Language - Pregnancy

It's always interesting to look at different languages and see how their words for certain ideas relate to how different cultures view that same said idea.

For example pregnancy!

The word pregnancy has such different connotations in different languages.

In Russian, the most common word for pregnancy is Беременная. The word for pregnancy has the same exact root for the word "burden" (this applies to most other slavic languages too). Babies bad. This is really interesting considering that Russia is experiencing one of the lower birth rates in the world. In fact, the government has implemented various social programs to encourage couples to have babies. The majority of the factors behind Russia's lower birth rate probably has much more to do than just language (cough economics cough), but culture has to be considered.

Swinging to the other end of the spectrum to a country that has historically produced a lot of babies, the word for pregnancy is 有喜, which translates roughly to "having happiness". Babies good. Is this related to China's ridiculously high population? Probably only a little, but still cool to think about it. Now if only my parents were happy about my existence.....

Anyway there are countless other examples. The Spanish word for pregnancy has the same root as the english word "embarrassed". Etc. etc. 

Language can only influence so much of a person's view on something. But I believe that languages are a part of a greater structure that really dictates how an individual perceives the world. I believe certain individuals from different parts of the world are more susceptible to certain optical illusions because the images and symbols in their cultural environment are different than those of others. It's a little bit of a depressing concept. But then again this is another reason why I feel the entirety of society must be restructured.

It's a really interesting thought. Is there a perfect language out there? Like what even is a perfect language? Something that doesn't subtly encourage racism/sexism? Would a perfect language eliminate all connotations from words? Do we lose the beauty of poetry and stuff there?

point is language is super cool!

source: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-04-14/language-pregnancy-seems-pregnant-meaning-it