beijing, I arrived and there were trees everywhere and half the cars were electric. Turns out they fixed the problem (although the city didn't have the freshest of air but I didn't have any adverse health impact from a temporary visit). I had heard stuff about Christian Persecution there, legally churches do need to be state sanctioned, but people claimed such churches were just propaganda arms/theatres for an illusion of a right to religious belief. I went to a church there and the way the service was carried out had it's unique aspects, but the actual content of what was being preached wasn't any different or concerning from what churches would preach here in the UK. There was no politics mentioned except a Chinese flag sitting outside the building and a poster tucked in the corner outside talking about "socialist values" which translated wasn't really anything alarming from a theological standpoint.
Further research indicated the reason why Opendoors (an organisation commonly cited regarding Christian Persecution) put them in the "red" category was due to Xinjiang and Tibet where family or community members may not take kindly to an apostasy from their traditional religions, as opposed to state persecution.
Sure, China isn't ideal but I have seen people over exaggerate stuff. It is advised if you renounced Chinese citizenship to always carry proof with you from what I've heard.
Sounds like you need to move out. Maybe try a flatshare if money is tight
Keeping enemies close in case I want revenge.
If I leave, I would never be able to gain such close access to fuck shit up. xD
But seriously tho, this is on of the problems of known danger vs unknown dangers, I know who these people are, I can plan accordingly. I don't think living with stangers as roommates would help my mental health. I tried living on campus once, my depression went from 10/100 to 110/100. So I had to withdraw.
I don't feel like nobody can understand my POV. I grew up moving country to country and my classmates growing up led similar lives and probably had similar POVs. It was only in college that I realized most people lived their whole childhoods in one city, not counting vacations.
I think you'd be interested in looking into the concept of "Third Culture Kids". I think the original book may be a bit outdated and lack some of the complexity of modern globalization, but it definitely made me realize a lot of things about myself when I read the book the first time way back.
I am not sure what you mean with pov that no one else’s understand because many of my European friends speak english on top of native language.
What i can attest is that each language has its own expressions, saying and emergent philosophy that is not always translatable in other languages.
The language you speak/think directly influences what and how you think. Knowing multiple is therefore a very enriching experience.
It's not that lofty, it's pretty much like the merrowingian put it in the second matrix movie: "cursing in french is like wiping your ass with silk" It's not limited to cursing, some languages have unique expressions for some things that are more fitting. You have to lean into it and embrace it though, it's like clothing or food, you have to want it and you have to enjoy it. There is no point in cooking yourself a fancy meal if you hate doing it and don't particularly value good food. The same is true for practicing language.
I enjoy learning languages in a low pressure way. I didn't enjoy it particularly in school.
No? The majority of my coworkers are also multilingual. They travel more often than I do.