Thinking About How Language Shapes Thinking

I found the article “How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?” very interesting because it asked if people who speak different languages think differently. I, like the author Lera Boroditsky, think that they do. This is evident to me both through the examples the author gives and from my own experiences in learning languages. Reading about the Aboriginal tribe who bases directions on the cardinal directions fascinated me, because I couldn’t fathom looking at the world that way and always having to be aware what direction you were facing. Because I was raised as an English speaker, I think it would be close to impossible for me to adapt to that way of thinking because that is just not the way I am programmed to think.

I have been studying French for 7 years, Spanish for 4 years and Latin for one year so I have a fair amount of personal experience in learning languages. It is definitely true that to learn a new language you are not just learning a new set of words, but a whole new way of thinking. This is illustrated by the failure of online translators, which can only translate word for word and cannot understand the complex thought process that goes into organizing a sentence or paragraph in another language. The formal and informal forms of you are a clear example of how people who speak different languages think differently. Generally in America people are less respectful of their elders and those in positions above them than are people from countries who have both a formal and informal “you” in their language, like France or Mexico. For example, in school America students often have a close relationship with their teachers and may argue or chat with them as they would with friends. In countries who have this formal and informal language there is a clear distinction about who should be treated with respect, and thus a student in France would not consider talking down to a teacher acceptable.

One final example that my language teachers over the years have told me about is that even after becoming fluent in a foreign language people revert back to their native language when doing math and working with numbers. Many languages have different ways of organizing numbers (for example “80” in French translates to “4 20’s”) and thus a specific way of thinking about math and numbers. The difficulty people have with doing math in different languages shows that different languages do indeed create a different way of looking at and thinking about the world.