How Saying Certain Words Rewires Your Brain

hey 42 here he loves me he loves me not is a simple yes-or-no game played by English girls but did you know that the French version fu Li L AM Marguerite has five different options with positive responses ranging from the lukewarm he loves mere bits to the intense he loves me crazily the French language is a myriad of words and phrases concerning the love with plenty making their way into other languages rendezvous menage tois femme fatale and more so what makes the French so romantic is it something in the air or is it something in the language itself can the language we speak control the way we think it may sound like science fiction but people have actually believed this to some extent for hundreds of years and there have been studies that show that the language we speak can directly influence the way we see and experience the world around us linguistic relativity is the idea another languages structure affects its speaker's worldview the phrase was coined by an American linguist called Benjamin Lee Whorf who famously studied the Hopi in the 1930s a Native American tribe that live in Arizona this is why you'll often hear linguistic relativity referred to as warfield ism Woolf wrote that the Hopi treated time very differently to much of the rest of the world and suggested that this was reflected in and influenced by their language he used the Hopi as an example of how the language we speak can influence the way we think he discovered that the Hopi have no concept of time because their language contains no words used to describe it such as future and the word time itself in English so when a Hopi woman breaks his husband because I told you to skin that da yesterday he could simply reply sorry love I don't know what yesterday is to be fair this isn't quite what he discovered what work is often mistakenly said to suggest that the Hopi have no concept of time whatsoever whereas he actually found that the tribe have no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at equal rate out of a future through the present into a past the hope he also didn't seem to have words for units of time in the way that we have minutes hours and days so did they experience the world differently if they didn't have the linguistic tools to describe time as a concept where their brains wired in a different way to ours because of the language they used to think and speak whilst Worf laid the groundwork for this train of thought he never had the chance to really experiment and test it as he died in 1941 leaving behind several and published papers which were taken up by friends and colleagues it was left up to Roger Brown and Erik Lenin Berg to test a theory of linguistic relativity through experiments with color brown and Lenin Berg tested English speakers alongside natives of the indigenous Zuni tribe to see how well they could remember certain colors they found the Zuni people who don't have words to differentiate between different colors for example between yellow and orange struggles to remember these colors correctly meanwhile the English speakers who had words for these different shades found remembering them and identifying them later in the experiments much easier more recent experimentation on the same phenomena has equally shown that Russian speakers you have different words for light and dark blue are far more adept are quickly identifying different shades than English speakers our scientists have also been able to note surprise in the brain of Russian speakers as a color display shifts from light to dark blue to them the color has fundamentally changed whereas English speakers lack the same surprise since all AC is blue getting a little darker our brains will show the same surprise for red shifting to orange since we actually do have separate words for those two colors through these tests proved that the brains of the Zuni people English speakers and Russians are all wired differently there certainly appears to be some sort of link between linguistics and cognitive skills it seems that learning more words for colors made your brain better at telling those colors apart the theory of linguistic relativity has fallen in and out of fashion over the years from the 1960s to the 1980s most linguists subscribed to the theory of the universal grammar that there are innate structural rules to languages and as any humans will develop languages with the same basic properties like having nouns and distinguishing certain colors that's right we're back to colors linguist love using colors in our experiments since it provides a link between perception and language using something scientists can easily control they can measure colors by their wavelengths to ensure they're precise about any given shade this time Brent Berlin and Paul K where the scientists looking at how different languages describe colors they wanted to find out if all languages approached colors in the same way was their universality about the way we as a human race talked about color by studying dozens of different languages they found that there were NH restrictions on how many basic color terms or categories a language could have they identified eleven distinguishable colors that aren't too narrow in their usage such as blonde which we only use to describe hair and beer or turquoise which is just a bluey green the eleven basic color categories they discovered across all languages are white black red green yellow blue brown purple pink orange and gray they also discovered that new colors evolved within different languages in a familiar unpredictable patter Languages would always focus on the same colors first as they evolved for instance every language has words for dark and light that's hardly surprising and these two terms eventually become black and white as other colors are separated out but did you know that if a language only has three colors the third color to be added to the lexicon will always be red the fourth and fifth colors will always be green and yellow though these two can be in either order and the language with six colors will always add blue to the mix if every language adds color names in this order doesn't that suggest that color recognition is something hardwired into our brains and part of our very nature as opposed to the linguist relativity school which suggests it's the opposite ie how we describe colors dictates how we perceive them these discoveries were key to the Universalist period of linguistics but there's not much scientists love more than reigniting old arguments and so in the 80s and 90s linguistic determination came roaring back into fashion just like dungarees unfortunately this new more low key idea of linguistic relativity proposed that language is a key to culture clearly the Vega your statements the harder it is to disprove but this latest version of the old theory came back with some more shiny new examples especially from George Lakoff who heavily studied the metaphors used by certain languages for instance like I've noticed that in English much of the language around time treats it similarly to money in that time can be bought spent invested and so on Lakoff argued that these metaphors shape how we think about time and that's our approach to it might be different if we spoke a language where time wasn't equated to money in this way so can the words we use change our fundamental understanding of something like color or time it's an idea that's explored in the story of your life by Ted Chang which was made into the 2016 sci-fi film arrival now a quick spoiler alert is needed here because it's a great film definitely worth a watch in both the book and the film a linguist learns the language of an alien race called Hector Potts named so for their seven limbs as she learns the language of the hab demands the linguists perception of time as being linear changes as well her brain is rewired by the language she now knows and consequently she is able to see into the future in arrival the linguist eventually works out why the hepta pods have arrived on earth in the first place their language is a tool that they have gifted to the human race in return for a favor the Hector pods will need 3,000 years in the future so how realistic is the idea that learning a new language can completely rewire our brains in granters cognitive skills that seem downright supernatural or magical this extreme version of linguistic relativity is generally agreed to be well beyond the realm of plausibility but scintilla we've encountered aliens and learns they're potentially life-changing language who knows how abouts the more down to Planet Earth idea that language changes the way we think about the world around us in subtle but impactful ways this is less controversial and it's pretty easy to find everyday examples of this like how time is equated with money in English several foreign languages provide interesting opportunities to look at this effect through gender the English language doesn't really have grammatical gender in English we only differentiate between the gender of people and animals with his her him and she and that's just fine on a sort of personal note I'll never be comfortable accepting that they as a singular pronoun is grammatically correct despite the fact it's now entered the vernacular but many other languages have genders for all their nouns in German spoon fork and knife are masculine feminine and neuter respectively the logic for this while some nouns do you have a thought process behind their gender like how many flowers in German are feminine there often isn't any logic at all so just thinking about inanimate objects as having genders influence house speakers of those languages think and perceive their world you bet it does a 2002 study looked at how native German and Spanish speakers described certain objects the objects the researchers had chosen were carefully selected so that they were of opposite grammatical gender in each language like a key which is masculine in German and feminine in Spanish when they asked the participants to describe keys the German natives use adjectives like hard heavy and jagged while Spanish because Ford keys were intricate little and lovely the word bridge is your way around it's feminine in German and sure enough German speakers described bridges has beautiful elegant and slender while Spanish speakers felt they were strong sturdy and towering what's more these unconscious biases seemed to extend beyond the confines of their native tongues since the entire study was conducted in English a language which all the participants were fluent in what's more the researchers found that the participants didn't even need to speak or read to draw upon these biases when they were shown two pictures one of a person and one of an object the participants rated the pictures as more similar to each other when the gender of the person master grammatical gender of the object so any Spanish speakers watching this will presumably think I look much more like a bridge that aqui whilst Germans will say it's giveaway around I don't know which is more flattering so if language can influence the way we see the world than the objects within it it's human nature to then ask what can we do with this information and depending on what sort of person you are things can basically go two ways from here down the scary route or the nice one the scary route takes us into the realm of dystopian societies something that was perhaps most famously explored by George Orwell in his novel 1984 despite being written in the 1940s before much of the research we've already mentioned 1984 goes hard on the idea of linguistic relativity from its use of news speak the bastardized version of english that big brother under the oppressive state used to control her subjects Newspeak is the only language spoken at 1984 it is carefully controlled by the state it has a simplified and restricted vocabulary which aims to limit freedom of thought this makes it almost impossible for its speakers to articulate negative thoughts about their government or their own circumstances by only giving the population a small set of simple unambiguous words to communicate how happy they are Newspeak removes any opportunity for creative indirect anti-establishment forms imagine trying to criticize something but not knowing any negative words this was a struggle like characters in 1984 found themselves in all thanks to the influence that their language had on them if all this sounds frightfully reminiscent of what the political correctness Warriors are trying to do right now that's because it's exactly the same and yes it's terrifying of course language changing the way we think could also be a good thing as well there have been several languages created with the aim of providing a speakers with a different more positive experience one language is Logan an abbreviation of logical language that was developed in the 1950s by dr. James Cook Brown Braun wanted to create a language that was so different from natural languages that simply learning it would force people to think in a different way Lachlan was amongst the first logical languages and spawned a similar spin-off called Lodge bun with the same aims and it appears to have worked since speakers have Lodge button rapport improvements in logical thinking as they immersed themselves within the language Lodge man is also easy to learn and easy for computers to translate since any word in lodz one only has one meaning compare that to English where a word like get can mean receive become understands move catch and learn whereas load one has the word kappachu which is defined as gets procures acquires obtains accepts from source previous possessor not implied sure sounds useful if you are wanting to be ultra specific about your meaning but I'm not sold for me part of the beauty of the English language is its ambiguity and that's what makes conversing in it reading it and speaking it so damn interesting although we talk I believe is really interesting as you would expect it's all very logical each word is built from its equivalent in the world's six most popular languages English Mandarin Hindi Spanish Arabic and Russian take the word for mother Mamta and you can see it does indeed sound a bit like mother mouki Mon Madre um and mamma another example comes from linguist and writer Suzette's Hayden elegan who created the feminist language Laden that would make it easier to express a female worldview she wanted to shape a culture where women could more easily express their views through unambiguous statements the idea behind this was that speakers of la hoddan could clearly express not only what they were saying but the trustworthiness of their statements - this is done through an evidence particle a short addition to the end of statements that reflects how confident the speaker is in what she has said el djem wanted to stop women from constantly having to respond I know I said that but I meant this when men questions their statements like a linguistic version of the point-of-view gun from Hitchhiker's Guide sounds positively terrifying pursuing the idea that speaking a certain language could improve was isn't a pipe dream there are existing examples of natural languages that have honed their speaker's skills for instance googy yamasa an Australian Aboriginal language is famous for two things the first is that it gave us the word kangaroo though not in the way that the common myth tells us the urban legend goes that Captain Cook and his crew encountered the animal and asked the locals what it was the aboriginals replied kangaroo apparently meaning I don't understand you unforeseen corrected this misconception through their studies of the googy humor fur people but the story continues to be told to this day the second thing that has brought googy humor fur into the public consciousness is that its speakers commonly used to cardinal directions of north south east and west rather than using the egocentric terms like left-to-right forwards and backwards that were used to they don't just use these for giving directions and navigating either your left leg could be your southwestern leg depending on the way you're standing now this may well make some things more difficult it certainly makes the hokey-pokey a fair bit harder to sing but speaking the language has its judges as well as a result of using cardinal directions all the time speakers of the language have a remarkable sense of direction and almost always know exactly which direction they're facing the same is true for speakers of cuckoo tire another Aboriginal language in Queensland its speakers need to know which direction they're facing because this informs a direction they understand time to flowing if I asked you to draw a timeline of your life most of you would start with your birth at the left and progress through time from left to right the Kuk tire would arrange event running from east to west regardless of which direction they were facing if they were facing west ty would flow directly away from them turn 180 degrees and it would be coming straight at them instead having a number system forms the basis of so much of modern life without mathematics there could be no engineering no computers no YouTube to watch this video on but some languages don't actually have number systems at least not in the way we do ask them to count a group of objects and you may not get a precise number just many without the ability to calculate the exact quantities or entire way of life as we know it would be impossible and as much as this gap in one's language restricts thinking it's equally possible that we haven't yet unlocked many other realms of possibilities simply because we don't have the words for them yet the 7,000 languages spoken around the world have gotten us this far who knows what words and languages will be invented in the future that will allow us to conceptualize things that are currently impossible that may be the next step in language affecting how we all think for the better thanks for watching have you ever felt like the sound of your voice is holding you back from expressing yourself forging strong relationships or furthering your career truth is your voice can do great things all you need is the right voice coach to unlock its full potential recently I spent time with in my opinion the best voice coach in the industry Richard de bretagne to help me find the right sound for my upcoming audio book most voice coach's force you to speak like the Queen but Richard helps you to enhance the natural warmth and enchanting tone of your existing voice in just a few hours of bespoke one-to-one license over Skype Richard may be the best but his lessons cost the same as a few cups of coffee visit hello voice over comm now link in the description to book and secure your lessons before they sell out and exclusively for a short time Richard is offering my viewers 20% off if you mention the coupon code 42 if you enjoyed this video then please consider supporting me by joining the 42 Club here on YouTube by clicking the join button below or heading on over to patreon you can also get your hands on a first edition signed copy of my new book sticker flock in it by heading on over to unbound publishing and pre-ordering your copy today and thanks to hello voice over comm for sponsoring this video

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 914,904

Rating: 4.9192162 out of 5

Keywords: language, english, words, word, psychology

Id: 7mn1TkX0kXo

Length: 22min 4sec (1324 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 08 2020