We unremarkably presume words are just a mode of expressing ideas already in our head . But what if it ’s the other elbow room around?Some linguists saythe languages we speak basically castrate the way we intend , and even perceive reality .
The New York Times exploresthe implications of world - altering linguistics , and how we can learn about the complexness of both lecture and speaker . Linguist Guy Deutscher argues that , rather than forbidding us from infer sure concepts ( as in , if you do n’t have a word for it , you do n’t recognise what it is ) , speech force us to reckon sealed ways .
For example , while English does n’t employ gender when talking about someone , piazza , and things , mountain of languages do — and the departure is n’t just an extra worry for high school Gallic students . Gendered language hale their speaker unit to , even unconsciously , consider forks , table , trees , and sandwiches to have genders . This sounds obvious , and maybe even little , but research show that these properties dissemble the way Spanish Speaker , for illustration , see their environments . “ Once gender connotation have been imposed on impressionable young mind , ” explains Deutscher , “ they chair those with a gendered female parent tongue to see the inanimate earthly concern through lense 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 nomenclature that have no conception of person - oriented direction . That is to say , there ’s no my left , or your left . There ’s no left wing at all . If a soccer ball lands next to you , Australia ’s primal Guugu Yimithirr verbaliser will tell you to reach to your east to pick it up . As a consequence of single-valued function compass directions across personal since childhood , speakers of such languages have almost superhuman sensory faculty of orientation , able-bodied to make out north and in the south as most of us would be capable to intuitively “ know ” front and back .
The product between judgement and word is still a blurred one for science , and much work remains to be done . But philology offer to arrange the humankind in a way that piss good mother wit , and , even if we ca n’t always sit at the same tabular array and chat ( or even possess a Bible for mesa ) , make the world a less strange place . [ NY Times ]
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