10 ms·

Our Language Affects What We See

143 points by ALee 8y ago

IngoBlechschmid 8y ago
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/.)
dpau 8y ago
There’s an analogous situation with the Chinese color “qing” (青), a complex and nuanced issue debated by antique collectors and linguists alike. 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: http://muyueh.com/greenhoney/ http://muyueh.com/greenhoney/ https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4i9ko5/visualization_of_color_names_in_chinese_and/ https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4i9ko5/visuali...
LawnboyMax 8y ago
Related TED talk How language shapes the way we think by Lera Boroditsky: https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k Difference in color perception ability is mentioned towards the end.
newman8r 8y ago
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect
whatshisface 8y ago
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.
- alboy 8y ago
  Developing an understanding of quantum mechanics landed Heisenberg the Nobel prize, whereas nowadays thousands of students manage to work through their textbooks just fine. Having information expressed in human language, a form highly optimized for our understanding, is a huge step down from pulling yourself by your bootstraps outside of any familiar conceptual framework.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    I would argue that quantum mechanics is actually not expressed in textbooks. Instead, they have exercises and sufficient hints. Try learning QM without doing any of the exercises and you will see what I mean. On the contrary, I bet you could learn QM just fine with just a few definitions and a series of well-designed problems.
    - alboy 8y ago
      "Starting with definitions" is the opposite of the language-less, intuitive way of understanding something. It means precisely that one has been provided with an effective formal language for the domain. The fact that you rederive some minor parts surely helps, but students don't routinely rediscover QM from scratch.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
canjobear 8y ago
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.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  That might not even be a Whorfian effect. Perhaps the act of learning the word for a color involves spending time looking at the color, as well as practice at identifying it, so you prime your visual system in a way that could happen even without language. I propose that if you gave someone wordless practice with a color (for example by asking them to sort objects) they would see all of the same time improvements.
  - jonahx 8y ago
    The article address this objection: """ To determine if words were being automatically (and perhaps unconsciously) activated, the researchers added the following twist: they asked their Russian participants to perform a verbal task at the same time as making their perceptual discrimination. This condition eliminated the reaction time advantage of contrasting goluboy and siniy. However, a nonverbal task (a spatial task) could be done at the same time while retaining the goluboy/siniy advantage. The dual task variants indicated that the task of discriminating color patches was aided by silent activation of verbal categories. """
    - dorchadas 8y ago
      I don't think it does it well. Compare the Russians to someone who does the task regularly in English, say a graphic designer. My guess is the differences will go away when you compare someone who practices it regularly to them.
- mlevental 8y ago
  what? why? i speak russian and can't imagine why this would be the case.
austincheney 8y ago
* Linguistic Determinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism * Neural Darwinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism * Eskimo words for snow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow It has been largely established that language structures shape how the brain organizes cognitive reasoning, which in turn shapes the brain and vise versa. 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 word when comparing languages and relating the resulting vocabulary distinctions to perceptual distinctions in an objective way.
- enriquto 8y ago
  If anything, your link to "exkimo words for snow" seems to mostly disprove what you are stating in your message.
  - austincheney 8y ago
    How so?
    - enriquto 8y ago
      It explains that inuit languages do not actually have more words for snow than other languages. The other link explains that linguistic determinism is a superseded theory that can not be used to accurately model language. The "X words for snow" is even a sort of running joke as the cliché example of crackpot theory among linguists (see snowclone).
      - austincheney 8y ago
        The second paragraph in my original post literally talks about vocabulary limitations exactly the same as you are describing. Linguistic determinism doesn't seek to model language.
      - 8y ago
Causality1 8y ago
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.
- limbicsystem 8y ago
  No. They were surprised that the exact same light/dark blue discrimination was faster for Russian speakers.
jointhefuture 8y ago
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.
- bookishtempacct 8y ago
  Re: unconventional gender depiction in media, and how language and media affects thinking By coincidence, I spent a long time reading various sci-fi books consecutively which each had nonstandard approaches to gender. One book series (Ancillary Justice) used she/her pronouns for all characters because the protagonist's culture did not have the social concept of gender, and in-story the protagonist mentions the choice of using female pronouns when translating the story into English. In many Greg Egan books, most of the characters are uploaded human minds or AIs which exist independently of any specific body or avatar, so traditional gender norms don't necessarily apply. In some Greg Egan books, the protagonist and some characters were agendered and used unconventional pronouns such as ve/ver/vis. In another Greg Egan book, none of the characters had gender, and male and female pronouns were used seemingly randomly and often changed for individual characters in text and dialog (I assume there may have been some grammatical, social, or situational pattern or intention to it). These books each had interesting worlds that captivated me (for non-gender-related reasons). I often visualized scenes in my head and day-dreamed about the possibilities with the stories' technologies and characters. I quickly noticed that my mind usually wanted to use the characters' genders as the first step in picturing how a scene would look and play out. These books rarely answered the question of characters' genders (at least not in a way that matched up to my cultural expectations), so I had to break that habit in order to really get into the stories. I had to really think about the dynamics between the characters in order to imagine the books' scenes instead of doing my usual pattern-matching of scenes against preconceptions of how male and female characters interacted. I think this shift in thinking stuck with me. The "male" and "female" buckets in my mind became much less defined. I think I truly internalized that those mental buckets are just shortcuts that we over-rely on. It became increasingly obvious to me that neither gender had an exclusive claim to any quality that I previously considered gendered, including qualities that I was attracted to. Long story short, I'm now in a same-sex relationship and identify as bisexual. It didn't occur to me as a possibility before these books. I know some people will read this and decide this all must mean that I was always wired up to be bisexual and in denial until now, but I don't think it's that. I believe the mind is much more plastic and malleable than most people think, but our culture rarely gives the opportunities to put this plasticity to use.
rdtsc 8y ago
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. 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. 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..."
- jacobolus 8y ago
  > color between yellow and green In English this is often called chartreuse or pear. (Ignore the web/CSS color “chartreuse” which is hilariously terrible, like pretty much all of the named web colors.)
  - SECProto 8y ago
    > In English this is often called chartreuse or pear. Although I know what both of these objects are, and think it seems like an accurate descriptor, I have honestly never once heard those used as colors (so I'd hesitate to say "often"). Wikipedia agrees on this usage though, so maybe it's just me who hasn't heard it...
    - losvedir 8y ago
      Huh, I never knew "chartreuse" was anything _but_ a color. I agree with you about "pear", though.
      - SECProto 8y ago
        A very unique liqueur, if you're into that sort of thing!
- jacobush 8y ago
ohduran 8y ago
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
YouKnowBetter 8y ago
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. 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.
hevi_jos 8y ago
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). You create complex neural networks that process this sensory data. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
kaolti 8y ago
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. 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.
amelius 8y ago
I guess a similar thing holds for people who program in functional programming languages versus imperative languages.
olive_branch 8y ago
I have been mildly obsessed with Linguistics over the past few months (to the point where I decided to double major in it!). 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(https://fermatslibrary.com/s/russian-blues-reveal-effects-of-language-on-color-descrimination https://fermatslibrary.com/s/russian-blues-reveal-effects-of...). It is a super interesting intro paper to linguistics and the methods they used to evaluate differences between languages are quite clever.
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
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 Enframing[1] has something to do with it: > 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. 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) ... and ... > 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) [1] https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContGreg.htm https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContGreg.htm
SamReidHughes 8y ago
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.
jasode 8y ago
A supplemental fyi to the article... 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k (It's an interesting talk but I have no idea how other cognitive scientists judge her research findings.)
- dorchadas 8y ago
  Boroditsky should not be trusted. Her research is highly flawed and has many issues. And one of her most 'impactful' studies relies on data that has been 'publication forthcoming' since 2002! I'll edit/add another comment with more detail and links to some linguistic rebuttal when I'm on a computer
  - x3tm 8y ago
    Please do. I was also impressed recently by her Ted talk and bookmarked some of her publications to read later.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - dorchadas 8y ago
      Sure. First off, note that if you read her 2002 work about gender, it often relies on a(n in) famous "bridge study". In 2002, she mentioned it as "publication forthcoming"; 17 years later, it still hasn't been published. But a general good overview of her statements regarding to blame, and why they fail, can be found on LanguageLog [1]. I'd also recommend searching LanguageLog, as there's other articles discussing how she often overstates the conclusions, and how the media takes it ever farther. If you're on Reddit (can't access it currently on work WiFi), search in /r/linguistics and /r/badlinguistics to find even more criticisms of it (and other Linguistic Relativity research). [1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2592 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2592
AdieuToLogic 8y ago
My favourite quote related to this topic is one a friend of mine enlightened me with years ago: "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."[0] 0 - Benjamin Lee Whorf, http://izquotes.com/quote/355169 http://izquotes.com/quote/355169
- dorchadas 8y ago
  It'd be great...if it hadn't been fairly thoroughly discredited, especially the strong form he seems to be suggesting.
godelmachine 8y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity For those seeking a prior introduction
cypherg 8y ago
Seems like re-hashed linguistic-relativism here. Steven Pinker has carefully debunked sapir-whorf time and time again.
jcranberry 8y ago
Pretty good article from PLOS Blogs on how languages affects your sense of smell: https://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/09/10/asifa-majid-language-olfaction/ https://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/09/10/asifa-ma...

143 points by ALee 8y ago

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/.)

dpau 8y ago

There’s an analogous situation with the Chinese color “qing” (青), a complex and nuanced issue debated by antique collectors and linguists alike. 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: http://muyueh.com/greenhoney/ http://muyueh.com/greenhoney/ https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4i9ko5/visualization_of_color_names_in_chinese_and/ https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/4i9ko5/visuali...

LawnboyMax 8y ago

Related TED talk How language shapes the way we think by Lera Boroditsky: https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k https://youtu.be/RKK7wGAYP6k Difference in color perception ability is mentioned towards the end.

newman8r 8y ago

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader%E2%80%93Meinhof_effect

whatshisface 8y ago

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.

alboy 8y ago
Developing an understanding of quantum mechanics landed Heisenberg the Nobel prize, whereas nowadays thousands of students manage to work through their textbooks just fine. Having information expressed in human language, a form highly optimized for our understanding, is a huge step down from pulling yourself by your bootstraps outside of any familiar conceptual framework.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  I would argue that quantum mechanics is actually not expressed in textbooks. Instead, they have exercises and sufficient hints. Try learning QM without doing any of the exercises and you will see what I mean. On the contrary, I bet you could learn QM just fine with just a few definitions and a series of well-designed problems.
  - alboy 8y ago
    "Starting with definitions" is the opposite of the language-less, intuitive way of understanding something. It means precisely that one has been provided with an effective formal language for the domain. The fact that you rederive some minor parts surely helps, but students don't routinely rediscover QM from scratch.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

canjobear 8y ago

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.

whatshisface 8y ago
That might not even be a Whorfian effect. Perhaps the act of learning the word for a color involves spending time looking at the color, as well as practice at identifying it, so you prime your visual system in a way that could happen even without language. I propose that if you gave someone wordless practice with a color (for example by asking them to sort objects) they would see all of the same time improvements.
- jonahx 8y ago
  The article address this objection: """ To determine if words were being automatically (and perhaps unconsciously) activated, the researchers added the following twist: they asked their Russian participants to perform a verbal task at the same time as making their perceptual discrimination. This condition eliminated the reaction time advantage of contrasting goluboy and siniy. However, a nonverbal task (a spatial task) could be done at the same time while retaining the goluboy/siniy advantage. The dual task variants indicated that the task of discriminating color patches was aided by silent activation of verbal categories. """
  - dorchadas 8y ago
    I don't think it does it well. Compare the Russians to someone who does the task regularly in English, say a graphic designer. My guess is the differences will go away when you compare someone who practices it regularly to them.
mlevental 8y ago
what? why? i speak russian and can't imagine why this would be the case.

austincheney 8y ago

* Linguistic Determinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_determinism * Neural Darwinism - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism * Eskimo words for snow - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskimo_words_for_snow It has been largely established that language structures shape how the brain organizes cognitive reasoning, which in turn shapes the brain and vise versa. 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 word when comparing languages and relating the resulting vocabulary distinctions to perceptual distinctions in an objective way.

enriquto 8y ago
If anything, your link to "exkimo words for snow" seems to mostly disprove what you are stating in your message.
- austincheney 8y ago
  How so?
  - enriquto 8y ago
    It explains that inuit languages do not actually have more words for snow than other languages. The other link explains that linguistic determinism is a superseded theory that can not be used to accurately model language. The "X words for snow" is even a sort of running joke as the cliché example of crackpot theory among linguists (see snowclone).
    - austincheney 8y ago
      The second paragraph in my original post literally talks about vocabulary limitations exactly the same as you are describing. Linguistic determinism doesn't seek to model language.
    - 8y ago

Causality1 8y ago

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.

limbicsystem 8y ago
No. They were surprised that the exact same light/dark blue discrimination was faster for Russian speakers.

jointhefuture 8y ago

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.

bookishtempacct 8y ago
Re: unconventional gender depiction in media, and how language and media affects thinking By coincidence, I spent a long time reading various sci-fi books consecutively which each had nonstandard approaches to gender. One book series (Ancillary Justice) used she/her pronouns for all characters because the protagonist's culture did not have the social concept of gender, and in-story the protagonist mentions the choice of using female pronouns when translating the story into English. In many Greg Egan books, most of the characters are uploaded human minds or AIs which exist independently of any specific body or avatar, so traditional gender norms don't necessarily apply. In some Greg Egan books, the protagonist and some characters were agendered and used unconventional pronouns such as ve/ver/vis. In another Greg Egan book, none of the characters had gender, and male and female pronouns were used seemingly randomly and often changed for individual characters in text and dialog (I assume there may have been some grammatical, social, or situational pattern or intention to it). These books each had interesting worlds that captivated me (for non-gender-related reasons). I often visualized scenes in my head and day-dreamed about the possibilities with the stories' technologies and characters. I quickly noticed that my mind usually wanted to use the characters' genders as the first step in picturing how a scene would look and play out. These books rarely answered the question of characters' genders (at least not in a way that matched up to my cultural expectations), so I had to break that habit in order to really get into the stories. I had to really think about the dynamics between the characters in order to imagine the books' scenes instead of doing my usual pattern-matching of scenes against preconceptions of how male and female characters interacted. I think this shift in thinking stuck with me. The "male" and "female" buckets in my mind became much less defined. I think I truly internalized that those mental buckets are just shortcuts that we over-rely on. It became increasingly obvious to me that neither gender had an exclusive claim to any quality that I previously considered gendered, including qualities that I was attracted to. Long story short, I'm now in a same-sex relationship and identify as bisexual. It didn't occur to me as a possibility before these books. I know some people will read this and decide this all must mean that I was always wired up to be bisexual and in denial until now, but I don't think it's that. I believe the mind is much more plastic and malleable than most people think, but our culture rarely gives the opportunities to put this plasticity to use.

rdtsc 8y ago

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. 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. 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..."

jacobolus 8y ago
> color between yellow and green In English this is often called chartreuse or pear. (Ignore the web/CSS color “chartreuse” which is hilariously terrible, like pretty much all of the named web colors.)
- SECProto 8y ago
  > In English this is often called chartreuse or pear. Although I know what both of these objects are, and think it seems like an accurate descriptor, I have honestly never once heard those used as colors (so I'd hesitate to say "often"). Wikipedia agrees on this usage though, so maybe it's just me who hasn't heard it...
  - losvedir 8y ago
    Huh, I never knew "chartreuse" was anything _but_ a color. I agree with you about "pear", though.
    - SECProto 8y ago
      A very unique liqueur, if you're into that sort of thing!
jacobush 8y ago

ohduran 8y ago

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

YouKnowBetter 8y ago

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. 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.

hevi_jos 8y ago

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). You create complex neural networks that process this sensory data. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

kaolti 8y ago

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. 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.

amelius 8y ago

I guess a similar thing holds for people who program in functional programming languages versus imperative languages.

olive_branch 8y ago

I have been mildly obsessed with Linguistics over the past few months (to the point where I decided to double major in it!). 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(https://fermatslibrary.com/s/russian-blues-reveal-effects-of-language-on-color-descrimination https://fermatslibrary.com/s/russian-blues-reveal-effects-of...). It is a super interesting intro paper to linguistics and the methods they used to evaluate differences between languages are quite clever.

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago

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 Enframing[1] has something to do with it: > 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. 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) ... and ... > 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) [1] https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContGreg.htm https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Cont/ContGreg.htm

SamReidHughes 8y ago

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.

jasode 8y ago

A supplemental fyi to the article... 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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKK7wGAYP6k (It's an interesting talk but I have no idea how other cognitive scientists judge her research findings.)

dorchadas 8y ago
Boroditsky should not be trusted. Her research is highly flawed and has many issues. And one of her most 'impactful' studies relies on data that has been 'publication forthcoming' since 2002! I'll edit/add another comment with more detail and links to some linguistic rebuttal when I'm on a computer
- x3tm 8y ago
  Please do. I was also impressed recently by her Ted talk and bookmarked some of her publications to read later.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dorchadas 8y ago
    Sure. First off, note that if you read her 2002 work about gender, it often relies on a(n in) famous "bridge study". In 2002, she mentioned it as "publication forthcoming"; 17 years later, it still hasn't been published. But a general good overview of her statements regarding to blame, and why they fail, can be found on LanguageLog [1]. I'd also recommend searching LanguageLog, as there's other articles discussing how she often overstates the conclusions, and how the media takes it ever farther. If you're on Reddit (can't access it currently on work WiFi), search in /r/linguistics and /r/badlinguistics to find even more criticisms of it (and other Linguistic Relativity research). [1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2592 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2592

AdieuToLogic 8y ago

My favourite quote related to this topic is one a friend of mine enlightened me with years ago: "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."[0] 0 - Benjamin Lee Whorf, http://izquotes.com/quote/355169 http://izquotes.com/quote/355169

dorchadas 8y ago
It'd be great...if it hadn't been fairly thoroughly discredited, especially the strong form he seems to be suggesting.

godelmachine 8y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity For those seeking a prior introduction

cypherg 8y ago

Seems like re-hashed linguistic-relativism here. Steven Pinker has carefully debunked sapir-whorf time and time again.

jcranberry 8y ago

Pretty good article from PLOS Blogs on how languages affects your sense of smell: https://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/09/10/asifa-majid-language-olfaction/ https://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2015/09/10/asifa-ma...