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So i'll be speaking to you
Using language
Because i can
This is one of these magical liabilities that we humans have we can transmit really complicated thoughts to one another
So what i'm doing
Right now is i'm making sounds with my mouth
As i'm mix haaling and making tones and hissm puffs
And those are creating air vibrations in the air
Those air vibrations are traveling to you
They're hitting your air dones
And then your brain takes those vibrations from your air drones
Transforforms in to thought
I hope
I hope that's happening
So because of this ability
We humans are able to transmit our ideas across best reaches of space and time
Right we're able to transmit knowledge across across minds
I can put bizarre a new idea in your mind
Right now i could say imagine a jellyfish walsing in a library
While thinking about quantum mechanics
Now if everything has gone relarelatively well in your life so far
You probably haven't had that thought before
But now i've just made you think it through language now
Of course
There isn't just one language in the world
They're about seven thousand languages spoken around the world
And all the languages different from one another in all kinds of ways
Some languages have different sounds
They have different vocabulies
They also have different structures
Very importantly different structures
That begs the question does the language we speak shape the way we think now this is an ancient question
People have been speculating about this question for forever charalleamong holer
Roman emperor said
To have a second languages
To have a second soul
Strong statement
That language crafts reality
But on the other hand shakees
Here has juliot's say what's in an name arrose by any other name would smell a sweet
No that suggests that maybe language doesn't craft reality
These arguments have got back in forth for thousands of years
But until recently there husn't in any data to help us decide either way
Recently in my lab and other laves are around the world
We've started doing research
And now we have actual scientific data to weighgh
And on this question
So let me tell you about some of my favorite examples
I'll start with an example from an aboriginal community in australia
That i had a chance to work with these are the cooktire people they live in pomparal at the very west edge of capeyk
And what's cool about cooked tire is in cooked tire
They don't use words like left and right and instead
Everything is in cardinal directions north southeastern west
And when i say everything
I really mean everything
You would say something something like
Oh
There's an ant don your southwest flag or move your cup to the north northeeast a little bit in fact the way that you say hello and fuook tiger is you say which where we're going and the answer should be north northeeast in the far distance
How about you so imagine as you're walking around your day
Every person you greet
You have to report your heading direction that would actually get your orry entered pretty fast right
Because you literally couldn't get psed hello
If you didn't know which where you're going in fact people who speak language es like this stay oriented
Really really well they stay oriented better than we used to think humans could we used to think that humans were worse than other creatures because some biological excuse
Oh
We don't have magnets and our big sir in our scales
Now if you're language in your culture trains
You to do it
Actually you can do it
Theare humans around the world
Who ststay oriented really well and just to get us um in agreement about how different
This is from the way we do it
I want you know to close your eyes for a second and point southeast
I'll keep your eyes close point okay
So you can open your eyes
I see you guys pointing there there there there there
I don't know which weiit is myself
You have not been a lot of help
So let's just say the accuracy y this room was not very high
This is a big difference and cognitive ability across the langugues alright
Where one group very distinguish
Group like you guys doesn't know which way is which
But in another group i could ask a five year old
And they would know they're also really big differences in how people think about time
So here i have uh pictures of my grandfather are different ages
And if i ask an english speaker to organize time
They might lay out this way from left to right
This has to do with writing direction
If you wear speaker of heber arabbook
You might do it going in the opposite direction from right to left
How would the cooook tire this aboriginal group i just told you about to do it
They don't use words like left and right
Let me give you a hint
When we sat people facing south
They organized time from left to right
When we sat them facing north
They organized time from right to left
When we sat and facing east
Time came towards the body
What's the pattern east to west right
So for them time doesn't actually get locked on the body at all it gets locked on the landscape
So for me find facing this way
Then time goes this way
And find facing this way
Then time goes this way
I'm facing this way
Time goes this way
Very egocenc of me to have the direction of time chased me around
Every time i turned my body for the cooktire time has locked on the landscapes of dramatically different way of thinking about time
Here's another really smart human trick suppose
I ask you
How many penguwinds are there well i bet
I know how you'd solved that problem
If you solved it
You went one
Two Three
Four Five
Six
Seveneight you counounted them
You named each one with a number and the last number
You said was the number of penguins
Now this is a little trick that you're taught to uses kids
You learn n number lilist
You know you learn hydle player
A little linguistic trick
Well some languages don't do this
Because some languages don't have exact number words
Their languages that don't have a word like seven or a word like eight and in fact people who speak these languages don't count
And they have trouble keeping track of exact quantities
So for example
If i ask you to match this number of penguins to the same number of ducuh
You would be able to do that by counting but folks who don't have that linguistic tic trick can to do that
你不是长的好好看了
Language es also different how they divide up the color spectrum
The visual al uh
Some languages have lots of words for colors
Some have only a couple words
Light and dark
And language es differ in where they put boundaries between colors
Ers for examample uh english there's a word for blue
That covers all of the colors
That you can see on the screen
So in russian
There is into single word instead
Russian speakers have to different sheen between light blue globoy and dark blue sycney
So russians have this lifetime of experience of in language distinguishing these two colors
When we test people's ability
Ility
Persexually discriminate these colors
But we find is that russian speakers are faster across this linguistic boundary
They're faster to be able to tell the difference between a light and a dark bloom
And when you look at people's brains as they're looking at colors
Say you have color shifting slowly from light to dark blue
The brains of people who use different words for light and dark blue
Will give a surprise reaction as the color shift from light to dark
As if wow
Something has categorally changed
Where's the brains of english speakers
For example
That don't make this categorical distincinction
Don't that surprise
There's nothing
Nothing cacagorically changing language es have all kinds of structural quorks
This is one of my favorites
Lots of languages have grammatical gender
So every now gets aside a gender often masculine or feminine and these geners differ across languages
So for example
The sun is feminine and german
But masculine in spanish and the moon they're reverse
Could this actually have any consequence for how people think do german speakers think of the sun is how somehow more female like and the mosomehow more male like actually turns out
That's the case
So if
If you ask german and spanish speakers to say describe a bridge like the one
Here bridge happens to be grammatically feminine and german
Grammatically masculine and spanish
German speakers are more likely to say bridges are beautiful
Eleagain these stereotypically feminine words
Where's spanish speakers will be more likely to say they're strong or long
These masculine words
Language es also differ in how they described events right
So you take an event like this an accident in english
It's fine to say he broke the vase in a language like spanish
You wgoing to be more likely to say the vace broke or the vace broke itself if it's an accident
You wouldn't dn't say someone one it in english
Quite weirdly we can even say things like i broke my arm
Now in lots of language es you couldn't use that construction
Unless you are illunatic
And you went out looking to break your arm
And you succeeded right if it was an accident
You would use a different construction
Now this has consequences
So people who speak different languages will pay attention to different things
Depending on what their language usually requires them to do
So we show the same accident dent to english speakers and spanish speakers
English speakers will remember who did it
Because english requires you to say he did it
He broke the vase
Where spanish speakers might be less like that to remember who did it
If it's an accident
But they're more like that don't remember that it was an accident
They're more like that to remember the intention
So two people watch the same event ent witssed the same me
Me But
But up remembering different things about that event
This has implications of course
Fught eyewitness testimony
It also has implications for blame and punishment
So if you take english speakers
And i just show you someone breaking a vace
And i say he broke the vase
Ce suopposed to i say the vace broke
Even though you can witness it yourself
You can watch the video
You can watch the crime against the vace
You will punish someone more
You'll blame someone more
If just said said brobroke it suopposed to it broke right
The language guides are reasoning about events
Now i've given you a few
Examples of how language can profoundly shape the way we think
And it does so a variety of with so language can have big effects like we saw this space in time
Where a people can lay out space in time
And completely different ordinate frames from each other
Language can also have really deep effects
That's what we saw with the case of number having countwords in your language
Having number words opens up the whole world of mathematics
Of course if you don't count
You can't do algebra
You can't do any of the things that would be required to build a room
Like this or make this broadcast right right this little trick of number words gives you a stepping stone and toll
Whole cognitive rome language can also have really early effects
What we saw on the case of color right these are really simple basic percepual decisions we make thousands of them all the time and yet language age getting in there and um fussing even with these tiny persexual decisions that we make language can have really broad ght ects cts so case ase of gramamadal gender may be a little silly
But at the same time
Grammatical gendred applies to all nounns that means language can shape
How you're thinking about anything that can be named by noun
It's a lot of stuff and finally a giving
Example of how language can shape things that have personal way to us
Ideas like blame and punishment enter eyewitness memory
These are important things in our daily lives
Now the beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible
The human mind is
Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe
But seven thousand or seven thousand languguage spoken around the world
And we can create many more language es of course are living things
Things that we can hone and change to suit our needs
Now the tragic thing is that we're losing so much of this linguistic diversity
All the time
So we're losing about one language a week end by some estimates half f of the world languages will be gone in the next hundred years
And the even worse news
That right now
Almost everything we know about the human mind and the human brain is based on studies of usually american english speaking undergraduates
Uniververties
Right right that excludes almost all humans right
So what we know about the human mind is actually
Incredibly narrow in biased
And our science has to do better i want to leave you with this final thought
I've told you about how speakers of different languages thing differently
But of course that's not about how people elsewhere think it's about how you think it's how the language that you speak shapes the way that you think right
And that has gives you the opportunity to ask
Why do i think the way that i do how could i think differently
And also what thoughts do i wish to create
Thank you very much
