World of A Polyglot
By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
23 February 2026
'Every time you learn a new language, you get a new soul.' I read this quote years ago and it stayed with me in my forays into several languages that I learnt and conversed in. Before I descant upon the advantages of learning new languages and writing in them, I'd like to dispel a common misunderstanding that relates to being a linguist and a polyglot. We often erroneously think that a linguist is a person who knows many languages. But this is a fallacious perception. A linguist is one who knows ABOUT a language. He or she may know only one language but knows it in and out with all its linguistic aspects, whereas a polyglot is a person who knows a bunch of languages without bothering to know their structures, intricacies, roots and other technical facets. In that sense, I call myself a pure polyglot having learnt Persian, Armaic, Turkish, Urdu, Pashto, Dari (Afghan variant of Persian), Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, Bangla and of course a smattering of English, which I started learning rather late and out of compulsion.
When one learns a new language, one automatically learns the culture, customs, dimensions and history associated with that specific (linguistic) civilization because language, culture and civilization are inextricably dovetailed. It widens one's horizons and deepens perceptions. This is something one misses when one reads the translations however superb they may be. I remember when I was reading and thinking in my mother tongue Persian, I read all the great Persian mystics like Jalaluddin Rumi, Hafiz Shirazi, Fariduddin Attar, Jami, Hakim Sanai, Khaqani among others in their original Persian which sounds so sublime, especially in terms of the mellifluous rendition of Persian mystical and spiritual verses. Though their excellent English translations by Reynold A Nicholson, A J Arberry, Dick Davis, Iraj Bashiri, Sholeh Wolpe etc. are available, they pale when pitted against the original Persian.
The same can be said about the French language and its literature. When I read Albert Camus, Sartre, Flaubert and Simone de Beauvoir in English, I missed the essence of French's euphonic softness because English is phonetically a rather crude language and hardly conveys the nuances of French's feminine grace. Ergo, French people justifiably call English, 'the language of pirates' (L'anglais est la langue des pirates)! To comprehend Camus or understand Existentialism as well as the idea of Western Alienation, one must learn French.
Read Gunter Grass, Goethe, Nietzsche or Arthur Schopenhauer in English or any other tongue, you'll invariably miss the desirable semi-robustness of German. It's said that Nietzsche can be understood only in German and even his famous 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' sounds so humdrum and reads so banal in English that perceptive readers leave the book halfway through. Read the German maverick in his mother tongue and you'll be transported to a different realm, ' realm of absolute emancipation,' to quote William Faulkner. I could never read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche in any other European language other than the original German and I thanked my stars for having learnt German.
Can one ever enjoy Pablo Neruda's exquisite Spanish love poems even in English, though masterfully translated by Edith Grossman, Gregory Rabassa, Alastair Reid, Forrest Gander and Mark Eisner? It's said that many serious lovers specially learnt Spanish to appreciate Neruda's love poetry and quote his ethereally romantic verses to their beloveds! I, for one, could never read Neruda in English after having learnt Spanish.
Can any other term connote and convey the profound import of 'Saudades' ('I miss you' in Portuguese)? I seriously doubt it. Read Jose Saramago's works in other languages, the wavy nature of Portuguese language will be found sorely wanting. By the way, Saramago has been the only Nobel laureate in literature in Portuguese, winning it in 1998.
Read Ghalib's recondite Urdu poetry translated by the legendary Sir Ralph Russell, considered to be the greatest western authority on Ghalib, and you'll miss the profundity of the original Persianised-Urdu of Mirza Ghalib. Russell himself admitted that he couldn't translate Ghalib to his heart's content.
It's said that Dutch philosopher and rationalist Benedict Spinoza can only be understood in his native Dutch, a rather untranslatable language. The translations of his theological works into several European languages haven't done justice to the man and his immense erudition.
The list is interminable and the examples are endless. Learn new tongues and broaden your breadth of vision. You'll be a different person altogether, living in a different world of thoughts and ideas. Learning languages is akin to travelling extensively. You come across new people, new cultures and new ethos. This ennobles you. All said and done, while an individual may learn quite a few tongues, he/she remains predominantly monolingual, that too, inadequately monolingual! These are the latest findings in the realms of Neurolinguistics. A lifetime is not enough to master even one language, let alone, a host of other tongues. Even a brilliant explorer and polyglot like Sir Richard Francis Burton (nickname: Ruffian Dick!; Nom de plume: Mirza Abdullah the Bushri; 1821-1890), who could speak up to 29 different languages admitted that his thinking language remained English till the end.
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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian.
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/world-a-polyglot/d/138972
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