11 ms·

Bilingual speakers experience time differently, study finds

167 points by Jaruzel 10y ago

unit91 10y ago
Anybody know the sample size? At this point I'm pretty skeptical of "amazing" behavioral psychology finds.
lioeters 10y ago
This reminded me of an interesting example of "a difference experience of time". There is a tribe in South America, whose language use describes the future as being "behind" them. When they talk about their ancestors they gesture waving behind their back, and for their descendants (children, grandchildren), they gesture in front of them. To me, that's a clear example of how language can shape people's experience of time. (And also makes me think about "spatial metaphors" to describe time, which is what a clock is essentially..) http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.asp http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.a...
mikkqu 10y ago
I apologize for my ignorance, but am I the only one who consider this study a total bullshit?
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  No need to apologize and no you aren't.
emanreus 10y ago
The Time Paradox by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd explores different time perspectives and how the affect our lives. 6 min TED talk that covers some of the ideas in the book https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healt...
ekianjo 10y ago
If I paraphrase the results of the research: Researcher finds that bilingual folks express numbers in different ways depending on the language they use. So they experience numbers differently. The jump to the conclusion is certain far-fetched, and it's a question of habit, practice and context rather than "experiencing" anything differently.
captn3m0 10y ago
Paper: https://sci-hub.ac/http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/xge0000314 https://sci-hub.ac/http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLandi...
saasthrowaway3 10y ago
Neuro-Linguistic Programming is often labelled as pseudoscience, but I think this gives implicit credence to some of their methods (like Timeline Therapy, which is all about manipulating your own mental representation of time in order to eg get over phobias or achieve goals better).
- omginternets 10y ago
  >Neuro-Linguistic Programming is often labelled as pseudoscience There's a definite link between language and cognition: e.g. semantic priming effects. Clearly if we're able to be convinced by verbal argumentation, it follows that language can (in some sense) shape cognition. Where NLP becomes a pseudoscience is when it's presented as therapeutic, or at least as systematically therapeutic. In other words, the first principles of NLP are (generally) sound. The application is not.
  - saasthrowaway3 10y ago
    Where NLP becomes a pseudoscience is when it's presented as therapeutic, or at least as systematically therapeutic. In other words, the first principles of NLP are (generally) sound. The application is not. I looked into scientific backing just now - seems its therapeutic effect is mostly not backed by science. Ie it doesn't cure phobias, as it says it does. Then again, I would have to look at those 18% of studies that DO show an effect, and see if they are doing something different than the ones that don't show an effect (NLP can mean a lot of things). https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ppb.2010.41.issue-2/v10059-010-0008-0/v10059-010-0008-0.xml https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ppb.2010.41.issue-2/v10059-...
    - omginternets 10y ago
      Yes ... that was exactly my point. Sorry, I'm a bit confused by your comment. Are you agreeing or refuting?
unabst 10y ago
Our language alters how we reason with reality because words are the smallest unit of reason. Reason is not experience. However, we do experience our reasoning, and we also act upon it.
acd 10y ago
Different cultures can learn good things from another and adopt it. Got bilingual kids in the languages the article describes.
aisofteng 10y ago
Would love to access the journal publication, but can't figure out how to get to it.
- jordigh 10y ago
  Just stick the DOI (i.e. 10.1037/xge0000314) into Sci-Hub. If you feel that this is morally reprehensible, you might also be able to find it from your nearest university library.
  - aisofteng 10y ago
    What I find morally reprehensible is paywalling research that was taxpayer funded - I didn't know about this approach, so thank you several times over for mentioning it!
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
I can understand how this happens. For example, telling time in Norwegian took me viewing time differently. English tends to place importance on the last whole hour that passed: Half past six, six thirty-five, six twenty. It isn't until we approach the next whole hour that we give it any credit: Quarter 'til seven. Norwegian, on the other hand, seems to focus more on the "now" and the future, orientated around the nearest 15-minute mark and the next whole hour, only focusing on the hour that has passed for the first 15 minute. it is quite possible I've flubbed on the exact phrasing: While my Norwegian is on the upper end of adequate and passed the state tests, I am still far from truly fluent 6:20? Ten 'til half seven. 6:30? Half seven. 6:35? Five over half seven.
- ilanco 10y ago
  In the Dutch language, and probably others, people tell the time similarly.
- soperj 10y ago
  Same w/ German. Halb Neun (Half Nine) is 8:30. Half to nine.
  - dEnigma 10y ago
    In some regions they even use "Viertel Neun" (Quarter nine) for 8:15; but "Viertel über Acht" (Quarter past eight) is also common.
    - vostok 10y ago
      This is the same in my language where one might say "quarter of the ninth". The idea is that [00:00,01:00) is the first hour so [08:00,09:00) is the ninth hour.
    - sk5t 10y ago
      Really? I've only heard "viertel neun" to mean 8:45.
      - 10y ago
Artlav 10y ago
Interesting. Never really noticed any effects of that, however. On the other hand, in Russian there is no distinct time metaphor - it can be a short pause, it can be a small break.
11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
"A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúmë" http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/entish.htm http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/entish.htm
- evincarofautumn 10y ago
  That was an interesting read. But now my vision’s gone all pink because of the bright green background—looking at the world through rose-coloured lenses, I suppose.
  - 11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
    My sincere apologies.
coffeymug 10y ago
Humans are not very good at telling time and since their observations are subjective we can dismiss such experiments as anecdotal.
j_s 10y ago
The movie Arrival (2016) incorporated this idea as its primary plot element.
- guilamu 10y ago
  This is the premise of the movie indeed, language shape your perception of everything around you. If you missed it, you absolutely need to see it. It's the best SF movie of the decade. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/
palakchokshi 10y ago
As a multi(poly?)lingual person I had never consciously thought of this but after going over every language I know I can see, I perceive time in distance, volume as well as sizes. Interestingly a couple of languages I know depict time in distance as well as sizes depending on the context.
- Sunset 10y ago
  Do you "perceive time" or do you "express time". As a multilingual person myself. I don't "think in a language". I "think" in something innate which can't be described as any language I know. The thoughts are formed instantly and then I simply express them in the language the other party will understand. Almost automatically. I don't have to work to "translate" between these innate collections of ideas to spoken language, it happens automatically. Some people tell me their inner thoughts are in a certain language, but that's not the case for me. So I would like a clarification. Do you "think in a language"?
  - palakchokshi 10y ago
    I do think in a language but that changes based on situations too. For abstract thoughts I think in English, for planning thoughts I think in another language, etc. It is not a conscious choice, my brain somehow picks a language for thought
- gumby 10y ago
  You are equally multilingual and polyglottal (though apparently neither a Latin or Greek speaker). Most Americans are monoglots (i.e. unilingual). Except when they say (yuck!!) "monolingual" -- a horrible neologism that of course isn't.
  - lillesvin 10y ago
    "Monolingual" is the standard term in linguistics. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone using the term "unilingual". (I get that you want to mix Latin with Latin, but that's not how language works — especially not when it's borrowed into a language. I notice you also pluralize "monoglots" in English rather than Greek...) Furthermore, the distinction in linguistics between "-glot" and "-lingual" is that "-lingual" is used in reference to native language(s) whereas "-glot" is used about the languages a person is able to speak at a given level without them necessarily being native languages. So — to a linguist at least — you can be a monolingual polyglot if you have one native language but e.g. conversational knowledge of 4 other languages.
zaatar 10y ago
At first glance, his is too naive a conclusion. This isn't simply language-specific, it is further locale-specific in addition to simply the language, here's why: Ahorita in Spanish (USA) means something else from Spanish (Nicaragua) for example. If a Greyhound bus driver were to use that word to indicate the bus is departing "Ahorita", I would assume that to mean the next 10-15 minutes whereas in Nicaragua, I would have no idea if it means 10 minutes, 30 minutes or even 60 minutes, so my follow-up question would be, "Do you mean 15 minutes or less?" To me, this is more a cultural thing, not a linguistic thing since in fact the language in use is the same, i.e. Spanish. As another example, "later" (EN-US) is not the same as in EN-IN. Or maybe I'm missing the point of the research entirely ...
- pacofvf 10y ago
  Funny, in Mexico we use a lot "Ahorita" too, which it's just the diminutive for "Ahora" ("Right Now" in English). The word is very ambiguous here, it can mean "Right now" or "In a few minutes/hours/days" or if used sarcastically "Never". Edit: ohh my gosh I just remembered another case where it's used for past events: - Perdí mis llaves (I lost my keys) - ¿Cuándo? (When?) - Ahorita (Just a few seconds/minutes ago)
  - glibgil 10y ago
    To be fair, "just" is diminutive in English and the answer in English is "just now". Fairly literal translation
  - betenoire 10y ago
    - Ahorita (just now) Same in english, no?
    - acchow 10y ago
      I don't think "just now" is used to mean the future (in a few minutes, or hours, or days).
    - tyingq 10y ago
      Maybe "in a second" or "in a minute", which is almost never a second, or minute, respectively. Or "shortly". Heard that one a lot. We'll be departing shortly. Which could be 2 minutes or 15 minutes, or something in between.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
aquilaFiera 10y ago
As being bilingual in Italian and English, this seems … contrived to me. I don't believe I perceive time any differently when I speak one language or the other: I simply learned the idiomatic way to say it in that language. Same thing with using different prepositions: just because I use a different preposition in one language doesn't change the way I perceive the reality or relations of that situation.
- rosser 10y ago
  Yeah, I really don't get how these people got "they have a different experience of time" from this result. It's more a matter of "the language you happen to be using at any given time controls which 'concept' of its passage feels more natural," isn't it?
- ihaveahadron 10y ago
  There aren't much differences from each other so its probably so minimal that you might not be able to notice it. So it makes sense that you'd write your comment.
- nickparker 10y ago
  I took an intro linguistics class that focused a lot (like, weirdly more than I expected) on linguistic relativity, or the idea that the language you use affects your perception of reality. It's one of the things I'm really hoping neuroscience can answer better before I die, because honestly the class gave me the impression that the entire field is incredibly contrived stuff like this. My suspicion is that there's significant truth to it, but we still have such an awful understanding of cognition that almost all testable hypotheses we can imagine re: linguistic relativity are hopelessly naive. The only one that seemed really well founded to me was that Russian speakers distinguish shades of blue better because they have separate "light blue" and "dark blue" colors. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11759-russian-speakers-get-the-blues/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11759-russian-speaker...
  - Brakenshire 10y ago
    I think about it from the perspective of computing, when you learn jargon, are you just learning an idiom, or are you learning the model through which you will think? It's definitely the latter to some extent. In my family, we have the eternal 'coming in five minutes', which is never five minutes, but which may be anywhere from 12 minutes to never. Essentially it's a way of putting a future task on a queue which will be checked at an indeterminate time in the future. This doesn't exactly reflect a precise parsing of the phrase, which might be tempting for a linguist, but I do think that the way you express yourself in language and the way that language is understood by others affects the way you think and behave. The eternal five minutes definitely has a habit of making us late.
tabeth 10y ago
I recently watched the scifi film Arrival and it suggests that language can not only allow you to experience time differently, but to [1] (spoiler). I wonder if there's any truth in what it suggests, or if its just scifi mumbo jumbo. [1] "see" the future.
- tbrownaw 10y ago
  If my wife tells me she ordered pizza for dinner, that use of language lets me "see" an hour into the future when a delivery person will arrive with a couple flat boxes and a plastic bag holding a soda bottle. Nothing "mumbo jumbo" about it.
  - bitwize 10y ago
    Central to the premise of the movie is that in the movie-universe, time is not linear but a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff; you just need to learn Heptapod in order to Sapir-Whorf your way into realizing it. Time probably is linear for us in the real world, or else can only be perceived as linear by us wholly corporeal beings. Unless Roger Penrose is right and we have wibbly-wobbly, quantum-wantum stuff going on in our brains, which I doubt.
  - personlurking 10y ago
    And other times you can "see" w/o finding anything. In Brazil, when you were supposed to meet a friend at a certain time and they aren't there, you call/text them and ask where they are. They'll usually say: "já estou saindo" (I'm leaving already [from their house]), but according to the cultural norms, this actually often means "I haven't left yet and I'm getting ready, or thinking about getting ready". Likewise, if you're out and about, and pass by some acquaintances, you make quick chit-chat to be nice and then make plans to get together next weekend. Both parties generally know this will not happen, and it's only being said for appearances. This leads to a joke I like to imagine where situation 2 leads to situation 1. That is, "let's meet up next weekend!" and the response, "Ok, I'm leaving my house already". Everyone knows it's BS but they say it anyways.
- lillesvin 10y ago
Swizec 10y ago
Yeah well, if you become fluent in a particular alien language (Heptapod B) you can remember the future. Ted Chiang was onto something!
zwetan 10y ago
interesting, and to put in relation with those other articles Mother tongue may determine maths skills [0] Does the Language I Speak Influence the Way I Think? [1] [0]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9422-mother-tongue-may-determine-maths-skills/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9422-mother-tongue-ma... [1]: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-speak-influence-way-i-think http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-spe...
- titanix2 10y ago
  The [0] study itself said in its introduction "Whereas previous neuroimaging studies have revealed differential activation patterns during reading processes [...], the question remains whether these differences are derived from culture characteristics rather than ethnic or hereditary factors (1, 9)." but does not give any information about the races the two studied groups. The Chinese speaker group is most likely made exclusively of Han people while the English one may be racially more diverse but probably mostly non East-Asian people. So basically it compares groups that have an average IQ difference of at least 5 points and that may explain the math advantage of Chinese "speaker". To avoid that issue this kind of study should use groups of people of some A origin rise in A and B language environment (like Asian Born Chinese speaking exclusively English vs Chinese speaker from China).
anxrn 10y ago
Interesting. This appears to bolster the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis[1] which has been the subject of a fair degree of criticism[2], particularly from Steven Pinker. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity [2] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-criticisms-of-Whorfs-theory-of-linguistic-determinism-and-relativity https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-criticisms-of-Whorfs...
hkmurakami 10y ago
Idk, I do have different personalities in my two native languages, so I suppose the different mental makeup could affect things. But I'm not sure how much of this hypothetical difference is due to cultural differences assimilated into each part of my mind through differences in exposure via the two languages, vs the languages themselves. A worthwhile distinction imo.
arximboldi 10y ago
I am confused by what the article says. At least in Spain we don't use volumetric relative measures for time (big/small) but linear ("corto"/"largo", short/long). This is particularly true when for the examples in the article ("duración" duration: "larga duración" o "corta duración"; "wedding", a "big wedding" is a wedding with a lot of people, a "long wedding" is a wedding that takes a lot of time). The only case that might be different is that in Spanish it is common to use "mucho/poco" (a lot, little) as an adverb with "durar" ("to last") as in "sth lasts a lot" as opposed "sth lasts long" or "cuanto dura?" ("how much it lasts/takes?") As other pointed out, the "now" that blends into the future is maybe a more interesting feature of how time is understood in Spanish vs other languages.
- omaranto 10y ago
  I'm Mexican and everything you said about Spanish Spanish seems to me to also hold for Mexican Spanish. I wouldn't be surprised if someone Swedes showed up now saying the article is also wrong about Swedish. :)
- memracom 10y ago
  It is probably something to do with cultural habits in different geographic areas, not necessarily language. I moved from an English speaking region (Ontario, Canada) to another English speaking region (British Columbia, Canada) 5,000 km away. In BC people seem to measure distance using time but in Ontario they use distance. In Ontario they will say that a town is 150 km away but in BC they say that a town is 45 minutes away. Possibly this has to do with the mountainous terrain of BC which restricts your travel routes and speed, while Ontario is relatively flat, allows many different routes between point A and B, and you can speed without dying. On the other hand, I also speak Russian, and switch between Russian and English several times per day. When I speak/think in Russian I tend to not worry about the time order of things that I speak about because Russian has few verb tenses and makes it easy to function in an eternal now where actions are either ongoing or completed. Good for getting an overall perspective on things.
  - jurie 10y ago
    Albertan here; we're flat and our roads are straight, but we also measure distances by travel time, whether in the city ("I live 20 minutes from the mall") or across the province ("Calgary is three hours from Edmonton"). I suspect that it's a western thing more than a terrain thing. I wonder if that applies to the western USA as well? Another interesting thing that I've noticed is that Europeans and North Americans have a very different concept of historical time and relative distance. To me, a building that has stood for 100 years is OLD, and 200km (Somewhere that's "about an hour and a half to two hours away") is a day trip that's nothing out of the ordinary. When I was in the UK, I noticed that people held the opposite view - 100 years ago was just yesterday, relatively speaking, while traveling 200km for a day trip was inconceivable.
zoom6628 10y ago
I would suggest that the study reinforces that bilingual & polyglots naturalise other ways of thinking, or contexts for thinking, and that is for the brain, what habitualised exercise is for the body.
pzh 10y ago
I don't know what the standards of research in experimental psychology are, but this term project paper ended up a bit contrived. We took some superficial vocabulary characteristics of two languages (of which native speakers probably aren't even mindful) and somehow managed to distort this into a relativistic theory of language-based time perception that manages to prove that bilingual speakers have Neo-like abilities to transcend time, almost moving into 'What the bleep do we know' territory.
- vsipuli 10y ago
  The purpose of the term project paper is not to produce truthful research, but for you to practice how to do it. And you wasted that opportunity.
ihaveahadron 10y ago
I wonder if these differences are inherent in languages or if its just how each language is popularly used, and that say, Italian and English could both be used to mean , exactly, the same things, but to say the same thing in English speaking it in Italian it would be, while correct Italian, sound really weird to Italian speakers who are both, FUCKING RETARDED, and only used to hearing pop Italian.

167 points by Jaruzel 10y ago

Anybody know the sample size? At this point I'm pretty skeptical of "amazing" behavioral psychology finds.

This reminded me of an interesting example of "a difference experience of time". There is a tribe in South America, whose language use describes the future as being "behind" them. When they talk about their ancestors they gesture waving behind their back, and for their descendants (children, grandchildren), they gesture in front of them. To me, that's a clear example of how language can shape people's experience of time. (And also makes me think about "spatial metaphors" to describe time, which is what a clock is essentially..) http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.asp http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/soc/backsfuture06.a...

mikkqu 10y ago

I apologize for my ignorance, but am I the only one who consider this study a total bullshit?

kwhitefoot 10y ago
No need to apologize and no you aren't.

emanreus 10y ago

The Time Paradox by Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd explores different time perspectives and how the affect our lives. 6 min TED talk that covers some of the ideas in the book https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healthy_take_on_time https://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_prescribes_a_healt...

ekianjo 10y ago

If I paraphrase the results of the research: Researcher finds that bilingual folks express numbers in different ways depending on the language they use. So they experience numbers differently. The jump to the conclusion is certain far-fetched, and it's a question of habit, practice and context rather than "experiencing" anything differently.

captn3m0 10y ago

Paper: https://sci-hub.ac/http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/xge0000314 https://sci-hub.ac/http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLandi...

saasthrowaway3 10y ago

Neuro-Linguistic Programming is often labelled as pseudoscience, but I think this gives implicit credence to some of their methods (like Timeline Therapy, which is all about manipulating your own mental representation of time in order to eg get over phobias or achieve goals better).

omginternets 10y ago
>Neuro-Linguistic Programming is often labelled as pseudoscience There's a definite link between language and cognition: e.g. semantic priming effects. Clearly if we're able to be convinced by verbal argumentation, it follows that language can (in some sense) shape cognition. Where NLP becomes a pseudoscience is when it's presented as therapeutic, or at least as systematically therapeutic. In other words, the first principles of NLP are (generally) sound. The application is not.
- saasthrowaway3 10y ago
  Where NLP becomes a pseudoscience is when it's presented as therapeutic, or at least as systematically therapeutic. In other words, the first principles of NLP are (generally) sound. The application is not. I looked into scientific backing just now - seems its therapeutic effect is mostly not backed by science. Ie it doesn't cure phobias, as it says it does. Then again, I would have to look at those 18% of studies that DO show an effect, and see if they are doing something different than the ones that don't show an effect (NLP can mean a lot of things). https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ppb.2010.41.issue-2/v10059-010-0008-0/v10059-010-0008-0.xml https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ppb.2010.41.issue-2/v10059-...
  - omginternets 10y ago
    Yes ... that was exactly my point. Sorry, I'm a bit confused by your comment. Are you agreeing or refuting?

unabst 10y ago

Our language alters how we reason with reality because words are the smallest unit of reason. Reason is not experience. However, we do experience our reasoning, and we also act upon it.

acd 10y ago

Different cultures can learn good things from another and adopt it. Got bilingual kids in the languages the article describes.

aisofteng 10y ago

Would love to access the journal publication, but can't figure out how to get to it.

jordigh 10y ago
Just stick the DOI (i.e. 10.1037/xge0000314) into Sci-Hub. If you feel that this is morally reprehensible, you might also be able to find it from your nearest university library.
- aisofteng 10y ago
  What I find morally reprehensible is paywalling research that was taxpayer funded - I didn't know about this approach, so thank you several times over for mentioning it!

Broken_Hippo 10y ago

I can understand how this happens. For example, telling time in Norwegian took me viewing time differently. English tends to place importance on the last whole hour that passed: Half past six, six thirty-five, six twenty. It isn't until we approach the next whole hour that we give it any credit: Quarter 'til seven. Norwegian, on the other hand, seems to focus more on the "now" and the future, orientated around the nearest 15-minute mark and the next whole hour, only focusing on the hour that has passed for the first 15 minute. it is quite possible I've flubbed on the exact phrasing: While my Norwegian is on the upper end of adequate and passed the state tests, I am still far from truly fluent 6:20? Ten 'til half seven. 6:30? Half seven. 6:35? Five over half seven.

ilanco 10y ago
In the Dutch language, and probably others, people tell the time similarly.
soperj 10y ago
Same w/ German. Halb Neun (Half Nine) is 8:30. Half to nine.
- dEnigma 10y ago
  In some regions they even use "Viertel Neun" (Quarter nine) for 8:15; but "Viertel über Acht" (Quarter past eight) is also common.
  - vostok 10y ago
    This is the same in my language where one might say "quarter of the ninth". The idea is that [00:00,01:00) is the first hour so [08:00,09:00) is the ninth hour.
  - sk5t 10y ago
    Really? I've only heard "viertel neun" to mean 8:45.
    - 10y ago

Artlav 10y ago

Interesting. Never really noticed any effects of that, however. On the other hand, in Russian there is no distinct time metaphor - it can be a short pause, it can be a small break.

11thEarlOfMar 10y ago

"A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lindor-burúmë" http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/entish.htm http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/entish.htm

evincarofautumn 10y ago
That was an interesting read. But now my vision’s gone all pink because of the bright green background—looking at the world through rose-coloured lenses, I suppose.
- 11thEarlOfMar 10y ago
  My sincere apologies.

coffeymug 10y ago

Humans are not very good at telling time and since their observations are subjective we can dismiss such experiments as anecdotal.

j_s 10y ago

The movie Arrival (2016) incorporated this idea as its primary plot element.

guilamu 10y ago
This is the premise of the movie indeed, language shape your perception of everything around you. If you missed it, you absolutely need to see it. It's the best SF movie of the decade. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/

palakchokshi 10y ago

As a multi(poly?)lingual person I had never consciously thought of this but after going over every language I know I can see, I perceive time in distance, volume as well as sizes. Interestingly a couple of languages I know depict time in distance as well as sizes depending on the context.

Sunset 10y ago
Do you "perceive time" or do you "express time". As a multilingual person myself. I don't "think in a language". I "think" in something innate which can't be described as any language I know. The thoughts are formed instantly and then I simply express them in the language the other party will understand. Almost automatically. I don't have to work to "translate" between these innate collections of ideas to spoken language, it happens automatically. Some people tell me their inner thoughts are in a certain language, but that's not the case for me. So I would like a clarification. Do you "think in a language"?
- palakchokshi 10y ago
  I do think in a language but that changes based on situations too. For abstract thoughts I think in English, for planning thoughts I think in another language, etc. It is not a conscious choice, my brain somehow picks a language for thought
gumby 10y ago
You are equally multilingual and polyglottal (though apparently neither a Latin or Greek speaker). Most Americans are monoglots (i.e. unilingual). Except when they say (yuck!!) "monolingual" -- a horrible neologism that of course isn't.
- lillesvin 10y ago
  "Monolingual" is the standard term in linguistics. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone using the term "unilingual". (I get that you want to mix Latin with Latin, but that's not how language works — especially not when it's borrowed into a language. I notice you also pluralize "monoglots" in English rather than Greek...) Furthermore, the distinction in linguistics between "-glot" and "-lingual" is that "-lingual" is used in reference to native language(s) whereas "-glot" is used about the languages a person is able to speak at a given level without them necessarily being native languages. So — to a linguist at least — you can be a monolingual polyglot if you have one native language but e.g. conversational knowledge of 4 other languages.

zaatar 10y ago

At first glance, his is too naive a conclusion. This isn't simply language-specific, it is further locale-specific in addition to simply the language, here's why: Ahorita in Spanish (USA) means something else from Spanish (Nicaragua) for example. If a Greyhound bus driver were to use that word to indicate the bus is departing "Ahorita", I would assume that to mean the next 10-15 minutes whereas in Nicaragua, I would have no idea if it means 10 minutes, 30 minutes or even 60 minutes, so my follow-up question would be, "Do you mean 15 minutes or less?" To me, this is more a cultural thing, not a linguistic thing since in fact the language in use is the same, i.e. Spanish. As another example, "later" (EN-US) is not the same as in EN-IN. Or maybe I'm missing the point of the research entirely ...

pacofvf 10y ago
Funny, in Mexico we use a lot "Ahorita" too, which it's just the diminutive for "Ahora" ("Right Now" in English). The word is very ambiguous here, it can mean "Right now" or "In a few minutes/hours/days" or if used sarcastically "Never". Edit: ohh my gosh I just remembered another case where it's used for past events: - Perdí mis llaves (I lost my keys) - ¿Cuándo? (When?) - Ahorita (Just a few seconds/minutes ago)
- glibgil 10y ago
  To be fair, "just" is diminutive in English and the answer in English is "just now". Fairly literal translation
- betenoire 10y ago
  - Ahorita (just now) Same in english, no?
  - acchow 10y ago
    I don't think "just now" is used to mean the future (in a few minutes, or hours, or days).
  - tyingq 10y ago
    Maybe "in a second" or "in a minute", which is almost never a second, or minute, respectively. Or "shortly". Heard that one a lot. We'll be departing shortly. Which could be 2 minutes or 15 minutes, or something in between.

deleted 10y ago

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aquilaFiera 10y ago

As being bilingual in Italian and English, this seems … contrived to me. I don't believe I perceive time any differently when I speak one language or the other: I simply learned the idiomatic way to say it in that language. Same thing with using different prepositions: just because I use a different preposition in one language doesn't change the way I perceive the reality or relations of that situation.

rosser 10y ago
Yeah, I really don't get how these people got "they have a different experience of time" from this result. It's more a matter of "the language you happen to be using at any given time controls which 'concept' of its passage feels more natural," isn't it?
ihaveahadron 10y ago
There aren't much differences from each other so its probably so minimal that you might not be able to notice it. So it makes sense that you'd write your comment.
nickparker 10y ago
I took an intro linguistics class that focused a lot (like, weirdly more than I expected) on linguistic relativity, or the idea that the language you use affects your perception of reality. It's one of the things I'm really hoping neuroscience can answer better before I die, because honestly the class gave me the impression that the entire field is incredibly contrived stuff like this. My suspicion is that there's significant truth to it, but we still have such an awful understanding of cognition that almost all testable hypotheses we can imagine re: linguistic relativity are hopelessly naive. The only one that seemed really well founded to me was that Russian speakers distinguish shades of blue better because they have separate "light blue" and "dark blue" colors. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11759-russian-speakers-get-the-blues/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11759-russian-speaker...
- Brakenshire 10y ago
  I think about it from the perspective of computing, when you learn jargon, are you just learning an idiom, or are you learning the model through which you will think? It's definitely the latter to some extent. In my family, we have the eternal 'coming in five minutes', which is never five minutes, but which may be anywhere from 12 minutes to never. Essentially it's a way of putting a future task on a queue which will be checked at an indeterminate time in the future. This doesn't exactly reflect a precise parsing of the phrase, which might be tempting for a linguist, but I do think that the way you express yourself in language and the way that language is understood by others affects the way you think and behave. The eternal five minutes definitely has a habit of making us late.

tabeth 10y ago

I recently watched the scifi film Arrival and it suggests that language can not only allow you to experience time differently, but to [1] (spoiler). I wonder if there's any truth in what it suggests, or if its just scifi mumbo jumbo. [1] "see" the future.

tbrownaw 10y ago
If my wife tells me she ordered pizza for dinner, that use of language lets me "see" an hour into the future when a delivery person will arrive with a couple flat boxes and a plastic bag holding a soda bottle. Nothing "mumbo jumbo" about it.
- bitwize 10y ago
  Central to the premise of the movie is that in the movie-universe, time is not linear but a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff; you just need to learn Heptapod in order to Sapir-Whorf your way into realizing it. Time probably is linear for us in the real world, or else can only be perceived as linear by us wholly corporeal beings. Unless Roger Penrose is right and we have wibbly-wobbly, quantum-wantum stuff going on in our brains, which I doubt.
- personlurking 10y ago
  And other times you can "see" w/o finding anything. In Brazil, when you were supposed to meet a friend at a certain time and they aren't there, you call/text them and ask where they are. They'll usually say: "já estou saindo" (I'm leaving already [from their house]), but according to the cultural norms, this actually often means "I haven't left yet and I'm getting ready, or thinking about getting ready". Likewise, if you're out and about, and pass by some acquaintances, you make quick chit-chat to be nice and then make plans to get together next weekend. Both parties generally know this will not happen, and it's only being said for appearances. This leads to a joke I like to imagine where situation 2 leads to situation 1. That is, "let's meet up next weekend!" and the response, "Ok, I'm leaving my house already". Everyone knows it's BS but they say it anyways.
lillesvin 10y ago

Swizec 10y ago

Yeah well, if you become fluent in a particular alien language (Heptapod B) you can remember the future. Ted Chiang was onto something!

zwetan 10y ago

interesting, and to put in relation with those other articles Mother tongue may determine maths skills [0] Does the Language I Speak Influence the Way I Think? [1] [0]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9422-mother-tongue-may-determine-maths-skills/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9422-mother-tongue-ma... [1]: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-speak-influence-way-i-think http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/does-language-i-spe...

titanix2 10y ago
The [0] study itself said in its introduction "Whereas previous neuroimaging studies have revealed differential activation patterns during reading processes [...], the question remains whether these differences are derived from culture characteristics rather than ethnic or hereditary factors (1, 9)." but does not give any information about the races the two studied groups. The Chinese speaker group is most likely made exclusively of Han people while the English one may be racially more diverse but probably mostly non East-Asian people. So basically it compares groups that have an average IQ difference of at least 5 points and that may explain the math advantage of Chinese "speaker". To avoid that issue this kind of study should use groups of people of some A origin rise in A and B language environment (like Asian Born Chinese speaking exclusively English vs Chinese speaker from China).

anxrn 10y ago

Interesting. This appears to bolster the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis[1] which has been the subject of a fair degree of criticism[2], particularly from Steven Pinker. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity [2] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-criticisms-of-Whorfs-theory-of-linguistic-determinism-and-relativity https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-main-criticisms-of-Whorfs...

hkmurakami 10y ago

Idk, I do have different personalities in my two native languages, so I suppose the different mental makeup could affect things. But I'm not sure how much of this hypothetical difference is due to cultural differences assimilated into each part of my mind through differences in exposure via the two languages, vs the languages themselves. A worthwhile distinction imo.

arximboldi 10y ago

I am confused by what the article says. At least in Spain we don't use volumetric relative measures for time (big/small) but linear ("corto"/"largo", short/long). This is particularly true when for the examples in the article ("duración" duration: "larga duración" o "corta duración"; "wedding", a "big wedding" is a wedding with a lot of people, a "long wedding" is a wedding that takes a lot of time). The only case that might be different is that in Spanish it is common to use "mucho/poco" (a lot, little) as an adverb with "durar" ("to last") as in "sth lasts a lot" as opposed "sth lasts long" or "cuanto dura?" ("how much it lasts/takes?") As other pointed out, the "now" that blends into the future is maybe a more interesting feature of how time is understood in Spanish vs other languages.

omaranto 10y ago
I'm Mexican and everything you said about Spanish Spanish seems to me to also hold for Mexican Spanish. I wouldn't be surprised if someone Swedes showed up now saying the article is also wrong about Swedish. :)
memracom 10y ago
It is probably something to do with cultural habits in different geographic areas, not necessarily language. I moved from an English speaking region (Ontario, Canada) to another English speaking region (British Columbia, Canada) 5,000 km away. In BC people seem to measure distance using time but in Ontario they use distance. In Ontario they will say that a town is 150 km away but in BC they say that a town is 45 minutes away. Possibly this has to do with the mountainous terrain of BC which restricts your travel routes and speed, while Ontario is relatively flat, allows many different routes between point A and B, and you can speed without dying. On the other hand, I also speak Russian, and switch between Russian and English several times per day. When I speak/think in Russian I tend to not worry about the time order of things that I speak about because Russian has few verb tenses and makes it easy to function in an eternal now where actions are either ongoing or completed. Good for getting an overall perspective on things.
- jurie 10y ago
  Albertan here; we're flat and our roads are straight, but we also measure distances by travel time, whether in the city ("I live 20 minutes from the mall") or across the province ("Calgary is three hours from Edmonton"). I suspect that it's a western thing more than a terrain thing. I wonder if that applies to the western USA as well? Another interesting thing that I've noticed is that Europeans and North Americans have a very different concept of historical time and relative distance. To me, a building that has stood for 100 years is OLD, and 200km (Somewhere that's "about an hour and a half to two hours away") is a day trip that's nothing out of the ordinary. When I was in the UK, I noticed that people held the opposite view - 100 years ago was just yesterday, relatively speaking, while traveling 200km for a day trip was inconceivable.

zoom6628 10y ago

I would suggest that the study reinforces that bilingual & polyglots naturalise other ways of thinking, or contexts for thinking, and that is for the brain, what habitualised exercise is for the body.

pzh 10y ago

I don't know what the standards of research in experimental psychology are, but this term project paper ended up a bit contrived. We took some superficial vocabulary characteristics of two languages (of which native speakers probably aren't even mindful) and somehow managed to distort this into a relativistic theory of language-based time perception that manages to prove that bilingual speakers have Neo-like abilities to transcend time, almost moving into 'What the bleep do we know' territory.

vsipuli 10y ago
The purpose of the term project paper is not to produce truthful research, but for you to practice how to do it. And you wasted that opportunity.

ihaveahadron 10y ago

I wonder if these differences are inherent in languages or if its just how each language is popularly used, and that say, Italian and English could both be used to mean , exactly, the same things, but to say the same thing in English speaking it in Italian it would be, while correct Italian, sound really weird to Italian speakers who are both, FUCKING RETARDED, and only used to hearing pop Italian.