"How does our language shape the way we think?"
I had to share this fascinating article by Lera Boroditsky an assistant professor of psychology, neuroscience, and symbolic systems at Stanford University. It is a must read for those who want to understand how our language studies affect our cognitive development.
10 Answers
This is so cool!
"In Turkish you'd have to include in the verb how you acquired this information: if you had witnessed this unlikely event with your own two eyes, you'd use one verb form, but if you had simply read or heard about it, or inferred it from something Bush said, you'd use a different verb form."
And this is absolutely true,and I can say that it's the most challenging thing for a foreign speaker to understand too.
I have cut and pasted this article to read at my leisure.
Many years ago, when I was 12, I went to France for 6 weeks on an exchange visit.
I understood very little French but ..........
Almost instinctively I felt that the "French" were "different" to me. I wondered if this was because I understood almost no French. I came to the conclusion that this was not the whole explanantion, and began to wonder if it was the language itself.
When the exchange students arrived in England some months later I started to think about it again. My conclusion has always been that the language one learns as the "native" language does affect how we see the world, and even ourselves.
At that time the internet did not exist and I had no way and no one to discuss this with.
I wonder if any research has been done on identical twins - separated at birth - and raised learning different "first languages".
I know that becoming really fluent in a language other than English (Danish)changed me - exactly why I still can't explain.
Fascinating.
That's a nice article. It also fits in with what I studied in my master's education courses. The theory is that you can only learn things if you already have some place in your brain to put them, some earlier concept to attach them to. These are called schemas, like filing cabinet drawers or clothes hooks. The more you have of as many different kinds, the easier it is to learn new things.
Words seem to form good hooks to hang ideas on. It's difficult to think about things that you don't have a symbol to associate them with. It makes sense to me that your symbol set, in the form of the languages you speak, will have a definite impact on how you think about things.
Ooh, this IS fascinating! I've only read about half so far, but it's really interesting to see how language affects our thought processes. Thanks for posting!
Really interesting!
One thing I've noticed about English vs. Spanish is that in English people do all the acting, whereas in Spanish objects do some of the acting. For example:
- I dropped the pen.
- Se me cayó la pluma.
-
- I like meat.
- Me gusta la carne.
-
- I forgot it.
- Se me olvidó.
I don't know what impact this might have on how we perceive the world around us or interact with it, but it seems that such a basic thing as perception of action or ownership or responsibility must have some impact.
This is a great article. Moving on from it slightly, I, personally, always have days where I want to express myself in Spanish, my feelings. The transgression between languages is amazing. You do think differently. You approach things differently.
In Spanish I've noticed it is more respectful to certain things.
For example, the masculines and femenines. Like in the article, the femeninity of the key, compared to the German version of a key.
Also, "I love you" in Spanish is "Te quiero". I love you. I want you, from "querer" - to want... I love the fact that you cannot LOVE someone without WANTING them.
There are many examples of this, but I cannot remember them right now!
Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and "back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms — north, south, east, and west — to define space.1 This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit." One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is "Where are you going?" and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance." If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello."
The result is a profound difference in navigational ability and spatial knowledge between speakers of languages that rely primarily on absolute reference frames (like Kuuk Thaayorre) and languages that rely on relative reference frames (like English).2 Simply put, speakers of languages like Kuuk Thaayorre are much better than English speakers at staying oriented and keeping track of where they are, even in unfamiliar landscapes or inside unfamiliar buildings. What enables them — in fact, forces them — to do this is their language. Having their attention trained in this way equips them to perform navigational feats once thought beyond human capabilities.
Whoa! I still have to think sometimes just to remember the left-right thing. And, that bit about them arranging pictures in time order from east to west (regardless of what direction they were facing)! How different from our tendency to arrange from left-to-right, or the Hebrew's to arrange time sequences from right-to-left, or Chinese's to do so top-down (or whatever it was). Mind blowing!!!!
And to think so many in times past (and currently, sadly) would consider these people as mindless savages. 
Apparently, there are no normative ethics in eastern and oriental languages.
Pretty epic considering that all the history books were written by westerners and so they might've got it entirely wrong.
I don't usually think in a language anyway, but more in terms of images.
With reference to Follow me to Pormpuraaw,
I just remembered something my very young son said when asked "Which is your left foot?" (problem with putting on shoes)
His answer was "coming or going?"
