Language Affects How People Think
Introduction
Language is the way by which human beings use to communicate; it can either be written or spoken using words that are well structured. Different communities have different languages. Most people use a language as a tool of expressing their thought and emotions. But do people use language to express themselves or does language affect the way they think?
How Language affects People’s Thoughts
It is evident that language differs from others all over the world as different people or countries speak different languages. Languages have a way of imparting different cognitive skills depending on the one that someone knows. It is suggested by American linguists that people who speak different languages may have different ways of thinking. For example, while saying, “Peter read Robin's book in the evening,” focus is placed on the verb ‘read’. In English, that word is in its past tense-it happened in the past and therefore is pronounced differently. In Russia, the verb may be used to reveal the speaker's language. This illustration means that there is a different verb for different languages. In Indonesia, on the other hand, one does not need to alter the verb so as to make sense (Boroditsky, 2011).
The whole scenario shows that languages can show different things about speakers. People have different ways of distinguishing such things as gender in their languages. Another example is in directions; we say front, back, left and right in English while describing direction. But the Philistines use compass directions, i.e., north, south, east and so forth. One might hear them saying, “Tom is sitting south of Mary.” Such words might not be understood in the English language. Instead, one would hear, “Tom is sitting behind Mary.” The Philistine languages require one to be oriented so as to speak well (Boroditsky, 2011).
How Language expands and shapes People’s Thoughts
It is very clear that individual thoughts influence the way people speak. What people may not be sure of is whether their language affects their thinking. In the recent past, scientists have proven that language shapes people thoughts. For instance, studies have shown that teaching people how to differentiate color has shaped the way they think and also expanded their thoughts. Research also shows that individuals who speak two languages fluently see the world differently according to the language that they are speaking.
How Language affects how we perceive the world
It was proven by linguists around two decades ago that people who need to be well-oriented to speak a particular language have a good sense of direction. They can always keep track of where they are even when they are in new places compared to people who speak a different language in the same region. Their language has trained their cognitive skills concerning the sense of direction.
Levinson & Wilkins (2011) state that color perception also differs in different languages. For example, some languages have distinct words that are used to describe colors. Take for example the color blue which has numerous shades. English people would rather sum it up to a single color which is blue, but the Russians have names for all the shades from the lightest to darkest shades. They call the lighter shade ‘goluboy’ while; the darker shade is called ‘siniy.' Some speakers are quick at distinguishing colors while others have a difficult time.
Certain languages like Spanish and other romantic languages have their nouns as either masculine or feminine. Take for example the word chair which is a masculine word. If one is to make a sentence using the word, then they would have to make the verb, pronoun and the entire sentence to be in sync with gender. For instance, the word bed is a feminine name and subsequent adjustments have to be made to it. This means that the Spanish view these objects differently. They relate chairs to men and beds to women. It is evident here that languages affect how people think. A word like ‘bridge’ is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish; therefore, the Spanish will use masculine adjectives such as vigorous and sturdy to describe it while the German would use words like beautiful and lovely to describe the same thing.
A language also makes people think differently about space and time. The English people view time from left to right while the Hebrew view time from right to left. Other languages such as the Kuuk Thaayore view time according to the direction they are facing. Time representation varies with different languages. For example, the English see the future as “forward” and the past as “behind.” It is noted by linguists that English speakers involuntarily move their bodies forward when referring to the future and back when referring to the past. Also, the Aymara of Andes moves in the opposite direction while referring to the future and the past (Spivey, Joanisse & McRae, 2012)
Different languages also influence how speakers describe events and how they remember occurrences of an event even who did what. Let’s take an example of description of an accident. The English while describing use the agent would say, “Peter ran into Jane’s car.” While the Spanish and Japanese don’t describe the agent. Instead, they will say, “The car crashed.” This difference in taking account of an accident may interfere with eye witness evaluation. Some languages affect people’s memories. Some speakers can memorize numbers so well while others cannot.
References
Boroditsky, L. (2011) Frontier in Cultural Psychology: How language shapes thought. Pg. 63-64. Retrieved from https://psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/sci-am-2011.pdf
Levinson, S. C., & Wilkins, D. P. (Eds.). (2006). Grammars of space: Explorations in cognitive diversity (Vol. 6). Cambridge University Press.
Spivey, M. Joanisse, M & McRae, K. (2012). The Cambridge Handbook of Psycholinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
