Imagine going into hall for a quick lunch, but instead of a break from academia, you find yourself caught between a group of linguists nattering about their recent Flaubert lecture, and on the other side some natscis trying to work out the finer points of leaf formation. On your left, a bio natsci is pointing out that the radial patterning systems define that the meristem flanks are competent to form leaves, not the meristem apex. At the same time, the linguist on the far right is saying of his lecturer, “Yeah, I think he was a bit blasé about the problems the bourgeois were going through, the coup d’état really showed that they’d lost their joie de vivre. Flaubert’s just so avant-garde about this.”

Luckily, I do French and Spanish, and having recently been to that very lecture on Flaubert, I have a pretty good idea of what this linguist is talking about. However, I cannot claim to understand the words of the natsci. Because of language, I find myself identifying more with the linguist than the natsci and assuming (maybe wrongly) that our personalities are more similar.

It’s clear that our interests, and subsequently the books we read, the subjects we take and the programmes we watch, provide us with a specialised vocabulary in certain fields with which others are less experienced. We also use certain words, certain idioms, and certain slang based on where we come from, the people we’ve grown up with and the paths we’ve chosen to pursue. We have a certain identity based on the same things. Language and identity run parallel to each other, and language thus becomes a tangible means of defining someone’s individuality.

“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill! Instead, make a bull out of a fly in Finland  or an elephant out of a gnat in Estonia.”

Of course, words are not the only determining factor in forging a personality. But the way we use language is one way of signalling someone’s identity, and consequently, how that person has been defined by their language.

Identity, though, is not fixed, and neither is language. Your language will follow your personality, and your personality will follow your language: both are constantly affected by experience.

If different individual ways of using language point to different individual identities, then different languages should point to different general cultural identities. At one extreme, there are studies which argue that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought, but these theories are often refuted in modern linguistics. Idioms and slang rather are perhaps a more interesting and telling way to look at a nation’s cultural identity and how it is intertwined with language use.

The unfortunate demise of language learning

Some in England might use the (perhaps crass) term ‘bird’ to describe a woman. In Spain, they use the much more poetic pava, which literally means a turkey hen. If you’re sweating like a pig in England, you’re sweating carrots in the Netherlands (‘Ik zweet peentjes’). Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill! Instead, make a bull out of a fly in Finland (‘tehdä kärpäsestä härkänen’), or an elephant out of a gnat in Estonia (‘Sääsest elevanti tegema’). Have you ever told someone to break a leg as they head off to their last exam? In Germany, they should break their leg and their neck if they want to do well (‘Hals und Beinbruch’). Italians like ham: if you can’t see something obvious, your eyes are lined with it (‘avere gli occhi foderati di prosciutto’); if you can’t hear something obvious, your ears are too (‘avere le orecchie foderate di prosciutto’). To shed crocodile tears? Well, the expression ‘shed crocodile tears’ exists in 45 European languages as well as Arabic, Swahili, Persian, Indian languages, Chinese, and Mongolian. So not all idioms are different.

It’s not easy to work out a difference in identity between those who make bulls out of flies and those who make elephants out of gnats. (In fact, the use of animal metaphor might mean their identities are a bit more similar to each other than to ours.) But the differences in phrases such as these show that language is a tangible signal – a signature even – of the intangible phenomenon that is identity. We could not work out a complete cultural identity from its slang (and would be flirting with stereotype if we tried) but language, on the personal and national level, is a principal means through which personality can be transmitted.