Does your language shape the way you think?
- Cate Taylor
- Jun 6, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 24, 2022
The diversity of human languages has always fascinated me. Cognitive Scientist, Lena Boroditsky, talks about how linguistic diversity proves the ingenuity and flexibility of the human mind. There are 7,000 world languages currently, apparently. Does the language you speak really shape the way you think?
The words we have available to us in our language can guide our reasoning about events; in Spanish we would say - the vase broke, in English we would say - he broke the vase. In English we can say - I broke my arm. Did we really break our own arm?!
When teaching French or Spanish to speakers of English, I'm always asked about masculine and feminine nouns in other languages. It turns out that these masculine and feminine nouns actually change the way that speakers describe that noun. The example given here by Lena is “the bridge”. In German, "the bridge" is a feminine noun and German speakers are more likely to use feminine attributes to describe a bridge e.g. elegant, beautiful. The word is masculine in Spanish and the opposite is true.
The words we have available to us in our language affects the way we perceive things. Some languages have words which differentiate between shades of colour and the brains of speakers of these languages register a perception of difference in colour not visible in those people who don’t have the specific words.
Some languages don’t have have any number words which has implications on the speakers' ability to perform mathematical techniques; as Lena says, it’s having the number words which gives you the stepping stone into a whole cognitive realm.
As learners of a second language, we are encouraging our brains to develop the ability to perceive things, and think, in different ways. So, let's speak some French or Spanish, or your language of choice, and give our brains some alternative ways of thinking!
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