
How the language you speak changes your view of the world - wpietri
https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/04/how-the-language-you-speak-changes-your-view-of-the-world/
======
kazinator
If you know several different languages, the advantage is not that your view
is _enhanced_ , but rather you are more aware of the false contributions of
language to thought; you are more aware that some pattern of thinking is just
really some linguistic convention and not real semantics.

For instance, you are more likely to spot someone's equivocation: confusing
multiple meanings of some term in the same argument. Right away you realize:
"Doh, in this other language I know, those two concepts are not even the same
word; what he's saying doesn't _translate_."

~~~
A_COMPUTER
I was never that good of a Japanese speaker so someone can correct me if I'm
wrong, but to me it felt like there was a lot more ambiguity about things in
Japanese than in English. And I definitely found when I used it for long
periods of time, even my way of perceiving the world around me changed, in a
way that seemed closer to how the Japanese I knew perceived it. I never knew
if this was a cause or an effect. And I _definitely_ experienced, as you say,
knowing that there was no way to translate something to English without losing
its Japanese "feeling".

~~~
Htsthbjig
There are very few differences between German and English, but there are tons
of difference between European languages and Asian ones.

I studied in Korea, I was specially interested in Hangul, and found Japanese
extremely similar to Korean in the cultural side of things.

For example, there is a iconic concept in the US of "bad guy", "rebel against
the world". It simply does not exist in Korea, or in Japan by the way. You
can't talk about "bad guys"to them, because it does not exist in their world.

The same happens with different levels of respect and politeness in Japan, it
does not match anything the Western world has.

Words are like icons or shortcuts for something the culture has.

The intimate relationships, the families, the social contracts,violence, the
way of working... it is simply another world of thinking.

~~~
tiatia
"There are very few differences between German and English,"

While English is, more or less, a simplified version of German I still would
not agree to your statement. English has no declension (a simplification of a
grammar).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension)

In German it does not make a difference if you say "Dog bites Man" or "Man
bites Dog". The word order is very flexible and it is always clear who bites
whom. This is a major difference in a language.

~~~
r00fus
The lack of grammatical genders in English is also a significant difference
from German, IMHO.

It's interesting that of the largest economies in the world, the non-
grammatical-gender languages seem to reign supreme (English, Chinese,
Japanese).

~~~
tiatia
"the non-grammatical-gender languages seem to reign supreme " Hm. Seems like
bullship.

Portuguese? (Brazil) Russian? I suspect Indian (Hindi) might have genders too.
German is not a tiny Economy by the way.

~~~
r00fus
Top 3 are all genderless and, combined, vastly outsize the remaining 7 on the
top 10.

------
lordnacho
Isn't this called the Sapir-Worf hypothesis?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)

I'm not sure I can feel it personally. I suppose as with many polyglots, I
tend to speak different languages in specific contexts. So it's hard to
compare, which I guess is why these researchers are setting up specific
situations to do this.

For instance, I only really know science/business words/ideas in English. I
couldn't do a degree in my first language. And it's awkward to talk business
in English with my family.

~~~
westoncb
This is one of a long line of people arguing for or against what's essentially
Sapir-Worf—people have been strongly divided on it for a long time. I'm
surprised to see that something like this article is getting attention,
though. I figured that at this late date you'd have to say something much more
compelling/nuanced to be considered as adding to the subject.

------
fit2rule
I am raising my sons to be multi-lingual (German and English) and it is a
wonderful thing indeed to see the mind expansion that occurs on your average
code-switch .. especially in very young minds. "Daddy, the erdapfel sind too
hot!", and "Das Feur makes me vv-aaaarmm!!" .. ;) Much amusement in such
moments.

And socially, I think it sets the kids up a bit as well, because they are
quite acclimated to the strange looks from strange people when you switch
fluidly, between the languages. There is a huge caché, and the boys seem to be
becoming aware of how to spend it.

~~~
YAYERKA
Thanks for your comment. It brings up positive nostalgic memories for me. I
grew up speaking, reading and writing three different languages, as well as
constantly hearing another being yelled through the phone.

Not sure about the article; personally it's helped me be able to adapt quickly
in lots of foreign places and realize that with a little time and enough
"banging your head against a desk" anything can be understood (even Cyrillic
alphabets).

~~~
Jayd2014
Same here. Fluent in 4 languages. For me the best advantage is not learning
just the language, but the whole culture. If you can't laugh to comedy standup
stars and understand the culture of other people, it really doesn't help much
if you are fluent in one language or more. Languages also promote a more
liberal worldview and more tolerance for others.

~~~
fit2rule
I agree with you - the moment you learn another language, you step outside the
borders of your own culture, metaphysically, and are able to see things from a
different perspective than what is normal. That's the value - and the
liability - of language, in my opinion.

The world would be a better place if we all spoke more than just our mother-
tongues ..

------
SimpleMinds
A little bit related to article, as I'm not bilingual but just speaking
English as another language and this come up after conversation with friend
(another not native English speaker). I learned my English mostly thanks to
computers and playing games, including classical RPGs.

I started to read Malazan Book of the Fallen[0], a very dark and heavy fantasy
series. I started in English, then switched to my native language, now to have
maximum fun from it (as I like it a lot), I read one book in native and then
reread in English.

What I've noticed is that reading in my native language makes me feel much
more connected to characters, I see the whole relations between persons more
vividly and intensively. Then rereading in English, the same characters (which
I already know and like!) feels much more distant and abstract.

But :)

All the fantasy scenes plays much better in my head in English than in my
language. For some reasons sentences like "blood dripping from sword",
"screams of souls", "massive", "darkness", "spread his wings" etc instantly
trigger the feeling of magnificent and out-of-this-world scale of experiences.
Even though translation is top-notch, for those parts I prefer the English
version.

Very interesting experience.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malazan_Book_of_the_Fallen)

~~~
johnchristopher
What about fantasy in your native language ? How does it feel ?

I am of the opinion that translated works are (unintended) betrayals of the
original text. And that a `native` author will produce better wording (sigh,
sorry about that) than a translator.

~~~
SimpleMinds
Do you mean originally written in my language? As coming from post soviet
block, most of our fantasy is a bit different in a sense that from the
beginning it doesn't involve epicness of Tolkien, Malazan, Black Company
scale. From the beginning books focus on different things.

I would like to read some of them in English to see how's the difference in
perception.

------
westoncb
Here's the kind of thing to expect from the article:

"Research with second language users shows a relationship between linguistic
proficiency in such grammatical constructions and the frequency with which
speakers mention the goals of events."

—where 'mentioning goals of events' means using the grammatical constructions
these people are more proficient with. So, people who are more proficient with
X use X more...

But, they're really trying to push their perspective, saying things like:

"The worldview assumed by German speakers is A HOLISTIC ONE – they tend to
look at the event as a whole – whereas English speakers tend to zoom in on the
event and focus only on the action."

The capital letters are mine, referring to their hypertext connecting to this
paper:
[http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ling.2012.50.issue-4/ling-20...](http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ling.2012.50.issue-4/ling-2012-0026/ling-2012-0026.xml)

—whose abstract makes it clear how much they're stretching it by saying "the
worldview assumed by German speakers is a holistic one," and then following up
with a section titled "Switch languages, change perspective"

edit: typo

~~~
amirouche
They don't say what do bilinguals for the same exercice.

------
lisper
If you really want to expand your linguistic horizons, study sign language.
Sign language is fundamentally different than spoken or written languages. It
doesn't just substitute gestures for phonemes or written tokens. Its grammar
(and it does have one) is three-dimensional. It also opens you up to the
fascinating world of deaf culture, since teaching sign is one of the most
popular ways for deaf people to earn extra money.

~~~
spiritplumber
One interesting thing as of late is that there are some deaf people who are
against ear implants because, as it solves deafness, it weakens deaf culture.

[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/17/1256259/-The-
Cochle...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/17/1256259/-The-Cochlear-
Implant-Controversy)

~~~
jallmann
That article isn't really balanced, and is really one person's (rather
uninformed) opinion.

The cochlear implant debate is a bit more nuanced than that, and it is
centered around children. One argument is that, often, the child may not be
given a choice whether to be implanted. There are long-term considerations:
the CI destroys any residual hearing and the capability for hearing aids to
work so you can't "roll back" after the surgery, you can't do MRIs ever again,
you are supposed to avoid high pressure/high impact activities (scuba diving,
tackle football, etc) -- although many deaf people with CIs that disregard
this advice. It's also a big commitment that requires years of auditory
training to master, especially if you received the implant after the language
development phase of childhood -- maybe 5 or 6 years of age.

It does seem the CI's effectiveness is inversely proportional to age of
implantation, especially if you are going from zero hearing (with hearing
aids) to a CI overnight. The younger you are, your brain has a chance to
develop into the CI as it would with normal ears, and those kids are often
functionally hearing. Which is totally fine with me, by the way.

Source: Deaf, use sign language, have a CI, although I don't wear it anymore.
Me and my friends with CIs are no less a part of deaf culture because of it.

------
OvidNaso
Along these lines, I've often thought about the cognitive paths that could be
explored or changed if I were to learn braille or sign language. Neuroscience
has recently studied and given legitimacy to the state of 'Flow' or 'the
Zone'[0] which has been long been understood in the physical realm, but is
probably the same or similar in states of other creative activities, like
speech or writing. I wonder if it may be easier to induce if one knew American
(or any dialect) sign-language. Could we more readily produce eloquence or
insight with the forced physicality athletes and meditation guru's use? And
how much beautiful poetry and prose are we missing produced by the deaf
community?

0\. Popularized in recent books by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
and journalist Steven Kotler.

~~~
westoncb
From my understanding, 'flow' is basically when your mind has set on and is
comfortable with some 'procedure' for doing something; at that point, there's
no 'meta process' watching the procedure performed, looking for ways to
correct it—the procedure just runs on its own (and it runs much more
efficiently that way—kinda like representing a procedure in hardware instead
of software). If there's much to that, it probably doesn't matter much whether
the procedure has immediate physical consequences or receives data from the
physical senses.

------
julianpye
I was raised bilingual in German and English, growing up in Germany. For me
both languages are very different and to this day I prefer English when I want
to talk about ideas and areas where I explore while talking and I use German
when I need to be precise. I could never pitch in German and really don't like
talking about my projects in German, since everything needs to be exact and
committed to.

~~~
radicalbyte
English is my first language, I learnt Dutch (I'm fluent) as an adult. I have
the same experience as you: English is extremely context sensitive, it's for
"invention" \- it's a very natural language.

Dutch is more precise; there's less ambiguity. You have to think a little more
before you speak (thanks to the differing subject-object-verb order). I've
become a better engineer since learning it.

We're raising our kids bilingual because the benefits are just so clear; and I
figure that if they get English/Dutch for free then German is very cheap so
they can learn an east-asian language too..

~~~
fnord123
>Dutch is more precise; there's less ambiguity.

Really? I would suggest that Dutch is plenty of ambiguity as you can omit a
lot. e.g. "Ik moet naar de tandarts
[gaan/rijden/fietsen/lopen/bellen/kijken/wijzen/zoeken]" ("I must [?] to the
dentist").

~~~
EdwardDiego
If Dutch is anything like German, gaan means "go" and rijden/fietsen are along
the lines "go by vehicle".

In German at least, you tend to use "go by vehicle" where English would just
use "go". That is the preciseness English doesn't have.

Interesting that the "I must <x> to the Bla" construct exists in Dutch,
English has it, but it's antiquated.

~~~
octatoan
"We must away / We must away / We must away ere break of day / . . ."

------
wpietri
What surprises me about this article is not that worldviews change, but how
quickly these experimenters got it to happen. "When we surprised subjects by
switching the language of the distracting numbers halfway through the
experiment, the subjects’ focus on goals versus process switched right along
with it."

I would have expected it was a much slower process. It makes me wonder if we
could observe similar effects in multilanguage code bases.

------
indralukmana
I will speak with a point of view from Indonesian with Javanese ethnicity.

Most of Indonesian peoples can speak at least 2 languages. Our local or
regional language and national language.

Me myself can use 4 languages: Javanese (native), Indonesian (native), English
(intermediate), Japanese (beginner), Arabic (beginner). For the Javanese
language there some tiers of politeness but the usage in society can be
generalized to polite Javanese (kromo) that we use when speaking to elders and
rough Javanese (ngoko) that we use with our peers.

I have read some articles that speak about language effects on mind or point
of view. But since I was small I learned more than two languages I cannot
really differ them. Something a kin to the expression of "asking a fish what
is water".

Based on my own feelings and experiences there are some nuances that accompany
each language that I have known. I cannot describe them with words yet, but a
language would be appropriate on different settings, medias, and intended
audiences.

There are some language usages that are not appropriate when used in a
different settings but sometimes of course there are some usages that would
also help exploring the meanings

------
Htsthbjig
I see this a lot in China.

The monolingual people in China that only speak different versions of Chinese
have serious difficulty with abstract ideas and concepts because of their
language.

Chinese is so outdated and obsolete in so many ways. It has not evolved, yes
you could understand today a 4.000 year old writing but at what cost?

It is a socking experience, because as a European I take evolution in
languages for granted.

In some ways, Europeans took the Steve Jobs approach of using new tech,
outdating the old, even in language, like Carmack saying f&ck you if you
wanted to play his games with only a CPU, and then forcing you to buy newer
and newer GPUs.

It is hard to read without training things written even 200-400 years ago, but
we have powers that Chinese don't have, like using tones for emotions(we used
tones for the language 4.000 years ago), flexibility, abstractions.

But you can only see those if you speak multiple languages.

~~~
Jimmy
>Chinese is so outdated and obsolete in so many ways.

This is really interesting. Could you expand on this? Do you find it to be
something with the vocabulary, the grammar? What about the writing system?
I've always wondered how the Chinese language writes loan words (Japanese
handles this by having a system of phonetic spelling that's used alongside
traditional Chinese characters).

And before anyone thinks it's absurd that one language could be better at
expressing abstract ideas than others, imagine the limit case: a language with
only one word. Pretty useless, right? Obviously no natural language is that
limited, but that doesn't mean that a range of variation can't exist. It's an
empirical matter whether it does.

~~~
Htsthbjig
"Do you find it to be something with the vocabulary, the grammar? What about
the writing system?"

All the above. In everything. There are no tenses in Mandarin for example. The
writing system is hell. Most Chinese have different levels of analphabetism
because it has so many words.

"I've always wondered how the Chinese language writes loan words"

They have different transcription methods for that. They standardized in
Pinyin:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin)

It is not for loan words, but THEIR OWN ones. They need this in order to know
how something sounds!!. Most of them use memory, but you study pinyin if you
are educated.

In fact, the same Chinese character sounds different in different Chinese
languages, and even in the same language in different parts of the country!.

~~~
nopinsight
Chinese does not use formal tenses but they add words to tell time when it's
useful to. The same can be said about the lack of grammar for social
relationships and politeness levels in English compared to Japanese. Would you
say that it is English's weakness?

Languages are rooted in culture and express by default what the culture
values. One can claim that an aspect of a culture is more amenable to
modernization than another, but to say one language is better than another in
an absolute sense does not seem logical.

~~~
Htsthbjig
"The same can be said about the lack of grammar for social relationships and
politeness levels in English compared to Japanese. Would you say that it is
English's weakness?"

Yes. :-)

My native language is not English. So I don't believe English is perfect by
any means, because I know other languages are better for other things.

For example, English way of writing is terrible for expressing sounds.
Japanese or the korean ways are much better Or Spanish by the way.

Any country has a propaganda system in order to make people believe their
system is the best, and you can't fight against it.

I know there is no way I could convince a Chinese person that the language
they speak is outdated, because it is not rational fact but emotional. There
are no rational facts against nationalistic dogmas people are feed since they
are born.

In fact if it is the only language someone speaks this person is heavily
invested in believing their system is the best.

If you go to North Korea all people there feel pity for the rest of the world,
mostly because they don't know better.

"but to say one language is better than another in an absolute sense does not
seem logical."

I had never said that one language is better than another in absolute sense.

I have said that Chinese is outdated. I have said that it is a better language
for reading ancient works, but it has not evolved like other languages.

This is not something I say, this is something Chinese emperors' counselors
agreed while having knowledge of other cultures, and their own(there were
alphabetic systems inside China Like Mongol's). It was a conscious decision
not to evolve the language, because of different reasons.

It is certainly not politically correct in China just the idea that if you
force children to learn thousands of symbols in order to properly read, or the
order of hundreds of groups in order to properly write, that there are
simpler, more evolved ways.

Just comparing a system that requires high levels memory and five years of
learning with another that requires one for doing the same is not something I
wanted to do.

~~~
Jimmy
>For example, English way of writing is terrible for expressing sounds.
Japanese or the korean ways are much better Or Spanish by the way.

Just wanted to point out that the style of syllabary that Japanese uses
wouldn't be practical for English. Japanese has around 150 possible syllables,
English has almost 16,000 [1].

[1]
[http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/inde...](http://semarch.linguistics.fas.nyu.edu/barker/Syllables/index.txt)

------
aorth
On a related note: learning another writing system can also be enlightening.
Last year I learned how to read Cyrillic and it was a valuable experience. Now
I'll see tidbits on Russian-language forums that I can kinda make sense of, or
jokes about people using faux Cyrillic[0] in band names, t-shirts, etc. :P

More practically, it makes you think about coverage of non-Latin characters in
fonts! What does a Cyrillic "ya" (я) look like in your font of choice, for
example? Also, I'm curious how most peoples' browsers display it here on HN!
BTW, Fira Sans[1] and Noto Sans[2] are two open-source fonts with Cyrillic
coverage.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_Cyrillic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faux_Cyrillic)
[1] [http://www.carrois.com/fira-4-1/](http://www.carrois.com/fira-4-1/) [2]
[https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Noto+Sans](https://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Noto+Sans)

------
thisjepisje
“Learn a new language and get a new soul” — Czech proverb.

------
mrcactu5
isn't this the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? I remember in linguistics class my
professor spent an entire lecture on how it was so controversial. It's a
pretty common-sense idea but neither of the two guys who developed it are
linguists.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.htm...](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/supplement2.html)

------
hkarthik
I took one semester of French in college after 4 years of Spanish in high
school.

The most intriguing parts for me were around numbers and counting. For
example, the number 80 is "quatre-vingts", which literally means 4 x 20.

I thought maybe this gave French youth an edge with arithmetic, and this
slight edge might translate to strong mathematics foundations later in life. I
have heard there is a strong emphasis on mathematics in their school
curriculums, so maybe there is some correlation there.

~~~
cletus
English is really consistent here. 4321 is four thousand three hundred and
twenty one. Probably the biggest inconsistency in English are the numbers 11
to 19.

Many European languages are not. Often with numbers between 11 and 99 are a
weird special case. German puts the single digit first. As another poster
mentioned 23 is "dreiundzwanzig" (literally "3 and 20"). French is worse where
97 is "quatre-vingts dix-sept" (literally "4 20s 10 7").

These are just the last remnants of a pre-decimal ("vigesimal" specifically)
counting system.

I don't really see how weird rule exclusions on certain numbers would give
anyone an advantage in math, particularly because even though the word means
"4 20s" when you learn it, it's just a word and it may well just lead to
questions like "why isn't 40 2 20s?" There is a cognitive cost with
exclusions.

I remember reading a study once about how verbs became regular in English.
There was a mathematical relationship between how often the word was used and
how quickly it became regular. The less used, the quicker it happened.

This is why "to be" is irregular (as its the most common verb) whereas most
other verbs (with <100 exclusions) follow a simple pattern.

It's probably the same with numbers. The numbers less than 100 are used far
more often so their irregularity is preserved far longer than the less common
numbers above 100.

~~~
lordnacho
But what is causing the irregularity? Is there any benefit to conjugating "to
be" differently to everything else?

~~~
cynicalkane
It's thought to be a combination of colloquialisms + the Indo-European ablaut
system, wherein vowels would change depending on conjugation.

Consider how many English irregular verbs follow a pattern. Sing, sang, sung.
Ring, rang, rung. These are ablaut conjugations.

------
tiatia
"To speak another language is to possess another soul" Charlemagne

“We inhabit a language rather than a country. “ Emil Cioran

"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my
horse." Charlemagne

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Wittgenstein

~~~
AlbertoGP
_" I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my
horse." Charlemagne_

I had learnt this line as attributed to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (king of
both Spain as Carlos I, and of Germany as Karl V). Charlemagne could hardly
have spoken those languages as they didn't quite yet exist around the year 800
A.D. when he lived, but spoke Rhenish Franconian, Latin, and some Greek [1].
Charlemagne was the first Holy Roman Emperor which could explain the
confusion, but Charles V lived around 1500 A.D, seven centuries later.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne#Language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne#Language)

I have quoted those words myself for a number of years, but when checking
before commenting I found out that he didn't ever say exactly that, but
according to reports some 40 years after his death:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor#...](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor#Misattributed)

 _" When Emperor Charles V used to say, as I hear, that the language of the
Germans was military; that of the Spaniards pertained to love; that of the
Italians was oratorical; that of the French was noble"._

 _" Indeed another, who was German, related that the same Charles V sometimes
used to say: if it was necessary to talk with God, that he would talk in
Spanish, which language suggests itself for the graveness and majesty of the
Spaniards; if with friends, in Italian, for the dialect of the Italians was
one of familiarity; if to caress someone, in French, for no language is
tenderer than theirs; if to threaten someone or to speak harshly to them, in
German, for their entire language is threatening, rough and vehement"._

Thanks for triggering me into correcting my misunderstanding. :-)

------
primroot
There is a linguist (Daniel Everett) who thinks language can make you less
prompt to accept a religion
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNajfMZGnuo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNajfMZGnuo)

------
Soarez
Steven Pinker has dispelled this notion in his book The Language Instinct.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Language_Instinct)

~~~
rustynails
That book makes sense, to a degree. Language does not tell us how to think,
but it can constrain what we say. I find that our words reflect what we think,
particularly when it comes to our prejudices.

Common indicators are language that is inclusive or exclusive (we/us/I Cs
them/they), notions of gender (eg. Feminism indicates a prejudice toward one
gender). I have found that when someone has a biased mindset (particularly an
exclusive one) and you point out their mindset through their use of language,
most moderate people start to think differently and as such, their language
changes.

However, I find that emotive people and political correctness break this
pattern. This parallels the "faith" gambit - logic never enters the equation.

------
msutherl
Praying that nobody mentions the Sapir-Whorf s/Hypothesis/(Hoax|Strawman)

~~~
blowski
Well given that you _have_ mentioned it, why don't you want anyone else to
mention it? It's obviously relevant.

