Someone suggests that identity is fluid enough an entity to be separate from the confines of language, but my mother tells me I sound different whenever I write to her in English. Her preference for the Chinese written form has nothing to do with her personal understandings, but is rather associated with the brevity with which certain messages can be conveyed. This is not to say that 汉语 has produced taciturn people. Rather, the choice of form in a language is a statement on priorities: how beauty is always described with terse references to nature, the way 情 (sentiment) is a word that encompasses all kinds of 爱 (love).
To the unattuned ear, language is not very different from noise—a configuration of soft and harsh sounds of its own cadences, partitioned by periodic gaps of silence. To differentiate between these forms is to play with music, as it would be a very monotonous indeed if all noise sounded the same.