The Fascinating Effects of Language

Language is one of the most complex things to ever have been created by humanity. We have created around seven thousand different intricate dialects, each with a distinct articulation, sounds and symbol. Most of our languages have corresponding letters of an alphabet or symbol system, we put them together in different orders forming diverse words that make up our extravagant range of vocabulary. For centuries, people have been wondering if all the variety of languages shape the way we think. If our mother tongue was English compared to Russian, would are brains be wired to think and react unalike? Do languages affect the way we think? In the past we did not have any data or research to back up any side of the arguments. In the Ted Talk How Languages Shape the way we Think by Lera Boroditsky, she briefly describes how we form words through a sequence of huffs and puffs which then travel in air vibrations. Once the vibrations reach our ears, our brain processes the sound waves and turns them into thoughts. We recognize these distinct patterns of sounds and call many of them words. Boroditsky worked with an Aboriginal tribe from Australia called the Kuuk Thaayorre or Thaayorre Tribe, who speaks Kuuk Thaayorre Language, a Paman language. They are natives who reside in the settlement Pormpuraaw, the western part of the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland in Australia. This tribe’s unique language is such a wonder. They use cardinal direction, north, south, east and west, instead of simple left and right. However, they do use the cardinal direction for more then just direction, it’s used in greetings, telling time and moving objects. When we English speakers greet someone we normally say “Hello,” where in Kuuk Thaayorre you would say “Which way are you going?”. Our response is entirely different as well, people of the Thaayorre tribe would respond with “North, north, east in the near distance,” if all is going quite well. This unique way of simply just greeting people makes our universal language quite boring. Telling time is also different as well, it all depends on which cardinal direction they are facing, for each direction would mean a new arrangement. It’s not just this tribal language that has a unique system, Russian compared to English and German to Spanish also have many radical differences. In English when we see a colour, such as blue, we simply address it as blue. Russian speaker tend to differentiate light blue and dark blue respectively. As part of Boroditsky’s research, their team would watch brain patterns and the different reactions from multiple things of all sort of language speakers. Those who speak Russian, their brain has like a quick surprise/reaction when seeing a shade of blue change from light to dark, whereas in English speakers there wasn’t. A lot of languages have grammatical gender, different nouns and adjectives are categorized as a more feminine or masculine word. In German the sun is feminine, described with more feminine adjectives and the moon masculine. Contrastingly, in Spanish the moon is portrayed more feminine and the sun masculine. Certain languages train you to pay attention to different things. For example, in an accident, English speakers are more likely to remember who caused the accident where in another language people zero in on how the even actually unfolded. Languages shape the way we view time, numbers, colours, grammatical gender, memory and what we focus on. The variety of different sounds, symbols, articulation for each language is so unique, quite a fascination language is. It is unfortunate that currently we are losing around a language a week. Finishing the Ted Talk, I have concluded that the different languages we speak affect the way we think one way or another, all this research supporting this argument. Then again, our research is all done in just solely English by English speakers so is our research valid? Is all our research and data simply narrow minded and biased? What are we to believe?