Craig Storti

“The student of Arabic, for example, learns that “God willing” (N’sha’llah) is automatically added to any statement about the future (just as “thanks be to God” accompanies any reference to fortunate events of the past), that many common given names—Abdullah, Abdelsalam, Abdelwahid—translate as slave (abd) of God, appreciating, as a consequence, the essential fatalism of Arab culture. Similarly, the student of Nepali, struggling to sort out the myriad nouns for family members—there are four words for uncle, denoting whether the man in question is the brother of one’s father or mother and whether he is older or younger than said parent—readily appreciates the importance of the family in Nepali society and may even intuit the relative insignificance of the individual. Language is not simply how people speak; it is who they are.”
― Craig Storti, The Art of Crossing Cultures