I’ve come to believe something I can’t fully prove but feel deeply: language shapes who we become. Not just how we communicate, but how we think, how we feel, what we’re capable of understanding about ourselves and the world.
This isn’t a scientific claim. It’s a conviction born from living between languages—from knowing what it feels like to reach for a Tibetan word that holds an entire way of seeing, and finding no English equivalent waiting on the other side.
The Vessel and What It Carries
Tibetan has words for states of mind that English can only circle around with clumsy approximations. We have precise vocabulary for subtle gradations of compassion, for the texture of awareness, for relationships between teacher and student that carry centuries of meaning in a single term. These aren’t just words. They’re doorways.
When you grow up speaking a language, you inherit its architecture. The concepts it names become available to your thinking. The distinctions it makes become distinctions you can perceive. A language rich in vocabulary for inner experience trains attention toward inner experience. A language with elaborate honorifics trains awareness of relationship and context.
I’m not saying this determines everything. Culture shapes language and language shapes culture—they feed each other in ways no one can fully untangle. But I believe the vessel matters. And when the vessel breaks, something spills that cannot easily be gathered back.
What Empires Understand
In 1260, Kublai Khan commissioned a Tibetan lama named Chögyal Phagpa to create something ambitious: a single writing system for his entire multilingual empire. The Phagpa script, completed in 1269, was designed to write Mongolian, Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Sanskrit under one unified system.
The Khan understood something fundamental: a shared script binds people together. One writing system, one empire. Language as infrastructure of identity.
This is not ancient history. This is the logic still operating today.
For decades, China has pursued the assimilation of Tibet through every available means. They resettled Han Chinese into Tibetan regions. They took control of the monasteries. They designed television programming specifically for Tibetans. They blocked international radio and restricted social media. They tried everything.
And still, Tibetans inside Tibet have resisted. The pressure is visible, the stakes are clear, and people push back against what they can see.
But in recent years, something has shifted. China has moved aggressively to replace Tibetan with Mandarin in schools, to make Chinese the language of education and opportunity inside Tibet. They are no longer just controlling the container—they are targeting the thread itself, the thing that makes a Tibetan a Tibetan.
They understand what we sometimes forget: lose the language, lose the people.
The Invisible Erosion
Here is the bitter irony. Inside Tibet, under pressure, the language survives because people fight for it. They see the threat.
In the diaspora, we have no one forcing us. No policies. No restrictions. And yet our children are forgetting.
It happens quietly. English is easier. English is everywhere. English is what their friends speak, what their schools teach, what the world runs on. Tibetan becomes the language of home, then the language of grandparents, then the language of ceremonies they don’t quite follow, then a handful of phrases, then nothing.
No one made this happen. The environment made it happen. Convenience made it happen. The path of least resistance made it happen.
And one day a young person with a Tibetan name and Tibetan parents will want to connect with their roots. They’ll read the teachings in translation. They’ll learn the history through English sources. They’ll feel something stirring and reach for it—
And they’ll find they can reach only so far.
What Translation Cannot Give
I want to be careful here. I’m not saying that someone who connects with Tibetan culture through translation is connecting with something false. That would be wrong and unfair. Many people find profound meaning through translated texts, through teachers who bridge languages, through practice and study conducted in their native tongue.
But something is different. Something is missing.
It’s like the difference between hearing a song and hearing a song in a language you understand. You can feel the music either way. You can be moved. But the lyrics—the specific words chosen, the way meaning and melody interlock, the poetry of it—that layer exists only if you have the language to receive it.
Tibetan literature, Tibetan philosophy, Tibetan dharma—these were composed in Tibetan. The authors chose those words. They used the resonances available in that language, built on the concepts that language makes thinkable, played with meanings that exist only in that tongue.
Translation gives you the meaning. It doesn’t give you the music.
I think of it this way: a child who grows up with Tibetan has doors they can open. A child who learns their heritage only through translation can see the doors. They can know the doors exist. They can stand before them with respect and longing. But some doors only open from the inside.
More Than Words
I want to say something that goes beyond religious texts and philosophical understanding, though those matter deeply.
Tibetan language shapes character.
Consider our honorific system. When a Tibetan child learns to speak, they don’t just learn words—they learn to locate themselves in relationship. We have entirely different vocabulary for speaking to elders, to teachers, to lamas. You cannot speak Tibetan without marking respect. It’s not optional politeness you can skip when you’re feeling lazy. It’s woven into the grammar itself. Every sentence about your mother, your teacher, your elders requires you to practice reverence.
Consider how we speak of gratitude. དྲིན་ཅན་ (drinchen)—one to whom I owe kindness. བཀའ་དྲིན་ (ka drin)—the grace received from parents, teachers, country. These aren’t special words for special occasions. They’re how we refer to the people who raised us, taught us, gave us a place to stand. Indebtedness and gratitude are structural to Tibetan speech. A child who grows up speaking this way grows up with gratitude as a habit of mind.
Consider སེམས་ (sem)—the word that means both mind and heart, because Tibetan does not split them the way English does. That’s not a small linguistic quirk. It’s a different understanding of what a person is.
And consider our songs. The old songs don’t just mention Tibet—they teach you to see through Tibetan eyes. Snow mountains become metaphors for steadfastness. Rivers carry impermanence. Flowers stand for the beloved, for what is precious and brief. The homeland itself becomes a character in every song of love and longing. A child who learns these songs learns a way of seeing that no translation can install.
This is what I mean when I say language shapes us. Not just that it gives us access to texts, but that it trains perception, instills values, builds habits of respect and gratitude and attention. These things can be taught other ways, yes. But Tibetan teaches them automatically, constantly, in every conversation.
When our children lose the language, they don’t just lose access to books. They lose a training ground for character that our culture spent centuries building into speech itself.
What I’m Asking
I’m writing this for Tibetan parents in the diaspora, but also for anyone navigating the space between heritage and assimilation.
I should tell you: I have failed at this myself. Many times.
As a father, I have tried to teach my children Tibetan. I have started and stopped, grown frustrated and given up, felt the weight of everything working against me—their school, their friends, the sheer convenience of English, my own exhaustion. I have let weeks slip by without trying. I have told myself it’s too hard, they’ll learn later, it doesn’t matter as much as I thought.
And then I have started again.
This has become my constant: trying, failing, trying again. I am still trying, actively, every day. Not because I’ve figured out how to succeed, but because I understand what’s at stake and I cannot make peace with giving up.
So I’m not writing this from a place of success. I’m writing from the middle of the struggle, as someone who knows exactly how hard it is.
I’m not asking for perfection. I’m not saying your children must be fluent or they’ve failed. I know the pull of practicality, the limits of time, the genuine question of what matters most.
But I am asking you to understand the stakes as I see them.
China has thrown everything at the Tibetan people—population transfer, religious control, media manipulation, isolation from the outside world—and has not yet won. Now they are targeting language itself. That tells you what they believe the real binding force is.
We face no such assault. Only the gentle, invisible current of assimilation that carries our children away while we’re busy with other things.
We must try harder. Not because of guilt or obligation, but because of what we want our children to have. Full access to who they are. Full access to what their culture has spent centuries understanding. Full access to doorways that open only in the mother tongue.
This is my opinion. I cannot prove that language shapes character. I cannot measure what is lost when a generation forgets. But I have felt the difference between reaching for a Tibetan word and finding it, and reaching and finding only empty space.
I don’t want that empty space for our children.
Disclaimer: The insights and narratives shared here are purely personal contemplations and imaginings. They do not reflect the strategies, opinions, or beliefs of any entities I am associated with professionally. These musings are crafted from my individual perspective and experience.