Language Is a Good Teacher

When we consider the purpose of language, the first thing come to our mind is that it is a tool for communication between people. It is ture that the emergence of language is a manifestation of highly evolved human beings. We use language to convey information, record history, and express our deepest emotions. However, instead of these previous examples, language gets other purposes that are often ignored by people. For instance, my mother tongue Chinese is actually a kind of educational took.

In Chinese language, our ancestors wanted to combine philosophy and words together. They tried to make language become a kind of educational tool, which means sometimes when you see a word, you don’t have to let somebody else to tell what is the meaning of the word, you just need to take a look of the structure and the shape of word in order to understand it.

“忍” is a Chinese word which is pronounced as “Ren”. It shares a similar meaning with “Forbear”. This word comes from a combination of two different words. The word above called “刃” which means a kind of blade, and the word below called “心” which means mental and physical heart. When those two words combine together, the new words get a meaning of “there is an edge above your heart” from the original meaning of those two words. Our ancestors wanted to convey an idea throught this word that sometimes things are cutting edge, just as pressure in our hearts, if we cannot avoid them, how can we do? In order not to let yourself hurt, the best way is to forbear. However, this blade of pressure sometimes is aslo the blade of protection, the protection of your heart. Who else can hurt you while you block a blade in mind?