A medical student from Thailand who’s studying at a university in China says the only way to understand another culture is through its language.

Siwathep Singh Khanderpor, known as “Thep,” is living proof of his mother’s belief that if you speak one language, you’re one person, but if you speak more than one language, then you’re multi-faceted.

Thep was one of the winners of a UN-backed international essay contest promoting multilingualism.

Participants had to write in one of the six official languages of the UN—Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian or Spanish—that was not their mother tongue or the principal language of instruction in their primary or secondary education.

Thep told Dianne Penn how attending medical school in China and entering the essay competition have changed his life.

Duration: 3'04"