REFLECTIONS AND MIRRORS

I've always had a fascination with words and I’ve always had a fascination with different cultures. The unification of the two ideas comes in my interest in words of different languages because what’s most intriguing about all languages, in my opinion, is the fact that there exists certain words in that particular culture’s vocabulary that cannot be easily translated into other languages. One of my favorite examples is the Finnish word sisu. If you ask a Finn, the would translate it as something as “the Finnish spirit.” The dictionary may say it literally translates to “having guts.” But it means more that that—it means the ability to keep fighting even though most others would’ve quit. It’s the ability to keep pushing on with a certain amount of determination and courage despite the circumstances. It’s the capacity to look beyond the current situation and look forward and continue working for the future. While it’s possible to convey the meaning of the word in other languages, there just doesn’t seem to be a single word that expresses the same feeling. And that’s what amazes me about languages and humans—that we can all be biologically the same at the root of it all and we have all stemmed from the same ancestor, yet we can spread so far that we can have a whole range of languages to the point that there are some words that can’t be explained in a perfectly equivalent term. 

 

But these differences also reflect the values and experiences of different cultures. Such an example is the speculation that there are at least fifty terms to describe snow in the Inuit culture. From aqilokoq for “softly falling snow” to piegnartoq for “snow good for driving sled,” Inuits have a whole group of words dedicated just to snow because of how important that kind of weather and terrain is to them. That kind of cultural focus is what this series was rooted in; I looked into different proverbs that each language contained and tried to understand them as fully as possible. Then, I took these sayings and wrote them directly onto the bodies of people who spoke the language or were closely connected the culture the language comes from to further emphasize the great diversity of people that we are surrounded by. While, granted, this project only reflects the cultures of Great Neck, I hope to expand it further in the future and feature more languages and cultures.