The thesis of this article was also explored in the beautiful, emotional and brain-twisting short story /Story of your life/ by Ted Chiang, with a delicious bit of the principle of least action known from modern classical mechanics mixed in, in which a linguist's perception of time is fundamentally changing in the course of her studies of an alian language. Very much recommended. (This story was the basis for the 2016 movie /Arrival/.)
I speak multiple languages including Russian. I think I discriminate between more colors, just because for a particular color shade chances are one of the languages has different adjectives.<p>Because I distinguish between light blue and blue, I'd keep calling something "light blue" even when people in my extended family who don't speak Russian will start saying "this is green now". Sometimes we have silly arguments about that which is fun.<p>Another one I like is the color between yellow and green. Russian has the word "salatoviy" (салатовый) translated as "salad green". I always see it that way even when not thinking or speaking Russian and I'd tell people something is "salad green" and they'd respond with "huh? oh you mean yellow..."
Whorfian effects are generally extremely small. If you speak Russian you might be able to discriminate certain shades of blue around 50 ms faster than if you speak English. Maybe language has some low-level effects, but there is no evidence for anything dramatic.
I have been mildly obsessed with Linguistics over the past few months (to the point where I decided to double major in it!).<p>For a while now I thought it was an area I would probably enjoy learning more about. What really got me going was actually reading the Russian Blues paper mentioned in the article, after it was featured on Fermat's Library a few months back(<a href="https://fermatslibrary.com/s/russian-blues-reveal-effects-of-language-on-color-descrimination" rel="nofollow">https://fermatslibrary.com/s/russian-blues-reveal-effects-of...</a>). It is a super interesting intro paper to linguistics and the methods they used to evaluate differences between languages are quite clever.
Sounds related to the Baader-Meinhoff effect, where simply having a word in your vocabulary makes you much more aware of it in the future, to the point that it feels odd how often you're hearing it.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect</a>
Only tangentially related but there's a very popular game with intentionally genderless characters. The creator does not wish it to be translated to certain languages in which it's difficult to keep things genderless. Some language choose a gender for all kinds of nouns so apparently it's hard to keep things genderless in those languages.
Speaking several languages gives you some advantages. You need to automate the distinction of complex sensory patters to the point in which it become effortless(after lots of practice).<p>You create complex neural networks that process this sensory data.<p>It is incredible how we see an image with text on it and text just pop out effortless in Mandarin or English, Russian or Spanish.<p>But IMHO, it is not speaking spoken languages that will give you an edge, because they all are similar, but knowing the different languages of very different fields.<p>For example a Musician speak the language of Music, tones, frequencies,Harmonics. It works in the same way, after lots of practice it becomes second nature to understand complex patterns in the world.<p>There is a language of science, understanding orders of magnitude, entropy, energy, numbers in general, experiments, errors.After lots of practice, it becomes second nature to you understanding those patterns.<p>Someone who works with people or animals like dogs could anticipate what they are thinking (or what they will think in the future), just by looking at the body language or speech nuances. After lots of practice, it becomes second nature.<p>Programmers learn a computer language, and after years of practice, it becomes part of who they are. There are Holy wars in programming because people that master a language feel threatened when this language is attacked, is an attack on themselves.
When you learn about kerning you notice it everywhere. Was it not there before? Of course it was you just never noticed because you didn't know it's a "thing" that has a word for it.<p>Can we agree that you only notice what you can put into concepts? and concepts are words that we made up so it follows that a lack of words to describe something will generally make it go unnoticed.
When I was a kid, the first times I saw a rainbow was in a cartoon like Fantasia, or with crayons or other drawings, where it was drawn with stripes. Then, when I finally saw a real rainbow (as a young child), it looked like a smooth gradient! But nowadays, I see stripes.
There’s an analogous situation with the Chinese color “qing” (青), a complex and nuanced issue debated by antique collectors and linguists alike.<p>There was an interesting discussion on reddit a while back in regards to Chinese colors (including “qing”) and a really nice data visualization project that attempted to compare Chinese colors with English:
<a href="http://muyueh.com/greenhoney/" rel="nofollow">http://muyueh.com/greenhoney/</a>
<a href="https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4i9ko5/visualization_of_color_names_in_chinese_and/" rel="nofollow">https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4i9ko5/visuali...</a>
A supplemental fyi to the article...<p>Lera Boroditsky (who is mentioned in the SA article) gave a short TED talk about language affecting thinking. In addition to the "Russian blue" anecdote, she also talks about language usage causing heightened perceptions of cardinal directions.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k</a><p>(It's an interesting talk but I have no idea how other cognitive scientists judge her research findings.)
My favourite quote related to this topic is one a friend of mine enlightened me with years ago:<p>"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."[0]<p>0 - Benjamin Lee Whorf, <a href="http://izquotes.com/quote/355169" rel="nofollow">http://izquotes.com/quote/355169</a>
Related TED talk <i>How language shapes the way we think</i> by Lera Boroditsky: <a href="https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k</a><p>Difference in color perception ability is mentioned towards the end.
<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity</a><p>For those seeking a prior introduction
This is why I have come to the (anecdotal) conclusion that one can only integrate into a group / society / culture when one learns / masters the language.<p>There are many nuances that imply the importance of particular details in the hidden meaning of the wording. These get easily lost when one does not fully comprehend the language used.
Pretty good article from PLOS Blogs on how languages affects your sense of smell:<p><a href="https://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/09/10/asifa-majid-language-olfaction/" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/09/10/asifa-ma...</a>
Shameless plug, but the book 'Through the Language Glass', by Guy Deutscher covers this and more about language and thought in a very entertaining way. Check out the book, or find my notes about it here: alvaroduran.me/through-the-language-glass
The researches seriously acted like it was a surprise that discrimination between light blue and dark blue is faster than between two shades of light blue or two shades of dark blue.
despite my love for languages I find that the only advantage it gives me is a) social b) ability to digest more information. What is missing is the ability to make deep sense of it. Recently read some of Heidegger's early work (he seems to have created his own language just to say what he wanted to say) and I think his concept of <i>Enframing</i>[1] has something to do with it:<p><i>> Heidegger also referred to the metaphysical manner of thinking in our age as a "one-track thinking," a term which he explicitly associated with technology. (27) In a similar spirit, he called it a "one-sided thinking" that tends towards a "one-sided uniform view" in which "[everything] is leveled to one level," and "[our] minds hold views on all and everything, and view all things in the same way." (28) There is, to be sure, a kind of language that, as the expression of this form of thinking, is itself one-track and one-sided. Heidegger finds one "symptom" of the growing power of the technological form of thinking in our increased use of designations consisting of abbreviations of words or combinations of their initials. (29) It is thus a technological form of language in the sense that it heralds that order in which everything is reduced to the univocity of concepts and precise specifications.<p>Heidegger labels such interpretations "technological" while remarking that they are a given only "insofar as technology is itself understood as a means and everything is conceived only according to this respect." (30) If our way of thinking is one that values only that which is immediately useful, then language is only conceived and appreciated from this perspective of its usefulness for us. More importantly, this suggests it is the essence of technology as Enframing that somehow determines what he calls the "transformation of language into mere information." (31)</i><p>... and ...<p><i>> It is within Enframing, then, that "speaking turns into information." Heidegger also spoke of the "language machine" [Sprachmaschine] as "one manner in which modern technology controls the mode and the world of language as such." (33) We can infer that the language machine is one crucial way in which this language of Enframing speaks. (34) With the construction of what Heidegger called electronic brains, calculating, thinking and translating machines, the language machine is made possible insofar as their activities take place in the element of language. The term "language machine" should not be taken as if Heidegger were merely taking about calculators and computers. He referred to machine technology itself as "the most visible outgrowth of the essence of modern technology," (35) and he insisted that the fact ours was the age of the machine was due to the fact it is the technological age, and not vice versa. (36) More importantly, Enframing itself is not anything technological in the sense of mechanical parts and their assembly. Thus, the language of Enframing cannot itself be reduced to anything technological in this narrow sense. Moreover, Heidegger explicitly characterized the language machine as the "technical complex of calculating and translating machines." (37) He also distinguished it from what he called the "speaking machine" or recording apparatus. The distinction is important because he does not see the latter as "intruding into the speaking of language itself." The language machine, on the other hand, does intrude by regulating and adjusting through its mechanical energies and functions how we can use language. (38)</i><p>[1] <a href="https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContGreg.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContGreg.htm</a>
Everyone says that language shapes your thinking, but there isn't a single fundamental discovery in physics that even had words for it beforehand. Thought is far enough ahead of language for it to be hard for language to have any influence on it, unless you're talking about these studies which aren't really thought.
* Linguistic Determinism - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism</a><p>* Neural Darwinism - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism</a><p>* Eskimo words for snow - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow</a><p>It has been largely established that language structures shape how the brain organizes cognitive reasoning, which in turn shapes the brain and vise versa.<p>It is less well established that language shapes the data processing of the 5 senses. This is largely due to the trouble of defining what is a distinctive <i>word</i> when comparing languages and relating the resulting vocabulary distinctions to perceptual distinctions in an objective way.