+519 In cultures where text is read from right to left, when someone from that culture pictures time on a linear scale, the past is on the right with the future on the left. In languages with masculine and feminine pronouns, a natural speaker of that language is more likely to point out the aspects of that object that are generally associated with the pronoun's gender. The effect that language has on how we perceive the world is astounding. amirite?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I read somewhere that it affects how you see color. For example, a red piece of paper was shown to a native English and a native Hindi speaker. After a while, they showed them an orange piece of paper and asked if it was the same color. Most English speakers said no, but most people who spoke Hindi, where they don't have separate words for orange and red, said yes. They did a similar test with English and Russian (where they have different words for light and dark blue) speakers. The English speakers thought they were the same color, but the Russian speakers could tell the difference.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

That's correct :) There are some more really strange examples, like cultures who don't have words for right or left have incredible sense of direction, since they instead always know where north is. Or "wild" children who were raised without language not being able to remember any or all of their childhood, because without labels to put on their memories, they just faded. I could only fit so much in the post, however.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Where did you get this information? I'd really like to read more about it.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Cool! I'm so glad you're interested. I got it from a few of my Psychology professors in college, and some textbooks and independently read articles. When I'm at a computer I'll get you some links so you can read up.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Thank you! In the meantime, I'll look it up a little myself.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.html http://www.springerlink.com/content/pl105117133140t5/ http://psych.stanford.edu/~jlm/papers/DilkinaEtAl07CogSciProc.pdf

by Anonymous 13 years ago

If that's too heavy you can also read the Linguistic relativity page on Wikipedia.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Do you have an article about the wild children?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Thanks for showing an interest! I found a couple, hopefully they'll do. http://www.english.iup.edu/mmwimson/Syllabi/721/Genie.htm http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4804490&page=1#.T5IZFKtSS3Y

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Thanks! It just seemed really interesting.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Amazing! That explains why my parents and I always think things are different colors.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

so... your parents speak Russian and Hindi? O.o

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Oh, lol, no. That'd be pretty interesting though... Anyways, it's actually that my parents are native Hindi speakers & Hindi was my first language but I'm more accostumed to English. So, we always seem to clash on whether something is one color or the other. Like, if my brother and I say something is yellow or lime and they'll think it's //just// green. & I thought it was pretty neat to finally know why.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Hindi does in fact have separate words for Orange and Red. You are thinking of a different language, although your point still stands.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Really? I know red is "laal". What's orange?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

nirangi.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

i like how "nirangi" kind sounds like "orange," and even more like "naranja," which Spanish for orange

by Anonymous 13 years ago

"naranja" is actually orange as in the fruit, though it is rather similar to the color orange, which is "anaranjado"

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Oh, cool. Yeah, I think I may have heard that before… Thanks!

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I checked again and you're right, the language was actually called Himba.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Thinking about it, I don't really understand why we draw time as progressing from left to right. It just always made sense. I guess you're right.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

its the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis! :)

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Linguistic relativity, but I'm nitpicking. Very good!

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I just read about this not too long ago, it's really fascinating! There was an article about how which language you spoke affected everything from how you view things (masculine or feminine like you said), which details you pay attention to (say a person vs an action committed by that person), to how much money you save. It's incredible. Really great post. :)

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Thank you so much! I'm glad people find it as fascinating as I do.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Another random example: native Koreans are significantly better than Americans, Europeans, etc. at determining how loosely or tightly something fits because they use entirely distinct words for each.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

this is a good post

by Anonymous 13 years ago

This is a good comment. <3

by Anonymous 13 years ago

In Spanish, the word for "plug" is male (el enchufe) and the word for "socket" is not only female, but it's also a synonym for "female" (la hembra). If you get my drift.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Actually, when I was helping my brother get an extension cord for something, he told me that I he had needed the "female" part of the cord. At first I was like "haha, I get the joke." but then he told me that's what they're really called. Now I know what that originated from. :)

by Anonymous 13 years ago

http://tinyurl.com/cdabf7m is a pretty good article on this, and I'm sure you can find better ones. "Language shapes meaning" is a good keyphrase to use for research on this topic. And yes, it absolutely amazing the power words can have. Simply choosing a different word, even if they are synonymous, can give people a whole different impression of the same thing. :) If you're looking for something a bit more casual, Cracked did a surprisingly good article on this too: http://tinyurl.com/crackedlanguage

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Thanks so much for the reading, I had forgotten about that Cracked article.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Finally, a long post that actually holds my attention.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I also think this is why Asian countries generally have a more respectful culture, as the language that they speak can completely change depending on who they are talking to. They grow up having to learn how to speak to a variety of different people properly using honorifics in speech and other such things. Korean for example changes drastically depending on whether you are talking to someone who is older or more experienced than you, or a friend of the same age. They also add many words to describe people that we do not use. Such as a "Seonbae" which is a person who is more experienced than you are in your line of work, or perhaps a mentor figure. "Hubae" is the opposite of that, and it is what you would call someone that is younger and less experienced than you. There are some people that may even talk in honorifics even to their peers as a sign of respect and neutrality. What we would consider normal conversation to someone of any age or class level in English, Koreans actually separate it as a whole different type of language use called "Banmal", which is essentially a casual way of talking.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Like on TV, there is a code of how people should talk to each other. They must add suffixes to their names such as "Ssi" (The equivalent being the use of Mr or Mrs in English). If we watched TV and everyone had to refer to other people on the show as Mr Jones and Mrs Flowers it would feel really strange and put on, but this is how it works in Korea. Only times you see people talking more comfortably is on a long running variety / comedy show, but even still the language used is never 100% casual. It always has a lot of use of honorifics.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I've also always thought it was amazing how even within the same language simply the choice of vocabulary can change a sentence to paint a completely different picture in your head. For example: "I made love to a fair maiden upon a bed of reeds" "I fucked a hot chick in a bush"

by Anonymous 13 years ago

and it can give you subtle clues about somebody's personality http://ctrlv.in/80435

by Anonymous 13 years ago

What is this bullshit, I finally get a POTD and no Favvkes cat pictures?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

http://ctrlv.in/80436 I had to make it after I saw this.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

It's also scientifically proven that people who are speak more than one language change their personalities depending on the language their spoken to. And I'm sure it's true cause when I speak Arabic I'm like a COMPLETELY different person with different opinions and stuff. A friend told me that some kind of government is trying to remove the words "freedom" and "revolution" from their native languages to change the mentality of people. It's highly unlikely and probably false but it still brings things into perspective. Sometimes I think of all the languages which disappeared throughout time, which leads to the disappearance of not only cultures and thoughts, but actual ideologies that we would never know about. Kinda sad if you think about it.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Isn't that like the language from //1984//? Newspeak, I think it was called. There weren't any words for freedom, at least not in the sense we have now. By limiting vocabulary, you limit thought.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Actually I'm from a culture that reads text from right to left. Our linear time scale is from left to right.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

What culture is that?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

It's also been proven that word choice can change your perception of an event. http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/03/memories-manipulated-after-event.php For those too lazy to read the whole article, psychologists had volunteers watch a video of a car crash. They then separated the volunteers into ten groups, one of which was asked, "How fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" The other groups were asked the same question but with different verbs: "when they crashed", "collided", or even just "contacted". Those asked with more violent words estimated that they were going about 10 mph faster than they actually were, while the others were somewhere in between. Then about a week later, the volunteers were asked if there was any broken glass when the cars smashed/hit/came in contact, and those with the more violent words said that there had been glass when in fact there hadn't.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I remember reading about this study in my psychology class. It's quite fascinating.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

And the same people who know all that are the ones writing ip questions for political polls. It is frighteningly easy to manipulate results just with language choices.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Language can also affect they way you perceive your own experiences. My friend went through some pretty difficult stuff while she was studying in China. Whenever she talks about it in Chinese, she gets panicky and very upset very quickly. If she talks about it in English though, she says it feels farther away, and so it's easier to deal with. In a related vein, my boyfriend can only speak Chinese, so when I try to talk about him in English to my friends and family, it's kind of hard. These things-- my friend's experiences, my relationship with my boyfriend-- they just don't exist in English.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I fail at proofreading. That text shouldn't have strike-through... It was supposed to be hyphened.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Someone's been reading cracked.com

by Anonymous 13 years ago

I really like when we have intellectual POTDs. It's just something different from the usual jokes.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

...This comment section is currently the politest place on the internet. Well done, my fellow amiriters. Well done.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

TOK... nuff' said.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Yeah, and that's why English is so god-damn boring to me. I mean, in Russian (and even Spanish) I feel much closer or emotional when speaking about //anything//, no matter how boring it is. We can manipulate already good words to feel even closer or stronger about them, such as changing the feminine Trava (grass) to Travka, a nice sweet word. When talking about some dignified male cat (Kot) we can call him that or if he's really fat we can call him Kotyara, a rather more comical and visual word. There's just nothing in English. Everything is just... words.

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Why are these is the same post?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

Pardon? O.o

by Anonymous 13 years ago

How do these two ideas (reading right to left and the gender of words) have anything to do with eachother?

by Anonymous 13 years ago

They are two examples of linguistic relativity.

by Anonymous 13 years ago