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@@FIRE_STORMFOX-3692 🤣😂 She loves me and compliments me--its just that she thinks my head swells and she needs to put me in check sometimes. Its all in good fun. But thanks. 👍
@@joanneoliver8610 Yeah, English needs accusative. Some kind of accusative case makes a language’s sentence structure a lot easier and clearer. English has got a genetive case but “of the ...” works fine as well as “de la ...” in Romance languages. Will someone start a petition?
True. I find that I am different when expressing myself in a Latin based language like Italian compared to when I speak English. It's a more expressive and emotional language and I do speak it louder also. There's also the fact that we add the hand gestures lol.
@@mariag5306 I feel like in Dutch I often can't describe emotions/feelings but in English there are more specific words that are more accurate so I end up being able to say it easier if using English
@@leagueaddict8357 it's funny how languages affect us. I speak English mostly but when it comes to certain subjects I prefer to read about them in Italian because it seems easier to express. Languages are fascinating.
I'm currently learning my sixth language. This language being a Far East language and therefore belonging to an extremely different culture, I realise that, when fumbling for words I don't remember because I'm just a beginner, I already do it in a culturally appropriate way. The Self speaking this new, very exotic language is utterly different different from the previous five Selves (the five Selves all speak European languages and are less easy to distinguish). And I have six slightly different voices. I have recorded them, they are noticeably different.
Did you learn more than one language while growing up as a baby/child? If so do you notice differences between your "self" when you use those 2 birth languages respectively?
I speak 5 languages well enough to pass as a native speaker in all of them, and some of my internal thought thinking happens in different languages based on the topic but also based on how I feel about it, but I also have a slightly different voice and mannerisms depending on what language I am speaking in. I also speak/understand a lot more languages but I tend more to "hook" them to a language I know well so they are not as differential. Most trippy would be hearing me speaking to my mom as we share multiple languages and switch between them mid-phrase for whatever has the best description for what we are talking about. My wife was awed in the beginning but now it is totally normal for her to hear me speak different languages with different mannerisms and voice and switch immediately when I want to. However I did grow up multilingual so it is not the same thing for someone who didn't I think.
@@WolfgangDoW modes. Lemme giv u an example. When you're talking in your second learned language you tend to think more logically bc there is more active thought involved. Its not automatic like speaking your first language. This is true for me and others too
Yes, I've heard about the relative complexity of Finnish [street names change because you're heading in a different direction, etc.] Nothing to be ashamed of there! But suffice to say, simpletons like myself are never going to learn your mother tongue... 🤪
As Dane I think it best we don't use our spoken language for thought. That would just be a mess. Though it does seem to have affected me as often drop insignificant words from sentences in other languages I am otherwise fluent in. The funniest thing about Finnish speakers in English is that a Finnish dialect seems to be a source of pride and status, and having worked for Finnish companies you could always tell the seniority of a Finnish manager from their accent, the thicker the accent, the senior a position they held (at least that is how it was at Nokia) :D
During a role play in a Japanese lesson my partner and myself bought and sold apples to each other in a shop. I bought 3* Fuji apples for 90yen but I sold my partner 1* blue apple for 1,000,000 yen. My teacher asked why? I said in English it was a Blue apple and rare. She said Japan described green colour as blue so all I had done was charge too much for a granny Smith's apple.
lol. As someone who has recently watched a few videos on "rare" fruits that are really just regular fruits with odd names, that is hilarious. Like the "blue" banana: when unripe, instead of green, it has a more bluish-grey tinge, and the "Cameron apple" is a guava I think. I have a whole bag of Granny Smith's in my kitchen right now - I'm rich! lol
@@epowell4211 Excepting that 1 million yen is only a modestly large amount :D maybe a few months wages, so pretty expensive for apples, of course. You're not rich, but you've got enough to put a deposit in on a pretty nice house. (Unless that house is in Tokyo :D)
Wow, I’d never thought of time being a vertical construct before now, but it makes absolute sense to think of time as something you’re falling thru, my mind was just blown! 🤯
It’s funny when I heard that time could be thought of as vertical not horizontal It felt natural that the future was up not down. When he said the future was downwards I thought, that’s very pessimistic and morbid.
If time was vertical I would see the future as being above not below. As, 1. we come from the earth & (want to)go to the stars; 2. we grow UP over time.
This video was FASCINATING! I work in modifying behaviors and teaching communication to children with various developmental conditions. Verbal Behavior is a really interesting aspect of Behavior Analysis that focuses on function of language vs strictly receptive and expressive communication. Oh, please do more on language/communication! Love it!!
As a non-native English speaker, it took my 16 years and moving to Japan to realise that English "th" isn't f or d. (i.e. "this thing" was "dis fing" for me). Certainly what language you grow up speaking, limits what sounds you can use. Try getting Japanese to say any vowels beyond their five, or watch them try to pronounce "si" without slipping into a "shi".
@@Ass_of_Amalek Yes, seriously. From gaming and school. Th was not "like the first thing" that was taught. We learnt things like the colours, some animals and alphabet first. And it seems like th as f/d is rather common in dialects in England, the US and Africa: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th-fronting dialectblog.com/2011/04/12/th-in-city-accent/
Wow, I loved this episode!! The topic of language and perceptions/concepts of where one is in space and time is incredibly fascinating. The part about mandarin words for "next" and "down" being the same and "previous" and "up" being same the same words, really gave my brain a challenge to comprehend and I thought it was amazing that a TH-cam video gave me exposure to something new I never imagined of learning. Thanks Simon!
I love the differences languages apply to so many concepts. The possibility of viewing certain aspects of our reality through a language filter is incredibly stimulating IMO. So much (note: not everything) depends on our mental processes and how we think about such processes, and which instrument we think we are using for thinking about such processes, etc. pp... I am neither a universalist or determinist. I believe there is a certain mix and match of language influencing our thought processes depending on whether a concept applies to our more basic reflexes, or to more complex patterns. Our brains are the way we react to reality, but our reality literally shapes the way our brain thinks through neuro-flexibility and our brains ability to rewire itsself with enough training. This is so awesome, but quickly turns in a brain twister. Loved the video. Very stimulating.
The sapir whorf hypothesis came to mind when I saw the title. From an anthropology course more that 50 years ago but can i remember what I had for breakfast?
@@Daleymop actually I do remember breakfast but wanted to undercut bragging on the memory. I also watched the entire video to make sure it wasn’t referenced in it.
While studying psychology in graduate school, I took the course, "Thought and Language," which underscores everything in this video. A viewer commented that his personality changes whenever he speaks a different language, and I can definitely relate. I speak French, German and Spanish. Even though French and Spanish are similar, my mindset changes even when switching between those two. It's a shame that more Americans aren't multilingual. Speaking other languages definitely expands one's world view.
Humblebrag. You can have perspective without knowing how to conjugate verbs in multiple languages. Especially ones that are based in the same western culture.
I'm an English teacher in Brazil (which is a Portuguese speaking country). I have been superficially aware of most things of this video for a long while, so I absolutely loved it and now I want to share it with many of my workmates and a few advanced students!
Klingons _certainly_ have the concept of, and thus the word for, an apology; however, since an apology is usually in the form of disemboweling oneself with a dull knife.... What you meant to say is that Klingons do not have a word for _please._ (And apparently, _hello_ ). In the book of Klingon lexicon and grammar written by Marc Okrand, the linguist hired to invent the language, this is specifically stated. Incidentally, _Worf,_ played by actor Michael Dorn, is not spelled the same as Benjamin _Whorf,_ the linguist -- although I confess that I have employed the exact same mnemonic in the past.
You'd think that with all his earnings from all his channels he would have employed a personal groomer by now. Interesting video but poor presentation of the beard.
Have you ever done an episode on "the voice in our heads"? I have one, but I've heard that many people don't have one. They have to talk to themselves in actual speech, often in murmurs.
@@screamtoasigh9984 What, you don't have a voice in your head? I know some people cannot have internal conversations in their heads. They have to speak it out and listen to themselves.
@@gwick358 You might want to see a psychologist if you have three copies of yourself in your head. I'm only talking to myself without an audience. Some people murmur out loud because they don't have a voice in their heads, but I can murmur silently in my mind.
Fascinating! I used to think that the reason we didn't remember being babies was because we didn't have the language skills, so the memories weren't organized in the same way as ones after we learned language, but recently learned this was not true. I saw on FB one time a story (I did not fact check) discussing colors and language. Apparently, some group was able to differentiate between many more shades of green than the average American, and it was hypothesized that it had to do with the grass being an important predictor of the environment where they lived and whether they needed to move on. My mother studied art and color theory, as well as taught it, and I swear she sees more color variances than I do. I've heard that Eskimo tribes have many words to describe snow, something important to gage how the weather is going/ how dangerous the environment is. I've also learned that Japanese have words for different types of crispy/crunchiness of things like chips/crisps. When it comes to the human thought process, it seems that, the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know lol
You should read about Finnish cinema! I remember reading an article on the FInnish public service website about why Finnish films were not popular among the other Scandinavian countries. Apparently the cinematography used in Finnish films is very different due to differences in language, with more extreme closeups of faces and fewer wide shots to establish where the actors are in relation to each other in a scene. According to the author this is due to the finnish language structure and how they describe things and beings in relation to each other, which they do differently from most other languages. For Swedes, Danes and Norwegians this felt very strange and thus the films were not popular there. I found it very interesting and I'm surprised that you didn't mention it in the video.
*personally, i try to think of the most creative ways to say even the most mundane things and actively avoid cliche' as much as possible...sometimes the results of these verbal combinations are strange...and i do get very odd looks as other try to unpack their meaning...i mean stranger than the looks i typically get just by entering the room...but that's another topic for another time*
More creative is always more fun. One of the things I like about YTer Black Tie Kitchen is his fun word choices. For example, wrap of Saran and tray of baking. Those are perfectly legit in other languages but ‘odd’ in English. He also does most of his cooking in a hot box and uses organized wires to whisk things. Check him out. Very enjoyable.
I like this approach, but for two problems: First, it turns out I'm not that eloquent, so I fumble sentences constantly. Being a business/science translator, adding colorful to my language almost always comes back to bite me in the rear.
If someone said to me that there was a spider on me, before they even had the opportunity to finish their sentence I would already be jumping around slapping every part of my body until I got it off
When you think and your internal dialog is at work, this is not the sole contributor to the perceptions your mind is rendering within that dialog. Deeper within those systems there exists an partnership between all of the senses that drive the perceptual capacity of the brain. There is an alloy which is produced there which not only drives the complex thought lives which we enjoy, but also it renders all other realms of the human imagination and abstraction. Additionally, there must have been a time when human beings existed and thrived despite the probability that language hadn’t been devised yet. We surely had thought lives even then, yes? Language surely became such a dominant tool within our minds as it proved to be extremely useful for us to organize ourselves and therefore to solve problems and thrive. ... yes, surely we still were perceptive and creative animals even before we could speak to one another or document our outputs through written text. A very interesting topic for sure.
I find that curl in your beard quite charming, sir. Looking sharp! I've seen many of these concepts addressed separately, so it was really convenient that you pulled them all together to demonstrate the bigger picture. Thanks for the video (:
I always had this notion that it's exactly what language does - influence the ease of getting to some ideas necessary to get to some conclusions, especially in science. Like, the way you were brought up to speak influences the way you are able to think about things because of, maybe, some language patterns ingrained into the brain. It's fairly difficult for me to try and differentiate English and Croatian, my native tongue, as I've been learning English since I was 4. Apart from limited opportunities to speak it actively, in practice it is as much a part of how I think as Croatian is. I certainly use English more because of social media, education, movies/shows/music, work.. I find that I'm two different people when using each language, even though I use them both almost my whole life. English is more flexible in certain ways, like you can have a spoon but also spoon someone to death, which I can't do in Croatian without resorting to grammar heresy and inventing non-existent forms. Yet, in Croatian I can, dying, utter my last word and say "killed" and convey it was a female person because of that "gender attributed to nouns" thing, and it REALLY makes me think differently, create different sentences and ideas and, I believe, view the world differently. Thank you for another great video!
Yes! I write French, German, Spanish with dictionary help; Cambodian is my 2nd spoken. Each has impacts, even when later-learned. E.g.: 'street' Cambodian, one of the world's most compact languages, sends thoughts racing at easily 40% faster than in English, 60+% than French.
How does Cambodian stack up to French and English when trying to communicate complex or abstract ideas? Is there any other major differences? I'm kind of curious.
My native language is Spanish. My second is English. I think in both and dream in both. I live in a Spanish speaking country and use Spanish almost exclusively in daily life. However, I find that I switch from Spanish to English when I need to express strong emotions. I'm a more outgoing and expressive person in English than in Spanish. I write in both languages, but if I'm writing, say, fantasy stories, I am more comfortable with English. I also prefer reading in English. For some reason, I am able to "feel" and visualize what I'm reading better in English than in Spanish. I really don't know why.
Homo sapiens evolved at the latest one hundred thousand years ago. Linguistic studies is two hundred years old. It makes sense that we just do not know yet and it will take a lot more time to figure this out
Um, anatomically modern humans ha e been around for 300,000 years, not 100,000. Linguistics studies began in India in the 6th Century BCE, as well as in China in the 4th Century BCE, which makes the study around 2500 years old, not two hundred. Where the hell did you pull those arbitrary numbers from?
if you look at ancient artwork and very old artworks from societies that where less influenced by the rest of the world the color schemes seem to match up pretty well suggesting visual perception is not changed much by language
This one goes deep... And incidentally, was a thought I had been pondering about just a fortnight ago. Simon Whistler is just gonna have to live with the fact that each of the channels he hosts happen to be some of the most informative and less curricular sources of information available on TH-cam... Yes, especially 'Business Blaze'
I recently started to learn Welsh and Refresh my Japanese at the same time. I started to learn Japanese in uni 17 years ago, but I'm really out of practise, haven't been back to the country since 2010. Welsh is my 6th language, German is my mother tongue, I learned English in 5th grade and consider myself pretty much bilingual, which goes so far as being asked my British people, if I am from somewhere in the UK. My English teacher once said, at one point, you might dream in English and I can say, I think and dream in English for many years now. I learned Latin and Spanish in 7th and 9th grade. Latin helped me to understand grammar overall, because analysing sentence structure in different levels is one of the main elements of Latin lessons. Now adding Welsh to the mix is rather interesting. It's unlike any other language I speak or ever learned and I'm struggling so much. But at least the concept of blue/green was already covered in Japanese for me. I'M not sure, but I guess, I'm one of the only people, who is switching to Japanese to relax and learn something easy compared to Welsh. One of my friends started to learn Mandarin some months ago and we talked about the differences between Mandarin and Japanese and how both are taught. Explaining Japanese to my friend, I gasped again, that the language is difficult indeed, but I still struggle more, because Welsh is so different. I started listeming to Japanese music 20 years ago, which helped with recognising sounds, it's much easier for me to pronounce words compared to Welsh, I lack the outside influence. I am much older now, than when I started to learn any other language, but I still think, it's the lack of hearing enough Welsh around me. I'll continue, I love the country and learning Welsh is a way to support the culture of the country I love. I can do it!
Fascinating! I'm really curious about the cultural perception and presentation of numbers now, after you briefly touched on it here. For example, when it comes to cultures and languages that do have a complex and accurate number system, do they all use a base ten system as we know in English? I once heard that some ancient cultures at least (like ancient Hebrews or Babylonians) might have used a number system other than base ten. Also, how do other cultures and languages reflect partial numbers (fractions and/or decimals)? You could do a whole video on number systems of the world and I hope you will as it would be extremely informative.
My first language was Spanish, my second was English. Left my Spanish speaking home country at 3. At some point my mind switched from thinking in Spanish to thinking in english. I hadn’t really thought about it until a friend asked me what language I think in and I instantly said English.
Its the same for me except I never moved to an English speaking country. I don't even speak English in my daily life but still I somehow always think in English and strangest of all, with an American accent for some reason 💀. Idk when it started but looking back I find it bizzare that somewhere along the line I completely rewired my indian brain to natively speak a foreign language. Maybe its because I spend more time on the internet than irl 🥴
I grew up speaking English and learned Spanish as my second language. Normally I think in English but I've traveled to Spanish-speaking countries with my family and had to translate. By the end of the trip I'll be thinking in Spanish or a mash of both. Who would've thought the voices in my head were bilingual too?
@@mikehawk6175 if you move to a country where the majority of what you hear speak and read are in the other language i guess it makes sense but in your case I have no explanation. Very interesting
@@joekurtz2154 if you are bilingual i see no reason why the voice in your head wouldn’t also be bilingual. The voice in your head thinking in spanglish sounds like it would be annoying though
I worked with a lady who was born and raised in the United States, with Mexican parents. Spanish was spoken at home, exclusively. To this day, she thinks in Spanish, and it is evident in the way she writes. Spanish syntax and such are very apparent in her written English, though not in her spoken English.
17:00 Made think of documented but mostly only unconsciously used rules of the order of adjectives in English: General opinion Specific opinion Size Shape Age Colour Nationality Material Type Purpose "The eccentric charming little old black Jamaican cook." "A ridiculous giant blue Turkish steel trimmer guillotine"
If you were a "for real" cognitive anything, you'd know that language is so intimately tied up with culture that it's not really possible to definitively claim an answer to this conundrum either way. At best, there is a "weak" effect 18:00 Also, linguists in general agree that there isn't any concept that can't be expressed in any language. (There are some Amazonian tribes that have no words for time, and some that have limited number for counting, but still...)
@@JohnVKaravitis yeah alright, mate. I have the degree paperwork to prove it, but believe what you want. also, I should have known a cognitive linguistics denier would show up in the comments lol
@@bobthetroll there is definitely disagreement. lol there are many instances of linguists stubbornly clinging to the old chomsky model that says language is its own independent cognitive function and doesn't interact with or affect other parts of cognition at all despite the fact that that plenty of other linguists find that to be provably false. there is also extreme in the other direction which tries to claim that language impacts every single aspect of cognition and isn't separable from it, but really the truth is in the middle. language interacts with and affects other aspects of cognition, in most cases affecting things in slight/subtle ways but still definitely there. should also be clear that in regards to the title of the video, it kind of depends what you define as "how you think", which in my view means any aspect of cognition, to which the answer is definitely "yes, but we aren't sure entirely in what ways or how much yet, study ongoing"
@@emilyreich7548 "chomsky model that says language is its own independent cognitive function and doesn't interact with or affect other parts of cognition at all" Chomsky has never claimed that the language faculty doesn't interact with or affect other parts of cognition. Under his conceptualization, the system that deals narrowly with the recursive operations of the grammatical system has interfaces with both semantic and perceptual-motor systems. It is a shame that the anti-Chomskian linguistics departments of the world, which incidentally outnumber the Chomskian ones, have allowed all kinds of nutty misrepresentations of his work to take hold.
Regarding color: I think it comes down to training. Friends of mine have twins. For the first few years I could not distinct the two, at least not very fast. Then I spent much more time with them for approx. one year, and during this year, my brain learned to distinct them to a degree, where I had no Idea how they ever even could look similar to me...
I grew up speaking Spanish and German and always found it interesting that in many areas the pronounce is opposite, i.e. things that are female in one are male in the other and vice versa...
And how people describe those different gendered words is different Even though grammatical gender has nothing to do with people gender (it's just noun classes)
I was thinking about something like this yesterday, but I was wondering about psychological differences, like does a cultures language have an effect on the general mindsets of its speakers.
I think language is more or less a reflection of the culture of the people who speak it. For example, people from Japanese culture are typically very humble, polite, respectful, and logical. Likewise, the Japanese language has very few words or phrases that could be interpreted as "rude" or "mean" in most contexts. Words like "bitch," "slut," "asshole," "shithead," "fucker," etc. don't really have a Japanese equivalent. Also, the language is structured in a way that is very logical. It's hard to describe what exactly I mean by that, but one good example of this is the fact that, unlike many other languages, Japanese is extremely consistent and has very few "irregulars" or "exceptions" in their grammar rules and word conjugations.
maybe, but you can definitely watch them think if you learn dog body language. and you can communicate with them by pretending to think certain things through your own body language. they are constantly watching for this.
Thank you, Simon! You just solved a 20yr-old mystery for me. My Mom is Asian. Whenever we watch a movie, and she wants me to go to frw/rew it, we get into an argument bc story for her goes from right to left, but for me (eng/westerners) left to right.
I just did a commentary on an article about this very concept for a subject in my translation degree- "Miseria y esplendor de la traducción" by José Ortega and Gasset. It's in Spanish (obviously) but a really interesting read. Available on Jstor (or alternatively, on a blog "dialogos.ca") if anyone fancies giving it a read
I always count in Chinese only because it’s harder to lose counts. One, when people around me talk, using another language to think is just easier not to be interfered in my head. Two, English is just messy with its numbers, like why do 11,12 have a different system? Why do we group 1,133 in “11,” and “33?” Chinese numbers to English numbers are like the metric system to the imperial system
First, I've just started learning Chinese (Mandarin) and I do like that about the numbers. Second... never learn French lol! The most nonsense number system I know, and I love French!
the jumping back and forth in the way numbers are worded in english is pretty dumb. it's even worse in german, were the last two digits of a number (or number cluster in a long number) are always said in reverse - similar to thirteen, fourteen etc, but instead of changing to the more sensible twenty one, twenty two etc, it keeps going one-and-twenty, two-and-twenty. for example we would say 1,245,369 as one million two-hundred-five-and-forty-thousand three-hundred-nine-and-sixty (in written form the parts connected with the '-' are huge compound words with no spaces xD). I'm sure this causes a lot of confusion about numbers for people learning german.
Had to pause at the 4:10 mark just to write that the beard cosplaying the superman hairdo is so distracting it's making me rewind this video just to see what's been said. There. Maybe from this point forward I can focus on the narrative. Does anyone know of a good oil you could recommend for that beard?
I agree: this is the first time I've watched this channel, and it was a constant fight to concentrate on what you were saying with the background music pulling at my attention.
Didn't even notice it was there. For the record I speak English and Spanish; I was born and currently live in Latin America and I speak Spanish everyday, but I prefer to think in English
I have mentioned this a few times. I always feel like there is background "noise" outside or in another room, or coming from the headphones I'm not wearing...
Ugh that drives my OCD up the wall, either that puzzle of a head is painted red on both sides and that 1 piece is upside down or else it's been mirrored in photoshop. I absolutely hate that as presented it can't be solved.
I shaved my mustache earlier and I've got this one long hair that I missed just looking right at me and I can feel it....uuggg why don't I just pluck it...got any tweezers
Very interesting. Probably not the same but im a native german speaker and since i learned english i started to use some english words and meanings when talking german with my friends just because the english word is more fitting or pointed compared to the german equivalent. Same with thinking, the better i got with english the more i started to think in english sometimes without even noticing.
As I live for...long time...in shared flat with various foreigners, with who I usually communicate in English (or rather "Globish"), secondary language for all of us, I already noticed some shifts in my personality and also some typical differences. I mean - as Simon can surely confirm - czech language is very complicated but also very precise. Most slavic languages are. This allows for somewhat easier sharing of information, once you know the basic "word-symbols" and how they are combined and what prefixes/sufixes mean. However it is super-complicated and thus prone to errors by different subjective perception As that, language is both highly precise AND with inner doubts about it's precision... ...which culturally translate to having reputation of being "grumpy nation" for harbouring constant doubts about whether it could be done better - which in turn translates into real inovations and inventions... Also it partially defines approach toward art, music and even technology as defaulting to Globish seems to correlate with defaulting to simpler, cleaner and less inspirative environment and less ability to cope with complex thinking. This cognitive simplicity is frequently euphemised as "having focus" but in reality, it's mostly just about inability to understand wider consequences of complicate situation because of not being able to bend language to express it - either completely, or with hardships that make it utterly ineffective to try it...
One thing I've wondered for the past 5 years or so is " _How_ do the different languages think?" For example: US english tends to be more focused on the "what" of things. They must know *what* it is. Its more natural to ask "what happened" vs "how'd it happen." Germany tends to be more focused on the "how" of things. Like they need to know *how* it all works. Which might explain why German products are synonymous with durability. And as far as I can infer Japan tends to be more focused on the *why* of things. There is always a reason. Which might explain why Japanese products are synonymous with efficient. *How* _do_ the different languages think?
The difference between a language and lesser forms of verbal communication (like a pidgin or creole) is that with a language, you have the ability to express any idea whatsoever, even ideas never expressed before in that language. Given this is the definition of language, it's hard to find an angle to support that language limits thought. Language directing thought is fine, though, I think.
Benjamin Lee Whorf, originator of the Whorfian hypothesis, would be a good topic for one of your reviews. Basically, the “soft” version of the theory is that by being constrained to manipulating symbols within your language structure (and thus building restricted metaphors) does indeed define the parameters of your linguistic worldview (“hard” version even suggests actual perceptions are constrained; experimentally shown not to be likely though). The theory is not meant to try and differentiate between similar language structures like Spanish or German (for example) but rather between extremely different language structures like Native American (he lived with the Hopi) and European Romance languages (for example). This theory is at odds with Chomsky who postulated a human universal grammar, hard wired. Whorf was “relativistic.”
The Theory of Mind is the notion, that our perception of the world and how we interact with it, and ability to comprehend how someone percieves it may be vstly different
I'm fluent in Afrikaans and English and tend to think in the language that I am speaking or writing at the time. Or when I watch Afrikaans or English tv programmes I will think in the language of the programme I'm watching. I've found that family and friends who aren't fluent in both languages tend to think in their primary language when they speak their second language and will then struggle to "find" the right words or might mix up a sentence construction
i think a plan needs certainty to be strong and with uncertainty you need more strategy. i can kind of imagine if i thought of time being below me, looking down on it, i could somehow control it for a 5 Year Plan, and impose strict deadlines and expect certainty, when the opposite will be realised. looking out, is looking at the horizon, not looking down a hole, and there are events unknown, on my horizons.
Speaking only one language is very confining. I learned that when I was 12, after reading 1984. As far as knowing multiple languages is concerned, wow, I wish I learned to do that. Knowing and understanding how other people think would be incredibly helpful. Obviously, in the last 200+ years English has been the dominant language used by most of the dominant countries making us blind to the ways other peoples think.
I never understood the example about ordering pictures. If English associates the past with behind, I would expect them to start behind themselves or at least at the edge that is closed to them and therefore closed to "behind". But how does behind correlate with left? I don't see any connection
I am reminded of the enthusiastic goal a friend related to Winston in Orwell's "1984," that by reduced the contents of The Dictionary annually, people would eventually be incapable of Thoughtcrime b/c they'd the means to even express such mentally.
I spent 3 months in Basque country and worked alongside Basque natives for almost 2 years. Based on their language and numbers, I can most certainly say they are mathematically inclined. But I would say that if any language that counts in multiples of 20 plus 0-19.
With colours, languages develop new colour names in a set order: Black&white, red, then blue OR green, then green or blue, etc Also people who speak languages where they have like two different blue words or two different green words, they can differentiate shades of those colours faster/easier than others Others can too, but they have to focus a lot more and can miss subtle shade differences if they don't know there is a difference to find
I noticed changes in the ways I thought about things and how I approached problems when I started learning Spanish. My creativity for problem solving seemed to increase. I suspect this is due to the act of learning a language rather than the language I was learning. Interesting to me though.
Took a technical writing class, and while the intro runs I know the answer is yes. German is more concise and directive where as another language may be less so. Makes a difference when translating process docs apparently.
1 last comment ... This is my perception nothing else. Having taken courses in a couple different languages [very limited] enough to observe some differences in specificity amongst a variety of languages. As an English speaker, obviously its that to which I'll compare to. In relation to other languages, dialects English appears to offer the most specificity. Due to its ever growing number of neologisms, and it's ability as a language to aid it's speakers, to be as intricate and punctilious to such a finite terminus, in the most precise, and such fine detail of concepts, descriptions and ...[ I could have kept going on and on with that] Other languages seem to talk around something. Its limitations are partially due to it not adding as many new words, along with the structure of a sentence and how that plays role in making sure there's less ambiguity.
I was expecting an analysis of whether persons having certain linguistic habits are able to process thoughts more easily than the rest; Good linguistic habits could include: - use of proper punctuation, - using the correct noun-forms - for example they send "invitations" instead of "invites" - having a richer vocabulary - using adverbs correctly ("we must not lose this battle" or "we cannot afford to lose this battle" instead of "we cannot lose this battle") - etc.
As a late duo(possibly-multi)-language speaker, the most confusing stuff in English and some other languages is the distinction between existence "there is" and ownership-like verb "have" (both translated to "има", read as "ima" - short i, short a, in Bulgarian). I see "there is" and "to have" as closely related terms, when in fact, they are not.
Of course the language one is speaking and thinking in changes how one thinks provided that the language is different enough. As a Canadian I speak somewhat differently in England or the USofA but much differently in Amharic which I learned at age 6.
There's a dutch weapon, a spiked club or a club-like short spear depending on how you look at it, that is called a Goedendag. Rumour is that the name translates to "good day" because the guards/militia would hail strangers a "good day", but only another Dutchman could answer with the proper pronunciation. With the pronunciation being very difficult for an adult of another language to learn, it was a way to easily spot check who belonged and who didn't in an age before identification papers.
I asked a Russian friend what language he thinks in, and he said both depending on the task. Also while in Mexico I ended up starting to think in Spanish - so there's a lot to be said about social environment and the impact of linguistics on psychology
Many foreign language students believe that language affects how we think, which we would verify through subjective experiences that we would share between us. I've experienced it myself many times, such as when I worked through a practical problem in carpentry at a non-verbal level (I classified it as "pre-verbal") but when I tried to describe my solution with an English speaker I found myself using German sentence constructs, meaning that I had worked the problem in German but without words. It also affects how I write since a sentence is supposed to contain a complete thought and in German a complete thought tends to contain more information than in English -- German even has the "extended adjective" which is used in front of a noun as any attributive adjective but contains enough information to require a relative clause in English (eg, something like "the written with an old word processor application document"). And similar to the experiences of others, I can feel that my attitude and also personality will change a bit depending on which language I'm thinking in. In 1980 there was an article in a science magazine, "Science '80", about experiments in which they mapped which parts of the subjects' brains processed different kinds of sounds such as human speech, music, random noise -- no subjects were harmed in those experiments. They found that brains raised on the Japanese language used markedly different regions of the brain compared to brains raised on European languages. This was independent of the ancestry of the subject with Europeans raised on Japanese developing Japanese brains and Japanese raised on a European language developing a European brain.
I can definitely tell you that learning Spanish and Spanish grammar had a profound effect on my understanding of grammar in general. I learned English grammar mostly as a child, and I mostly don’t remember learning it. It’s just internalized. I learned Spanish grammar mostly as an adult, and I have actual memories of learning about different grammatical concepts. I swear learning Spanish actually helped me understand the structure of English better. That said, I also had multiple head injuries as a child that affected my memories significantly. Huge portions of my memories are fuzzy at best, while some of the ones I’d like to forget I can’t.
@@marthahawkinson-michau9611 There's a German quote which says that you don't know your own language until you've learned a foreign one. For me, it was learning German. Two years of high school German taught me more about English than 12 years of English ever did. It is why I know how completely wrong phrases like "with you and I" are (they're like saying "He sees I" or "Me like coffee"). The problem with grammar in English class is that "we know it already so why are we wasting our time with a lot of arbitrary and useless rules that nobody follows anyway?" When you learn a foreign language, then its grammar is key to the entire language and how to use it. You need to learn that grammar! But you can get by with English having grown up with it, so you feel that you don't need the grammar and that it's useless. Starting to learn even just that first foreign language changes all that.
@@davidwise1302 that makes so much sense. In particular, I think the “foreign” part of learning a foreign language makes the grammar rules stick in the brain. The fact that it’s new, and isn’t going to be automatic to you makes you think about it harder. At least if you’re motivated to want to learn it.
Rather a rushed presentation for me. I had to turn on the captions but still too fast. Interesting subject. I'm going to decrease the speed and watch again. The topic is important to me satisfying my curiosity.
@@Ass_of_Amalek When listening to a second language, it is easier to grasp is all of it when it is spoken more slowly. You're either pretending to be obtuse, or openly being kind of an ass. I don't care which or why.
I use English language as my secondary, learned it from American movie's, song's and games, my main language is Latvian, I have noticed that I hear word's/meanings better in TV shows, movie's and lyrical rap of all things, it's probability because I think of those text's words in two languages at the same time, or no, I don't know.
‘The turtles who dwell in the sewer’ and ‘The sewer-dwelling turtles’ are both right-branching sentences. The difference between them isn’t where the important (or emphasized) information is, it is what is being emphasized as important. The first one puts the emphasis that we’re talking about turtles in front with the factoid that they live in the sewers added afterwards. The second sentence emphasizes that things are living in the sewers and they happen to be turtles is stated afterwards. Yes, that is a all just semantics, but if we’re not here to discuss tiny bit important differences then why else are we watching these videos?
@@fredhubbard7210 my point is that English is a right-branching language. We don’t really do the left-branching thing in a very natural way. The closest we get to left branching is passive voice, which sounds kind of unnatural and grating. So, I kind of can’t give a very good example in English.
@@Aldrnari956 I think I get your point. Is this right: In English, the most important thing comes first. In his example of sewer-dwelling turtles. Sewer becomes dominant because it comes first. There really isn't a way to invert it. We will always perceive the first thing as most important?
Here's an interesting evolutionary note on remembering numbers. A Japanese lab with a huge chimp enclosure tests recall of numbers 1-9, in sequence, showing them in a random placement on a black and white touch screen, after which their blocks go blank, and one needs to press where they were, in order. While humans can go from one up to five or six, in order, no human has ever gotten past six. Meanwhile, all tested chimps end up able to accurately press up through nine, showing that they have better visual memory than we do. The hypothesis is that the portion of the brain used for visual data processing and short-term storage in most non-human animals has, in us, been turned over to this use for aural data. This means that, while chimps can easily recall things they've seen more accurately than humans, including numerical estimations, humans can more accurately recall what we've heard. Aside from the obvious implications for speech, this likely also explains our musical abilities. Relating to this video, our lesser abilities for recall of number locations may help explain why some tribal people have less ability to estimate and explain numbers, while many people's have remarkable oral histories and traditions, which they can relate easily.
Thank you for the interesting presentation. I bit of constructive commentary (I hope). At moments you were going really fast for things I needed more than a split second to digest. I even tried slowing down to 0.75 but that's was a bit much. 0.80 would have been probably perfect. Background sound was also pretty loud.
Thanks to CuriosityStream for sponsoring today’s video. Go to curiositystream.thld.co/brainfoodmay and use code BRAINFOOD to save 25% off today, that’s only $14.99 a year.
Spot on
I speak 8 languages and read 13--yet my wife calls me a moron...so I had to watch this to see what you have to say. 😁
@@joeluna7729 idk may be you should get a wife that appreciates you better man.
i couldnt pay attention cause your beard needs combing!
@@FIRE_STORMFOX-3692 🤣😂 She loves me and compliments me--its just that she thinks my head swells and she needs to put me in check sometimes. Its all in good fun. But thanks. 👍
I am native german. When I speak english, I tend to move my hands around alot during conversations, trying to support my words
Some but when I speak German.
Common English is not very precise, hence the hand waving. When I was learning German, I found it weird that hands weren't needed. :)
@@joanneoliver8610 Yeah, English needs accusative.
Some kind of accusative case makes a language’s sentence structure a lot easier and clearer.
English has got a genetive case but “of the ...” works fine as well as “de la ...” in Romance languages.
Will someone start a petition?
@@joanneoliver8610 wait until you learn Chinese
@@harrypadarri6349, what is the accusative case? I speak English and some Spanish.
Speaking 4 languages natively, I have to admit that my “personality” changes slightly when switching languages internally
What personality?
I was many times told that I sounded manlier when I spoke my native language, than when I spoke Japanese lol
True. I find that I am different when expressing myself in a Latin based language like Italian compared to when I speak English. It's a more expressive and emotional language and I do speak it louder also. There's also the fact that we add the hand gestures lol.
@@mariag5306 I feel like in Dutch I often can't describe emotions/feelings but in English there are more specific words that are more accurate so I end up being able to say it easier if using English
@@leagueaddict8357 it's funny how languages affect us. I speak English mostly but when it comes to certain subjects I prefer to read about them in Italian because it seems easier to express. Languages are fascinating.
I can't stop looking at that one curly bit on his beard
Looks like someone forgot the beard oil today
😂
Thank you, now I can't unsee it or focus on anything else. 🤣
Thanks.... I can't unsee it now
now that you drew my attention to it neither can I 😂
I'm currently learning my sixth language.
This language being a Far East language and therefore belonging to an extremely different culture, I realise that, when fumbling for words I don't remember because I'm just a beginner, I already do it in a culturally appropriate way.
The Self speaking this new, very exotic language is utterly different different from the previous five Selves (the five Selves all speak European languages and are less easy to distinguish).
And I have six slightly different voices. I have recorded them, they are noticeably different.
Did you learn more than one language while growing up as a baby/child? If so do you notice differences between your "self" when you use those 2 birth languages respectively?
I speak 5 languages well enough to pass as a native speaker in all of them, and some of my internal thought thinking happens in different languages based on the topic but also based on how I feel about it, but I also have a slightly different voice and mannerisms depending on what language I am speaking in.
I also speak/understand a lot more languages but I tend more to "hook" them to a language I know well so they are not as differential.
Most trippy would be hearing me speaking to my mom as we share multiple languages and switch between them mid-phrase for whatever has the best description for what we are talking about. My wife was awed in the beginning but now it is totally normal for her to hear me speak different languages with different mannerisms and voice and switch immediately when I want to.
However I did grow up multilingual so it is not the same thing for someone who didn't I think.
I currently live in Mexico and every time some hears me speak my native English for the first time I get a comment about my voice getting deeper 😂
Do those Selves feel like different people or just different modes?
@@WolfgangDoW modes. Lemme giv u an example. When you're talking in your second learned language you tend to think more logically bc there is more active thought involved. Its not automatic like speaking your first language. This is true for me and others too
As a Finn, even my thought process is messed up.
Yes, I've heard about the relative complexity of Finnish [street names change because you're heading in a different direction, etc.] Nothing to be ashamed of there! But suffice to say, simpletons like myself are never going to learn your mother tongue... 🤪
I speak Finnish, I'm american but my family are Finnish immigrants. I'm here to agree with your statement
As Dane I think it best we don't use our spoken language for thought. That would just be a mess. Though it does seem to have affected me as often drop insignificant words from sentences in other languages I am otherwise fluent in.
The funniest thing about Finnish speakers in English is that a Finnish dialect seems to be a source of pride and status, and having worked for Finnish companies you could always tell the seniority of a Finnish manager from their accent, the thicker the accent, the senior a position they held (at least that is how it was at Nokia) :D
During a role play in a Japanese lesson my partner and myself bought and sold apples to each other in a shop. I bought 3* Fuji apples for 90yen but I sold my partner 1* blue apple for 1,000,000 yen. My teacher asked why? I said in English it was a Blue apple and rare. She said Japan described green colour as blue so all I had done was charge too much for a granny Smith's apple.
lol. As someone who has recently watched a few videos on "rare" fruits that are really just regular fruits with odd names, that is hilarious. Like the "blue" banana: when unripe, instead of green, it has a more bluish-grey tinge, and the "Cameron apple" is a guava I think. I have a whole bag of Granny Smith's in my kitchen right now - I'm rich! lol
@@epowell4211 Excepting that 1 million yen is only a modestly large amount :D maybe a few months wages, so pretty expensive for apples, of course. You're not rich, but you've got enough to put a deposit in on a pretty nice house. (Unless that house is in Tokyo :D)
@@PouncingAnt a million yen for an apple though is absurdly over priced. You can buy a small house in a rural area with a million yen!
My partner an “I,” not “myself.”
Wow, I’d never thought of time being a vertical construct before now, but it makes absolute sense to think of time as something you’re falling thru, my mind was just blown! 🤯
It’s funny when I heard that time could be thought of as vertical not horizontal It felt natural that the future was up not down. When he said the future was downwards I thought, that’s very pessimistic and morbid.
If time was vertical I would see the future as being above not below. As, 1. we come from the earth & (want to)go to the stars; 2. we grow UP over time.
@@tsartomato For me it's self-cringe.
This video was FASCINATING! I work in modifying behaviors and teaching communication to children with various developmental conditions. Verbal Behavior is a really interesting aspect of Behavior Analysis that focuses on function of language vs strictly receptive and expressive communication. Oh, please do more on language/communication! Love it!!
The Chinese (Mandarin) expression for "thing" is dongxi, literally "east-west". The expression for "more or less" is zuoyou, literally "left-right".
As a non-native English speaker, it took my 16 years and moving to Japan to realise that English "th" isn't f or d. (i.e. "this thing" was "dis fing" for me).
Certainly what language you grow up speaking, limits what sounds you can use.
Try getting Japanese to say any vowels beyond their five, or watch them try to pronounce "si" without slipping into a "shi".
It funny when they do it.
Although it is funnier when a talkative Englishman asks a Spanish one why the objects have male and female pronouns.
Japanese is beautiful language though
seriously? how did you learn english? th is like the first thing you normally learn when learning english as a second language!
@@Ass_of_Amalek
Yes, seriously.
From gaming and school.
Th was not "like the first thing" that was taught. We learnt things like the colours, some animals and alphabet first.
And it seems like th as f/d is rather common in dialects in England, the US and Africa:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th-fronting
dialectblog.com/2011/04/12/th-in-city-accent/
@@parthsavyasachi9348 It really is, and them pronouncing th as s/z finally made me understand that it wasn't f/d.
Wow…..one of your best episodes. I’m bi linguistic, when I use English I drink milky tea. When Deutsche, I want to invade Poland.
Das facht
Linguistic relativity or Spair-Whorf hypotheses: the language we speak may reflect our worldviews, thoughts and perceptions. I highly agree with this.
Wow, I loved this episode!! The topic of language and perceptions/concepts of where one is in space and time is incredibly fascinating.
The part about mandarin words for "next" and "down" being the same and "previous" and "up" being same the same words, really gave my brain a challenge to comprehend and I thought it was amazing that a TH-cam video gave me exposure to something new I never imagined of learning. Thanks Simon!
I love the differences languages apply to so many concepts. The possibility of viewing certain aspects of our reality through a language filter is incredibly stimulating IMO.
So much (note: not everything) depends on our mental processes and how we think about such processes, and which instrument we think we are using for thinking about such processes, etc. pp... I am neither a universalist or determinist. I believe there is a certain mix and match of language influencing our thought processes depending on whether a concept applies to our more basic reflexes, or to more complex patterns.
Our brains are the way we react to reality, but our reality literally shapes the way our brain thinks through neuro-flexibility and our brains ability to rewire itsself with enough training.
This is so awesome, but quickly turns in a brain twister.
Loved the video. Very stimulating.
The sapir whorf hypothesis came to mind when I saw the title. From an anthropology course more that 50 years ago but can i remember what I had for breakfast?
I wonder if that kind of hierarchic memory retention is linguistically relative 😜
@@Daleymop actually I do remember breakfast but wanted to undercut bragging on the memory. I also watched the entire video to make sure it wasn’t referenced in it.
All I could focus on, that whole video, was that one whisp of beard that was too powerful to be tamed 💪
i was really hoping i wasn't the only one thinking that
Read this at the beginning. Can no longer not stare...
He must've run out of Beard Blaze
He's a man that cares but does not give a damn.
Use the beard curl as a possible date stamp. We may find out which videos he did on the same day.
While studying psychology in graduate school, I took the course, "Thought and Language," which underscores everything in this video. A viewer commented that his personality changes whenever he speaks a different language, and I can definitely relate. I speak French, German and Spanish. Even though French and Spanish are similar, my mindset changes even when switching between those two. It's a shame that more Americans aren't multilingual. Speaking other languages definitely expands one's world view.
Humblebrag.
You can have perspective without knowing how to conjugate verbs in multiple languages. Especially ones that are based in the same western culture.
100%. Many of my tribes elders dislike English and consider it a "dishonest" language because they can't convey the same ideas.
it seems dishonest to call the english language dishonest. :P
@@Ass_of_Amalek 😅
Would love to learn tribal languages.
May I ask which tribe you are from?
@@Anonymoususer44569 They’d tell you, but they can’t convey the idea in English. Honestly!
I'm an English teacher in Brazil (which is a Portuguese speaking country). I have been superficially aware of most things of this video for a long while, so I absolutely loved it and now I want to share it with many of my workmates and a few advanced students!
The Whorf effect. I found the name easy to memorize because Klingons don't have a word for apology.
Do Klingons not reconcile errors?
(I'm new to all this.)
Klingons _certainly_ have the concept of, and thus the word for, an apology; however, since an apology is usually in the form of disemboweling oneself with a dull knife....
What you meant to say is that Klingons do not have a word for _please._ (And apparently, _hello_ ). In the book of Klingon lexicon and grammar written by Marc Okrand, the linguist hired to invent the language, this is specifically stated.
Incidentally, _Worf,_ played by actor Michael Dorn, is not spelled the same as Benjamin _Whorf,_ the linguist -- although I confess that I have employed the exact same mnemonic in the past.
Strange ... I just rewatched Arrival on prime last night, which centered around this subject
Literally came to comment the same thing. But it was my first watch lol
Same, I just rewatched it two days ago. Maybe the aliens have all brought us together here for some reason?
Or maybe not.
Few weeks ago here
No, you watched Arrival BECAUSE you were going to watch this video.
sees Simon, grabs comb and start combing underside of beard...
It's so distracting!
Gawh! I was wondering if I was the only one! That wayward curl on his right...
You'd think that with all his earnings from all his channels he would have employed a personal groomer by now. Interesting video but poor presentation of the beard.
@@joycejames8461 i think it just makes him look like Simon, the guy that does 8x7 talking at a camera
Who remembers when he didn't have a beard at all. He looked 20 years younger
Have you ever done an episode on "the voice in our heads"?
I have one, but I've heard that many people don't have one. They have to talk to themselves in actual speech, often in murmurs.
Wait what?
@@screamtoasigh9984 What, you don't have a voice in your head?
I know some people cannot have internal conversations in their heads. They have to speak it out and listen to themselves.
I'm constantly talking to the guys. Both in my head and aloud. The guys are me, myself and I.
@@gwick358 You might want to see a psychologist if you have three copies of yourself in your head.
I'm only talking to myself without an audience. Some people murmur out loud because they don't have a voice in their heads, but I can murmur silently in my mind.
Fascinating! I used to think that the reason we didn't remember being babies was because we didn't have the language skills, so the memories weren't organized in the same way as ones after we learned language, but recently learned this was not true. I saw on FB one time a story (I did not fact check) discussing colors and language. Apparently, some group was able to differentiate between many more shades of green than the average American, and it was hypothesized that it had to do with the grass being an important predictor of the environment where they lived and whether they needed to move on. My mother studied art and color theory, as well as taught it, and I swear she sees more color variances than I do. I've heard that Eskimo tribes have many words to describe snow, something important to gage how the weather is going/ how dangerous the environment is. I've also learned that Japanese have words for different types of crispy/crunchiness of things like chips/crisps. When it comes to the human thought process, it seems that, the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know lol
The shear amount of in depth information in this video is the reason I love all of your channels.
You should read about Finnish cinema! I remember reading an article on the FInnish public service website about why Finnish films were not popular among the other Scandinavian countries.
Apparently the cinematography used in Finnish films is very different due to differences in language, with more extreme closeups of faces and fewer wide shots to establish where the actors are in relation to each other in a scene. According to the author this is due to the finnish language structure and how they describe things and beings in relation to each other, which they do differently from most other languages.
For Swedes, Danes and Norwegians this felt very strange and thus the films were not popular there.
I found it very interesting and I'm surprised that you didn't mention it in the video.
*personally, i try to think of the most creative ways to say even the most mundane things and actively avoid cliche' as much as possible...sometimes the results of these verbal combinations are strange...and i do get very odd looks as other try to unpack their meaning...i mean stranger than the looks i typically get just by entering the room...but that's another topic for another time*
More creative is always more fun. One of the things I like about YTer Black Tie Kitchen is his fun word choices. For example, wrap of Saran and tray of baking. Those are perfectly legit in other languages but ‘odd’ in English. He also does most of his cooking in a hot box and uses organized wires to whisk things. Check him out. Very enjoyable.
you'd probably enjoy the comic "Strange Planet."
@@Quicksilver1138 They are The Best!
I like this approach, but for two problems: First, it turns out I'm not that eloquent, so I fumble sentences constantly. Being a business/science translator, adding colorful to my language almost always comes back to bite me in the rear.
If someone said to me that there was a spider on me, before they even had the opportunity to finish their sentence I would already be jumping around slapping every part of my body until I got it off
😆...same here
hmm, if you'd speak a language that sticks the important bits at the end of the sentence, you might know which direction to panic jump to
@@Hugh_I if you speak a language that doesn't say earlier in the fucking sentence there's a spider on me...
We give words to colours. But words themselves, it seems, give colour to our world.
When you think and your internal dialog is at work, this is not the sole contributor to the perceptions your mind is rendering within that dialog. Deeper within those systems there exists an partnership between all of the senses that drive the perceptual capacity of the brain. There is an alloy which is produced there which not only drives the complex thought lives which we enjoy, but also it renders all other realms of the human imagination and abstraction. Additionally, there must have been a time when human beings existed and thrived despite the probability that language hadn’t been devised yet. We surely had thought lives even then, yes? Language surely became such a dominant tool within our minds as it proved to be extremely useful for us to organize ourselves and therefore to solve problems and thrive. ... yes, surely we still were perceptive and creative animals even before we could speak to one another or document our outputs through written text. A very interesting topic for sure.
We were debating about this about five months ago in theory of knowledge!! Very glad I get to find out your opinion!
I find that curl in your beard quite charming, sir. Looking sharp!
I've seen many of these concepts addressed separately, so it was really convenient that you pulled them all together to demonstrate the bigger picture. Thanks for the video (:
I read the Blank Slate by Pinker a while back and it was fascinating. The intersection between linguistics and psychology is just so interesting.
I always had this notion that it's exactly what language does - influence the ease of getting to some ideas necessary to get to some conclusions, especially in science. Like, the way you were brought up to speak influences the way you are able to think about things because of, maybe, some language patterns ingrained into the brain. It's fairly difficult for me to try and differentiate English and Croatian, my native tongue, as I've been learning English since I was 4. Apart from limited opportunities to speak it actively, in practice it is as much a part of how I think as Croatian is. I certainly use English more because of social media, education, movies/shows/music, work..
I find that I'm two different people when using each language, even though I use them both almost my whole life. English is more flexible in certain ways, like you can have a spoon but also spoon someone to death, which I can't do in Croatian without resorting to grammar heresy and inventing non-existent forms. Yet, in Croatian I can, dying, utter my last word and say "killed" and convey it was a female person because of that "gender attributed to nouns" thing, and it REALLY makes me think differently, create different sentences and ideas and, I believe, view the world differently.
Thank you for another great video!
Yes! I write French, German, Spanish with dictionary help; Cambodian is my 2nd spoken. Each has impacts, even when later-learned. E.g.: 'street' Cambodian, one of the world's most compact languages, sends thoughts racing at easily 40% faster than in English, 60+% than French.
How does Cambodian stack up to French and English when trying to communicate complex or abstract ideas? Is there any other major differences? I'm kind of curious.
My native language is Spanish. My second is English. I think in both and dream in both. I live in a Spanish speaking country and use Spanish almost exclusively in daily life. However, I find that I switch from Spanish to English when I need to express strong emotions. I'm a more outgoing and expressive person in English than in Spanish. I write in both languages, but if I'm writing, say, fantasy stories, I am more comfortable with English. I also prefer reading in English. For some reason, I am able to "feel" and visualize what I'm reading better in English than in Spanish. I really don't know why.
The difference of profession also affects how we process language.
Homo sapiens evolved at the latest one hundred thousand years ago. Linguistic studies is two hundred years old. It makes sense that we just do not know yet and it will take a lot more time to figure this out
If we're still around
Um, anatomically modern humans ha e been around for 300,000 years, not 100,000. Linguistics studies began in India in the 6th Century BCE, as well as in China in the 4th Century BCE, which makes the study around 2500 years old, not two hundred. Where the hell did you pull those arbitrary numbers from?
if you look at ancient artwork and very old artworks from societies that where less influenced by the rest of the world the color schemes seem to match up pretty well suggesting visual perception is not changed much by language
This one goes deep... And incidentally, was a thought I had been pondering about just a fortnight ago.
Simon Whistler is just gonna have to live with the fact that each of the channels he hosts happen to be some of the most informative and less curricular sources of information available on TH-cam...
Yes, especially 'Business Blaze'
I recently started to learn Welsh and Refresh my Japanese at the same time. I started to learn Japanese in uni 17 years ago, but I'm really out of practise, haven't been back to the country since 2010. Welsh is my 6th language, German is my mother tongue, I learned English in 5th grade and consider myself pretty much bilingual, which goes so far as being asked my British people, if I am from somewhere in the UK. My English teacher once said, at one point, you might dream in English and I can say, I think and dream in English for many years now. I learned Latin and Spanish in 7th and 9th grade. Latin helped me to understand grammar overall, because analysing sentence structure in different levels is one of the main elements of Latin lessons.
Now adding Welsh to the mix is rather interesting. It's unlike any other language I speak or ever learned and I'm struggling so much. But at least the concept of blue/green was already covered in Japanese for me. I'M not sure, but I guess, I'm one of the only people, who is switching to Japanese to relax and learn something easy compared to Welsh.
One of my friends started to learn Mandarin some months ago and we talked about the differences between Mandarin and Japanese and how both are taught. Explaining Japanese to my friend, I gasped again, that the language is difficult indeed, but I still struggle more, because Welsh is so different. I started listeming to Japanese music 20 years ago, which helped with recognising sounds, it's much easier for me to pronounce words compared to Welsh, I lack the outside influence.
I am much older now, than when I started to learn any other language, but I still think, it's the lack of hearing enough Welsh around me.
I'll continue, I love the country and learning Welsh is a way to support the culture of the country I love. I can do it!
Fascinating! I'm really curious about the cultural perception and presentation of numbers now, after you briefly touched on it here. For example, when it comes to cultures and languages that do have a complex and accurate number system, do they all use a base ten system as we know in English? I once heard that some ancient cultures at least (like ancient Hebrews or Babylonians) might have used a number system other than base ten. Also, how do other cultures and languages reflect partial numbers (fractions and/or decimals)? You could do a whole video on number systems of the world and I hope you will as it would be extremely informative.
Finally, this video answers many questions I have been asking myself for a long time. This is crazy stuff!
My first language was Spanish, my second was English. Left my Spanish speaking home country at 3. At some point my mind switched from thinking in Spanish to thinking in english. I hadn’t really thought about it until a friend asked me what language I think in and I instantly said English.
Its the same for me except I never moved to an English speaking country. I don't even speak English in my daily life but still I somehow always think in English and strangest of all, with an American accent for some reason 💀. Idk when it started but looking back I find it bizzare that somewhere along the line I completely rewired my indian brain to natively speak a foreign language. Maybe its because I spend more time on the internet than irl 🥴
I grew up speaking English and learned Spanish as my second language. Normally I think in English but I've traveled to Spanish-speaking countries with my family and had to translate. By the end of the trip I'll be thinking in Spanish or a mash of both. Who would've thought the voices in my head were bilingual too?
@@mikehawk6175 if you move to a country where the majority of what you hear speak and read are in the other language i guess it makes sense but in your case I have no explanation. Very interesting
@@joekurtz2154 if you are bilingual i see no reason why the voice in your head wouldn’t also be bilingual. The voice in your head thinking in spanglish sounds like it would be annoying though
I worked with a lady who was born and raised in the United States, with Mexican parents. Spanish was spoken at home, exclusively. To this day, she thinks in Spanish, and it is evident in the way she writes. Spanish syntax and such are very apparent in her written English, though not in her spoken English.
17:00 Made think of documented but mostly only unconsciously used rules of the order of adjectives in English:
General opinion Specific opinion Size Shape Age Colour Nationality Material Type Purpose
"The eccentric charming little old black Jamaican cook."
"A ridiculous giant blue Turkish steel trimmer guillotine"
as a cognitive linguist, I don't even need to watch this to know the answer is "yes", but I will naturally watch anyway because how could I not 😁
If you were a "for real" cognitive anything, you'd know that language is so intimately tied up with culture that it's not really possible to definitively claim an answer to this conundrum either way. At best, there is a "weak" effect 18:00
Also, linguists in general agree that there isn't any concept that can't be expressed in any language. (There are some Amazonian tribes that have no words for time, and some that have limited number for counting, but still...)
@@JohnVKaravitis yeah alright, mate. I have the degree paperwork to prove it, but believe what you want.
also, I should have known a cognitive linguistics denier would show up in the comments lol
The video said there is no conclusive answer and lots of disagreement..
@@bobthetroll there is definitely disagreement. lol
there are many instances of linguists stubbornly clinging to the old chomsky model that says language is its own independent cognitive function and doesn't interact with or affect other parts of cognition at all despite the fact that that plenty of other linguists find that to be provably false. there is also extreme in the other direction which tries to claim that language impacts every single aspect of cognition and isn't separable from it, but really the truth is in the middle. language interacts with and affects other aspects of cognition, in most cases affecting things in slight/subtle ways but still definitely there.
should also be clear that in regards to the title of the video, it kind of depends what you define as "how you think", which in my view means any aspect of cognition, to which the answer is definitely "yes, but we aren't sure entirely in what ways or how much yet, study ongoing"
@@emilyreich7548 "chomsky model that says language is its own independent cognitive function and doesn't interact with or affect other parts of cognition at all"
Chomsky has never claimed that the language faculty doesn't interact with or affect other parts of cognition. Under his conceptualization, the system that deals narrowly with the recursive operations of the grammatical system has interfaces with both semantic and perceptual-motor systems. It is a shame that the anti-Chomskian linguistics departments of the world, which incidentally outnumber the Chomskian ones, have allowed all kinds of nutty misrepresentations of his work to take hold.
Language depends on culture, which in turn depends on language.
Regarding color: I think it comes down to training. Friends of mine have twins. For the first few years I could not distinct the two, at least not very fast. Then I spent much more time with them for approx. one year, and during this year, my brain learned to distinct them to a degree, where I had no Idea how they ever even could look similar to me...
Distinguish
I grew up speaking Spanish and German and always found it interesting that in many areas the pronounce is opposite, i.e. things that are female in one are male in the other and vice versa...
And how people describe those different gendered words is different
Even though grammatical gender has nothing to do with people gender (it's just noun classes)
I was thinking about something like this yesterday, but I was wondering about psychological differences, like does a cultures language have an effect on the general mindsets of its speakers.
I think language is more or less a reflection of the culture of the people who speak it. For example, people from Japanese culture are typically very humble, polite, respectful, and logical. Likewise, the Japanese language has very few words or phrases that could be interpreted as "rude" or "mean" in most contexts. Words like "bitch," "slut," "asshole," "shithead," "fucker," etc. don't really have a Japanese equivalent. Also, the language is structured in a way that is very logical. It's hard to describe what exactly I mean by that, but one good example of this is the fact that, unlike many other languages, Japanese is extremely consistent and has very few "irregulars" or "exceptions" in their grammar rules and word conjugations.
Do dogs think in barks or commands?
I think of weird stuff.
Lol. Me too, same.
Asking the real questions.
maybe, but you can definitely watch them think if you learn dog body language. and you can communicate with them by pretending to think certain things through your own body language. they are constantly watching for this.
I think Dogs are very keyed in to tone of voice or bark, and body language.
@@tsartomato I've never even thought of that. How very Pavlovian 🤜
Thank you, Simon! You just solved a 20yr-old mystery for me. My Mom is Asian. Whenever we watch a movie, and she wants me to go to frw/rew it, we get into an argument bc story for her goes from right to left, but for me (eng/westerners) left to right.
I just did a commentary on an article about this very concept for a subject in my translation degree- "Miseria y esplendor de la traducción" by José Ortega and Gasset. It's in Spanish (obviously) but a really interesting read. Available on Jstor (or alternatively, on a blog "dialogos.ca") if anyone fancies giving it a read
I always count in Chinese only because it’s harder to lose counts. One, when people around me talk, using another language to think is just easier not to be interfered in my head. Two, English is just messy with its numbers, like why do 11,12 have a different system? Why do we group 1,133 in “11,” and “33?” Chinese numbers to English numbers are like the metric system to the imperial system
First, I've just started learning Chinese (Mandarin) and I do like that about the numbers.
Second... never learn French lol! The most nonsense number system I know, and I love French!
as with most eurasian systems, german (although 11 and 12 lurk there) and russian for me. 1 and 20, 3 and 40, 1 thousand 1 hundred 3 and 30, etc.
@@em1osmurf French "sixty eight, sixty nine... sixty ten, sixty eleven..." "sixty nineteen... four twenties, four twenties one..." "four twenties nineteen, hundred"😂
the jumping back and forth in the way numbers are worded in english is pretty dumb. it's even worse in german, were the last two digits of a number (or number cluster in a long number) are always said in reverse - similar to thirteen, fourteen etc, but instead of changing to the more sensible twenty one, twenty two etc, it keeps going one-and-twenty, two-and-twenty. for example we would say 1,245,369 as one million two-hundred-five-and-forty-thousand three-hundred-nine-and-sixty (in written form the parts connected with the '-' are huge compound words with no spaces xD). I'm sure this causes a lot of confusion about numbers for people learning german.
I have no idea what you are saying but the comparison to the metric system is overstated I think. There are physicists from all over the world.
Ask a foreigner ''What's Up''? And they will literally
look up in the air.
Say the greating "how are you doing?" to a Dutch person and you will more often than not get an actual answer to your question.
@@JoeyA92 So you'll get like a 10 minute answer. Lol.
Sounds like a fun ice breaker to discuss eachothers' fun culture and language quirks 😂
This makes me think when not hearing when your born affects the thought process
Had to pause at the 4:10 mark just to write that the beard cosplaying the superman hairdo is so distracting it's making me rewind this video just to see what's been said. There. Maybe from this point forward I can focus on the narrative.
Does anyone know of a good oil you could recommend for that beard?
I’ve mentioned it before, but here we go again. That background music is a nuisance. There is no need for it. It actually distracts.
I agree: this is the first time I've watched this channel, and it was a constant fight to concentrate on what you were saying with the background music pulling at my attention.
Didn't even notice it was there. For the record I speak English and Spanish; I was born and currently live in Latin America and I speak Spanish everyday, but I prefer to think in English
I have mentioned this a few times. I always feel like there is background "noise" outside or in another room, or coming from the headphones I'm not wearing...
Ugh that drives my OCD up the wall, either that puzzle of a head is painted red on both sides and that 1 piece is upside down or else it's been mirrored in photoshop. I absolutely hate that as presented it can't be solved.
I shaved my mustache earlier and I've got this one long hair that I missed just looking right at me and I can feel it....uuggg why don't I just pluck it...got any tweezers
Yup it does not only thinking but our dialogues and jokes kinda things too
Very interesting. Probably not the same but im a native german speaker and since i learned english i started to use some english words and meanings when talking german with my friends just because the english word is more fitting or pointed compared to the german equivalent.
Same with thinking, the better i got with english the more i started to think in english sometimes without even noticing.
As I live for...long time...in shared flat with various foreigners, with who I usually communicate in English (or rather "Globish"), secondary language for all of us, I already noticed some shifts in my personality and also some typical differences.
I mean - as Simon can surely confirm - czech language is very complicated but also very precise. Most slavic languages are.
This allows for somewhat easier sharing of information, once you know the basic "word-symbols" and how they are combined and what prefixes/sufixes mean.
However it is super-complicated and thus prone to errors by different subjective perception
As that, language is both highly precise AND with inner doubts about it's precision...
...which culturally translate to having reputation of being "grumpy nation" for harbouring constant doubts about whether it could be done better - which in turn translates into real inovations and inventions...
Also it partially defines approach toward art, music and even technology as defaulting to Globish seems to correlate with defaulting to simpler, cleaner and less inspirative environment and less ability to cope with complex thinking. This cognitive simplicity is frequently euphemised as "having focus" but in reality, it's mostly just about inability to understand wider consequences of complicate situation because of not being able to bend language to express it - either completely, or with hardships that make it utterly ineffective to try it...
One thing I've wondered for the past 5 years or so is " _How_ do the different languages think?"
For example: US english tends to be more focused on the "what" of things. They must know *what* it is. Its more natural to ask "what happened" vs "how'd it happen."
Germany tends to be more focused on the "how" of things. Like they need to know *how* it all works. Which might explain why German products are synonymous with durability.
And as far as I can infer Japan tends to be more focused on the *why* of things. There is always a reason. Which might explain why Japanese products are synonymous with efficient.
*How* _do_ the different languages think?
@@tsartomato English is overated.
@@tsartomato unfortunately I was born into it.
The difference between a language and lesser forms of verbal communication (like a pidgin or creole) is that with a language, you have the ability to express any idea whatsoever, even ideas never expressed before in that language.
Given this is the definition of language, it's hard to find an angle to support that language limits thought. Language directing thought is fine, though, I think.
Benjamin Lee Whorf, originator of the Whorfian hypothesis, would be a good topic for one of your reviews. Basically, the “soft” version of the theory is that by being constrained to manipulating symbols within your language structure (and thus building restricted metaphors) does indeed define the parameters of your linguistic worldview (“hard” version even suggests actual perceptions are constrained; experimentally shown not to be likely though). The theory is not meant to try and differentiate between similar language structures like Spanish or German (for example) but rather between extremely different language structures like Native American (he lived with the Hopi) and European Romance languages (for example).
This theory is at odds with Chomsky who postulated a human universal grammar, hard wired. Whorf was “relativistic.”
The Theory of Mind is the notion, that our perception of the world and how we interact with it, and ability to comprehend how someone percieves it may be vstly different
I'm fluent in Afrikaans and English and tend to think in the language that I am speaking or writing at the time. Or when I watch Afrikaans or English tv programmes I will think in the language of the programme I'm watching. I've found that family and friends who aren't fluent in both languages tend to think in their primary language when they speak their second language and will then struggle to "find" the right words or might mix up a sentence construction
i think a plan needs certainty to be strong and with uncertainty you need more strategy. i can kind of imagine if i thought of time being below me, looking down on it, i could somehow control it for a 5 Year Plan, and impose strict deadlines and expect certainty, when the opposite will be realised. looking out, is looking at the horizon, not looking down a hole, and there are events unknown, on my horizons.
Speaking only one language is very confining. I learned that when I was 12, after reading 1984. As far as knowing multiple languages is concerned, wow, I wish I learned to do that. Knowing and understanding how other people think would be incredibly helpful.
Obviously, in the last 200+ years English has been the dominant language used by most of the dominant countries making us blind to the ways other peoples think.
Wonderful video about linguistics!
I never understood the example about ordering pictures. If English associates the past with behind, I would expect them to start behind themselves or at least at the edge that is closed to them and therefore closed to "behind". But how does behind correlate with left? I don't see any connection
Oh this'll be fun. Cheers!!
I am reminded of the enthusiastic goal a friend related to Winston in Orwell's "1984," that by reduced the contents of The Dictionary annually, people would eventually be incapable of Thoughtcrime b/c they'd the means to even express such mentally.
I spent 3 months in Basque country and worked alongside Basque natives for almost 2 years. Based on their language and numbers, I can most certainly say they are mathematically inclined. But I would say that if any language that counts in multiples of 20 plus 0-19.
And then there are those who don't have clue what is being said, because it is being spoken at a faster speed.
With colours, languages develop new colour names in a set order:
Black&white, red, then blue OR green, then green or blue, etc
Also people who speak languages where they have like two different blue words or two different green words, they can differentiate shades of those colours faster/easier than others
Others can too, but they have to focus a lot more and can miss subtle shade differences if they don't know there is a difference to find
I noticed changes in the ways I thought about things and how I approached problems when I started learning Spanish. My creativity for problem solving seemed to increase. I suspect this is due to the act of learning a language rather than the language I was learning. Interesting to me though.
I love it when you convert linguistic topics!
Took a technical writing class, and while the intro runs I know the answer is yes. German is more concise and directive where as another language may be less so. Makes a difference when translating process docs apparently.
1 last comment ... This is my perception nothing else.
Having taken courses in a couple different languages [very limited] enough to observe some differences in specificity amongst a variety of languages.
As an English speaker, obviously its that to which I'll compare to.
In relation to other languages, dialects English appears to offer the most specificity. Due to its ever growing number of neologisms, and it's ability as a language to aid it's speakers, to be as intricate and punctilious to such a finite terminus, in the most precise, and such fine detail of concepts, descriptions and ...[ I could have kept going on and on with that]
Other languages seem to talk around something. Its limitations are partially due to it not adding as many new words, along with the structure of a sentence and how that plays role in making sure there's less ambiguity.
I tend to think, no matter where I am or which direction I am facing, that North is ahead of my & South is behind. Good times.
I was expecting an analysis of whether persons having certain linguistic habits are able to process thoughts more easily than the rest; Good linguistic habits could include:
- use of proper punctuation,
- using the correct noun-forms - for example they send "invitations" instead of "invites"
- having a richer vocabulary
- using adverbs correctly ("we must not lose this battle" or "we cannot afford to lose this battle" instead of "we cannot lose this battle")
- etc.
Does the persistent use of impersonal terms and acronyms in business lead us to devalue both the words they stand for and the people they represent?
@@marcusdirk Can you give some examples?
Thanks for this video. Very interesting.
As a late duo(possibly-multi)-language speaker, the most confusing stuff in English and some other languages is the distinction between existence "there is" and ownership-like verb "have" (both translated to "има", read as "ima" - short i, short a, in Bulgarian). I see "there is" and "to have" as closely related terms, when in fact, they are not.
Of course the language one is speaking and thinking in changes how one thinks provided that the language is different enough. As a Canadian I speak somewhat differently in England or the USofA but much differently in Amharic which I learned at age 6.
There's a dutch weapon, a spiked club or a club-like short spear depending on how you look at it, that is called a Goedendag. Rumour is that the name translates to "good day" because the guards/militia would hail strangers a "good day", but only another Dutchman could answer with the proper pronunciation. With the pronunciation being very difficult for an adult of another language to learn, it was a way to easily spot check who belonged and who didn't in an age before identification papers.
Interesting topic. Paused the video to discover the noise (background "music"?) wasn't coming from my neighbors. Couldn't finish watching this one.
As Simon's beard gets bushier, his voice gets quieter.
Bit of a shock when the adverts cut in.
You need to check out Business Blaze.
Spoiler alert: he's not quiet.
@@GuntherRommel OG Blazer here.
In this case it seems the audio was just mixed quiet. I had to turn him up.
I asked a Russian friend what language he thinks in, and he said both depending on the task. Also while in Mexico I ended up starting to think in Spanish - so there's a lot to be said about social environment and the impact of linguistics on psychology
Simon. It's no wonder you never remember what you've read. Mile a minute my dude! This was awesome. Watching again.
Many foreign language students believe that language affects how we think, which we would verify through subjective experiences that we would share between us. I've experienced it myself many times, such as when I worked through a practical problem in carpentry at a non-verbal level (I classified it as "pre-verbal") but when I tried to describe my solution with an English speaker I found myself using German sentence constructs, meaning that I had worked the problem in German but without words. It also affects how I write since a sentence is supposed to contain a complete thought and in German a complete thought tends to contain more information than in English -- German even has the "extended adjective" which is used in front of a noun as any attributive adjective but contains enough information to require a relative clause in English (eg, something like "the written with an old word processor application document"). And similar to the experiences of others, I can feel that my attitude and also personality will change a bit depending on which language I'm thinking in.
In 1980 there was an article in a science magazine, "Science '80", about experiments in which they mapped which parts of the subjects' brains processed different kinds of sounds such as human speech, music, random noise -- no subjects were harmed in those experiments. They found that brains raised on the Japanese language used markedly different regions of the brain compared to brains raised on European languages. This was independent of the ancestry of the subject with Europeans raised on Japanese developing Japanese brains and Japanese raised on a European language developing a European brain.
I can definitely tell you that learning Spanish and Spanish grammar had a profound effect on my understanding of grammar in general. I learned English grammar mostly as a child, and I mostly don’t remember learning it. It’s just internalized. I learned Spanish grammar mostly as an adult, and I have actual memories of learning about different grammatical concepts. I swear learning Spanish actually helped me understand the structure of English better.
That said, I also had multiple head injuries as a child that affected my memories significantly. Huge portions of my memories are fuzzy at best, while some of the ones I’d like to forget I can’t.
@@marthahawkinson-michau9611 There's a German quote which says that you don't know your own language until you've learned a foreign one. For me, it was learning German. Two years of high school German taught me more about English than 12 years of English ever did. It is why I know how completely wrong phrases like "with you and I" are (they're like saying "He sees I" or "Me like coffee").
The problem with grammar in English class is that "we know it already so why are we wasting our time with a lot of arbitrary and useless rules that nobody follows anyway?" When you learn a foreign language, then its grammar is key to the entire language and how to use it. You need to learn that grammar! But you can get by with English having grown up with it, so you feel that you don't need the grammar and that it's useless. Starting to learn even just that first foreign language changes all that.
@@davidwise1302 that makes so much sense. In particular, I think the “foreign” part of learning a foreign language makes the grammar rules stick in the brain. The fact that it’s new, and isn’t going to be automatic to you makes you think about it harder. At least if you’re motivated to want to learn it.
Rather a rushed presentation for me. I had to turn on the captions but still too fast. Interesting subject. I'm going to decrease the speed and watch again. The topic is important to me satisfying my curiosity.
the amount of information in the video does not increase if you slow it down...
@@Ass_of_Amalek but its easier to understand.
@@Ass_of_Amalek When listening to a second language, it is easier to grasp is all of it when it is spoken more slowly. You're either pretending to be obtuse, or openly being kind of an ass. I don't care which or why.
Yeah I'm a native English speaker and Simon must've been warming up to a Blaze.
Herne Webber oh well if you don't care then I guess I won't tell you. 😐
The correct awnser is that there's not enough data to say "yes." If it dose it's not by much.
Meaning not enough to really matter.
What is this field of study called ? Can someone recommend a "for dummies" book.
Linguistics
Tom scott has a nice playlist on yt covering some of what would be in the book
@@aydancc thanks
I use English language as my secondary, learned it from American movie's, song's and games, my main language is Latvian, I have noticed that I hear word's/meanings better in TV shows, movie's and lyrical rap of all things, it's probability because I think of those text's words in two languages at the same time, or no, I don't know.
Can I get the sources, please? I am very interested in this topic and I'd love to learn more...
‘The turtles who dwell in the sewer’ and ‘The sewer-dwelling turtles’ are both right-branching sentences. The difference between them isn’t where the important (or emphasized) information is, it is what is being emphasized as important. The first one puts the emphasis that we’re talking about turtles in front with the factoid that they live in the sewers added afterwards. The second sentence emphasizes that things are living in the sewers and they happen to be turtles is stated afterwards.
Yes, that is a all just semantics, but if we’re not here to discuss tiny bit important differences then why else are we watching these videos?
Keep going. Give your examples of left and right branching.
@@fredhubbard7210 my point is that English is a right-branching language. We don’t really do the left-branching thing in a very natural way. The closest we get to left branching is passive voice, which sounds kind of unnatural and grating.
So, I kind of can’t give a very good example in English.
@@Aldrnari956 I think I get your point. Is this right: In English, the most important thing comes first. In his example of sewer-dwelling turtles. Sewer becomes dominant because it comes first. There really isn't a way to invert it. We will always perceive the first thing as most important?
@@fredhubbard7210 yes, thank you. That’s exactly what I meant.
Here's an interesting evolutionary note on remembering numbers. A Japanese lab with a huge chimp enclosure tests recall of numbers 1-9, in sequence, showing them in a random placement on a black and white touch screen, after which their blocks go blank, and one needs to press where they were, in order. While humans can go from one up to five or six, in order, no human has ever gotten past six. Meanwhile, all tested chimps end up able to accurately press up through nine, showing that they have better visual memory than we do. The hypothesis is that the portion of the brain used for visual data processing and short-term storage in most non-human animals has, in us, been turned over to this use for aural data. This means that, while chimps can easily recall things they've seen more accurately than humans, including numerical estimations, humans can more accurately recall what we've heard. Aside from the obvious implications for speech, this likely also explains our musical abilities.
Relating to this video, our lesser abilities for recall of number locations may help explain why some tribal people have less ability to estimate and explain numbers, while many people's have remarkable oral histories and traditions, which they can relate easily.
Thank you for the interesting presentation. I bit of constructive commentary (I hope).
At moments you were going really fast for things I needed more than a split second to digest. I even tried slowing down to 0.75 but that's was a bit much. 0.80 would have been probably perfect. Background sound was also pretty loud.