How is thought shaped by language

While fascinating and important work, these and other similar results are a bit short of showing that "the more words you know, the more thoughts you can have. Although number words and counting are a fixture of life in most cultures from the time we are old enough to play hide-and-go-seek, some languages have only a handful of number words.

Basically, these words mean "around one," "some" and "many. The participants' task was simply to give the researcher the same number of balloons. If the participants were allowed to line up the balloons next to the spools of thread one-by-one, they did fine. But if they weren't allowed this crutch -- for instance, if the spools of thread were dropped into a bucket one at a time, and then the participant had to produce the same number of balloons -- they failed.

Although they were generally able to stay in the ballpark -- if a lot of spools went into the bucket, they produced a lot of balloons; a small number of spools, a small number of balloons -- their responses were basically educated guesses. That's unlikely.

When allowed to match the balloons to spools one-by-one, they succeeded in the task. Instead, it seems that they failed to give the same number of balloons only when they had to rely on memory. This actually makes a lot of sense. Try to imagine exactly seventeen balloons in your head, but without counting them.

It's impossible. Decades of research have shown that people can tell the difference between one object and two or between three objects and four without counting, but such fine distinctions with larger numbers like seventeen versus eighteen requires counting. You wouldn't match seventeen balloons to seventeen spools by sight alone. You would count the spools and then count out the same number of balloons.

They don't have number words. This suggests a different way of thinking about the influence of language on thought: words are very handy mnemonics. We may not be able to remember what seventeen spools looks like, but we can remember the word seventeen. This question is taken up in three experiments. English and Mandarin talk about time differently--English predominantly talks about time as if it were horizontal, while Mandarin also commonly describes time as vertical.

This difference between the two languages is reflected in the way their speakers think about time. In one study, Mandarin speakers tended to think about time vertically even when they were thinking for English Mandarin speakers were faster to confirm that March comes earlier than April if they had just seen a vertical array of objects than if they had just seen a horizontal array, and the reverse was true for English speakers. For instance, every time they would greet each other they would respond by saying which orientation they were walking in.

The bottom line is that the way those indigenous people use compass directions in their language has a profound impact on how they move in the landscape. Gender can play a significant role across many languages in cultures. In languages such as German, Italian, and Spanish nouns are gendered.

This means that there are masculine and feminine words, rather than neutral terms. Research indicates that the way that native speakers describe these objects depends on the gender of the noun. In conclusion, it is becoming increasingly clear that language has a deep impact on the way we think, describe, and feel about the world. How Your Brain Processes Language. Call Us. Space and time. Learn more our tailored language programs!

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