Do Different Languages Equal Different Realities? [Science]

We usually assume words are just a fashion of expressing ideas already in our heads. But what if it’s the opposite direction around? Some linguists say the languages we speak fundamentally alter the manner we predict, and even perceive reality.

The most recent York Times explores the consequences of worldwide-altering linguistics, and how we are able to study the complexities of both speech and speaker. Linguist Guy Deutscher argues that, in place of forbidding us from understanding certain concepts (as in, while you don’t have a word for it, you don’t know what it’s miles), languages force us to think certain ways.

For example, while English doesn’t use genders when talking about persons, places, and things, a lot of languages do-and the variation isn’t just an additional headache for prime school French students. Gendered languages force their speakers to, even unconsciously, consider forks, tables, trees, and sandwiches to have genders. This sounds obvious, and perhaps even trivial, but research shows that these properties affect the way in which Spanish speakers, for example, view their environments. ” Once gender connotations were imposed on impressionable young minds,” explains Deutscher, ” they lead those with a gendered mother tongue to work out the inanimate world through lenses tinted with associations and emotional responses that English speakers – stuck in their monochrome desert of ” its” – are entirely oblivious to.”

Deutscher also raises the fascinating example of obscure regional languages that don’t have any conception of person-oriented direction. It’s to assert, there’s no my left, or your left. There’s no left at all. If a soccer ball lands next to you, Australia’s aboriginal Guugu Yimithirr speakers will let you know to succeed in for your east to pick out it up. Resulting from mapping compass directions across personal since childhood, speakers of such languages have almost superhuman sense of orientation, ready to discern north and south as most of us can be in a position to intuitively ” know” front and back.

The intersection between mind and word continues to be a fuzzy one for science, and plenty work is still done. But linguistics offers to prepare the sector in a manner that makes better sense, and, no matter if we will be able to’t always sit at an identical table and chat (or perhaps possess a word for table), make the sector a less strange place. [ NY Times ]
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This post is tagged: Languages, realities, Science