August 8th, 2010 at 9:59AM
Does Language Influence Culture?

meestarman:

gaviota:

capucha:

lifeisacupcake:

dalasverdugo:

dihard:

Pretty interesting article in the WSJ today. Basically says that language profoundly influences how we see the world. Some examples:

  • Russian speakers who have more words for light and dark blues are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.
  • An aboriginal community in Australia doesn’t use terms like “left” and “right”, and instead uses north, south, east and west for directions. As a result they have greater spatial orientation.
  • People who speak languages that drop the agent of causality, for example “the vase broke itself” versus “John broke the vase,” don’t often associate blame for events.
  • One group who uses the words “few” and “many” in favor of actual number words have difficulty keeping track of exact quantities.
  • English speakers see time on a horizontal plane, with the best years ahead and the past behind us. Whereas Mandarin speakers see new events emerging like a spring of water, with the past above and the future below.

Here’s a bit more on the research. Pretty interesting! 

Very interesting.
  1. thesatyrincyprus reblogged this from theyoungvictoria
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  7. allcraftsconsidered reblogged this from glynnis and added:
    #4 explains why I can’t do math, but it doesn’t explain why all the other Russian-speakers can?
  8. riceyates reblogged this from glynnis and added:
    Roy Peter Clark, are you listening?
  9. deathwilldie reblogged this from captainkayla and added:
    I talked about this in sociology the other day and I believe it really does. One of the best ways to learn someone...
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  21. velocicrafter reblogged this from travelerofthetimestreams and added:
    straight up fascinating! meestarman:gaviota:capucha:lifeisacupcake:dalasverdugo:dihard: Pretty interesting article in...
  22. travelerofthetimestreams reblogged this from meestarman and added:
    Very interesting.
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  25. inhishands reblogged this from gaviota and added:
    Very interesting!
267 notes Source: dihard
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