On words creating worlds… (a mental vomit)

I am a fluent polyglot who is able to speak five languages fluently (Filipino, Cebuano, English, French and German), and I have always been fascinated by how language plays such a pivotal role in culture.

For instance, I work in the human services field, and we have quite a number of Filipino/a/x care providers (read: caregivers) who refer to the people we provide supports for as pasyente or patients in English; however, the more socialized term in English that is used in our field to identify people we support is client. This cultural phenomenon is so fascinating to me for two reasons:
(a) there is no closer equivalent to client in Filipino because the literal translation, kliyente, is more widely used with business clients rather than people receiving those supports, and;
(b) associating clients with the rough equivalent of this in Filipino (pasyente), creates a mental framework for how clients are treated by these same caregivers- using a medical model based on a person’s deficits rather than their skills, gifts and capacities.

In my work, I have emphasized how words create worlds; the way we use language is a marker of how we are interpreting and interacting with our respective external environments based on the multiple intersecting lens we have developed over the years. I often find myself rolling a boulder uphill with the type of culture shift I am evangelizing at work because of this layer of complexity: how do I continue with the work that I do and help people make the fundamental shift in language (in English BTW) without failing to honor, acknowledge and validate their linguistic programming?