The farther from home you roam, the more you realize your perspective on the world is a very small and limited one. You just didn’t notice, since at home you’re surrounded by people, ideas and perspectives more or less the same as yours. And there’s nothing quite like language learning to throw you in that particular deep end.

My favorite thing about travel is getting the opportunity to see the world from a different perspective. After just six weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, my entire idea of “normal” had shifted several times around. Did you know it’s physically possible to ride a bicycle with seven live pigs? Did you know your cash won’t be accepted unless it’s completely filthy, a sign it’s been in circulation and not counterfeit? And of course, as the comic above illustrates, did you know you don’t need your arms to carry anything?

I was amazed by the things I saw people carry on their heads. All of the above are true – humungous tubs of bread, entire shopfronts, kids carrying logs balanced exactly in the middle – and yet I struggle to hold on to anything that doesn’t have a designated handle, and even that wears on my fingers after a while. Of course we could easily start carrying boxes and groceries and laundry and furniture on our heads. What’s to stop us? All we’d need is a bit of practice. But, of course, it would feel so weird unless everyone else was doing it. It’s amazing that we have these amazing abilities of strength and balance that we won’t take advantage of because we’re worried we might look silly. Well, the Congolese think you look silly huffing and puffing, carrying that bag of cat litter with your arms like a chump.

Back to the point: getting a fresh perspective on what you take for granted as “normal” is a beautiful thing. It’s my favorite thing about travel, and it’s also my favorite thing about language learning. In particular, I love that you learn how words and phrases you think you know are used in totally different ways. If that doesn’t make sense, bear with me – this isn’t easy to describe in words, but I’ll try my best.

Take the simple German phrase das geht nicht, for example. Literally, it translates to “that doesn’t go” (das = “that,” geht = “goes,” nicht = “not”), which doesn’t make literal sense but I bet you can sense the meaning of it: “that won’t work,” “that’s no good” or “that’s not allowed.” It’s a wonderful and very common catch-all phrase for anything that, for whatever reason, simply won’t fly. Someone cut in line? Das geht nicht. Trying to hammer a screw? Das geht nicht. But it’s not entirely idiomatic, like the phrase “that won’t fly” in English, because the word “to go,” or gehen in its infinitive, can be used normally to mean, “works,” as in, “my bike still works” (mein Fahrrad geht noch). However, if you want to say you’re “going by bike,” you don’t use gehen, you use fahren, the verb “to go” for when you’re using a vehicle (yes, das Fahrrad (bicycle) = fahren (to go by vehicle) + das Rad (wheel) = “go-wheel”). Therefore, when you learn what the phrase das geht nicht means in German, you’re not just learning how the words translate exactly into English – even though the languages are really quite similar, they’re not exactly the same. You’re learning a very specific group of words which have meaning in a certain specific context that overlaps with, but is not equal to, your own.

Basically, you’re learning that the words you use in your mother language don’t correlate to the Truth. They’re just one way of putting it. And that’s a beautiful thing to realize – your tunnel-vision has suddenly widened just an inch, your horizons have expanded just a few degrees. You’re on the path to thinking outside the box, even in your own language.

Now, English and German are pretty similar, but I’ll bet you guys have examples from languages further removed from English that really push your perspective. What’s been your experience?