Languages

I've read this from the blog of a friend of mine:
"To speak another language is to possess another soul." Which is actually a quote from Charlemagne.
I think it's a very interesting concept, but I think to put it more precisely, we should say:
"To master another language is to acquire another soul."
I do agree that language is an important way of self-expression and it also affect the way we think and perceive the world around us.
To take it to the soul level, in my opinion, we have to know the language very well to reach the deep level of understanding.
I think it is very difficult to reach deep if, for example, a conversation never pass "Hello, how are you?--I'm fine, Thank you. And you?" this kind of thing.
So we must know a language well enough to express ourselves and to know enough abstract concepts.
Other than that, language also influence on the way we think and reason.
Take myself for instance, I find it easier to express my research-related ideas in English.
II connect better with spiritual growth related ideas or activities in English as well.
But for expression of emotion and creativity, I'm much better off using Mandarin.
Probably because this just says something about the context of my learning different subjects, i.e., I learnt Mandarin when I was younger and I speak Mandarin with my family; whilst I learnt psychology and do research in English. Hence, it is not until when I'm older that I started to learn about spiritual growth and by this time, I had been using more English than Mandarin in everyday life.
So it will be very interesting to say that I have(at least) two souls: one Mandarin soul and one English soul.
My Mandarin soul is probably much younger than my English soul, and my English soul is definitely going to get older and older (as I keep on working on its growth).
Then we'll see a beautiful picture at the time of my death- An old English lady and a Taiwanese little girl, hand in hand, walking toward the afterlife together.
Such a lovely and heart-warming sight. :)