The Music of Languages

"Every language carries a different way of seeing the world."

People often ask me why I write in several languages.

The truth is, I don't think it started with writing.

It started much earlier.

I've always been fascinated by languages.

Not only by what they mean, but by how they sound, how they are written, and how they seem to carry the soul of the people who speak them.

When someone tells me,

"I don't like that language."

I almost instinctively begin looking for what makes it beautiful.

Sometimes it's the calligraphy.

Sometimes it's the rhythm.

Sometimes it's simply the way a few words seem to dance together.

I've even found myself wanting to learn languages that are no longer spoken.

Not because they would be useful.

But because they still whisper the stories of the civilizations that gave birth to them.

Perhaps that's why languages have always reminded me of music.

There are moments when I listen to people speaking a language I don't understand.

Logically, I shouldn't understand anything.

And yet...

I often have the strange feeling that a part of me understands.

Not the words.

Something deeper.

The emotion.

The intention.

The humanity behind them.

It reminds me of listening to a song in a language I've never learned.

I don't know the lyrics.

Yet the music still reaches me.

I've experienced the same feeling while travelling.

Sometimes I sat with people who spoke almost none of my language, while I spoke almost none of theirs.

We smiled.

We laughed.

We shared food.

We pointed towards the mountains or the sea.

Somehow, a conversation still existed.

Not through perfect vocabulary.

But through curiosity, kindness and the simple desire to understand one another.

Those moments have convinced me that communication is far greater than words.

Perhaps that's why I love languages so much.

Each one feels like another melody.

Another way humanity has found to tell the same story.

And perhaps, if we listen carefully enough...

we discover that understanding often begins long before translation does.

Jean Claude Grimaldi