Around the world, every country has a specific language that follows their own set of rules. Generally, language is used to get ideas and thoughts across to fellow people who speak that language. Even those who can not hear or speak have their own language. I, myself, have attempted to learn how to speak Spanish. Natively speaking English, it was difficult for me to comprehend that every object is designated male or female. Also, it was difficult for me to pronounce the "rr" sound when first learning the language. This is because when I was an infant, the people around me never used this sound. In turn, the sound was dropped from my vocabulary.
I recently read several articles discussing the impact of language on our thoughts. First, I read the article "Relatively speaking: do our words influence how we think?" This article brought up the idea that possibly the language we speak develops different thoughts in our minds. For example, German speakers always sound so angry when they speak. Does this make them think more aggressively than those who speak English? This is an interesting thought, but it can not be true that Germans are constantly angry. This being said, language could still influence thoughts, they just can not possibly influence thoughts. Who would want to be angry all the time anyway?
Also in this article, I read about a group of people called the Hopi tribe. This tribe is also known as "time-less Hopi" because they literally have no sense of time. In America time is a big part of our lives, from the time of the day, to the past, to the future. So if we try to understand a world where time is not a factor, it is difficult to comprehend. Imagine if the English language did not have the word time. Would we be as stressed from day to day? Or would we be anxious about what is going to come in our future?
The second article I read was named "How Language Shapes Thought". I was immediately interested in this article by it's start. People in the Pormpuraaw community are constantly aware of which north, south, east and west are without hesitation. If you were to ask any of English speaking people to point north, they would hesitate and point in a direction that was somewhat accurate but not exactly correct. With the people from this community would not hesitate and be perfectly accurate. This is also mind-blowing, to those not from that culture. Of course, I am sure it is astonishing to them that we are not capable of the same thing.
There are also several other examples of differences between various languages. One example would be in Mandarin, there are no words for exact numbers. Instead, they use words that mean "few" or "many". Again, could you imagine not having a word to say 'I have two dogs'? There is also a group of people who group colors into five categories. Basically, they use one word to describe both blue and green. Which we have like seven different words for colors that are very similar. For example, blue, bluish green, teal, turquoise, cayman are all words that describe very similar colors. Another example would be that several languages give objects a gender, like I stated earlier. In the English language, we only have genders for people and animals. This makes people who speak languages that follow this rule think in the way that inanimate objects that are male can not be given the name Lisa. Where those who speak English never blink an eye at calling an inanimate object any name they please.
The final experiment I read about was named "Language doesn't influence our thoughts...except when it does". I found this experiment a little odd. They created 16 images that resembled things the students have never seen before. The study showed that when the images were given labels, it was easier for students to guess them correctly. Those who were not given labels admitted to creating their own labels in order to place the images into the designated groups. This proves that language, whether we know the language or not, allows us to think clearer in the terms of placing these images into the designated group.
Overall, we can agree that language absolutely effects our thinking. Just in three articles, it was proven that the language we speak changes the way we think. Whether it be grouping colors together or not having any sense of time. There are tons of languages around the world so we can only think about how many different ways people around the world think. If something as common as language effects our thought, what other things effect our thoughts?
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