How Language Shapes The Way We Think
TedTalk
Lera Boroditsky
Notes:
Languages do not limit our ability to perceive the world or to think about the world, but they focus our perception, attention, and thought on specific aspects of the world. This can be useful indeed. Chinese-speaking children learn to count earlier than English-speaking children because Chinese numbers are more regular and transparent than English numbers (in Chinese, "eleven" is "ten one"). Likewise, people speaking some Australian languages orient themselves in space better than English-speaking people (they often know north from south—even in darkness), plausibly because their languages have absolute spatial deictics. This means that when referring to a distant object they do not say “that car” or “that tree over there,” but rather “the car to the north” or “the tree to the south.” Because they need to know direction in order to correctly assembly utterances in their language, they are more accustomed than us to pay attention to the cardinal points.
Further notes on colour
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