Does the language we speak change our thinking?

Do the languages we speak shape the ways we think? It is a long-standing question that has been asked by many people. According to Charlemagne “to have another language is to possess a second soul”. Does it make any sense to you? In fact, even though the topic used to be unstudiable, we may found now evidence which proves that languages we speak influence our thinking.

As a first example, Lera Boroditsky notes that there’s a language which requires from its speakers to stay constantly oriented. Speakers of that language don’t rely on words like left and right as speakers of most languages we can think of do. They need to be aware of cardinal directions the whole time so that they can speak their language properly. Is it a feature that speakers of other languages have? I dare to doubt and so does Lera Boroditsky asking students to point out south-east with their eyes closed. It turns out that people she asked were not consistent at all while pointing their direction. On the other hand, a young speaker of the language that requires being oriented can do it effortlessly.

Another example relates to “how do we think about time”. For instance, in English we say “the best ahead of us” and “the worst behind us” and we tend to organise time from left to right whereas speakers of Arabic and Hebrew would do it from right to left. There are also languages which don’t have left-right concept. Speakers of such a language would then orient time from east to west or the other way round. 

These are only two examples. If you are looking for more, I would strongly recommend watching the video below: