11/9 Comments

I found Deutscher's article to be quite interesting since it deals with certain things that I would not have normally thought too much about without inquisition. Considering the impact that different languages might have on someone's mindset or attitude towards different objects or concepts, I think it is true that thinking in different languages does actually yield different results. Going off of my own experience, since I speak both English and Chinese, I have realized that my attitude (I suppose) sort of changes when switching between the languages. For reasons I can't quite explain, I feel like I'm a bit more polite when speaking in Chinese. Maybe it's due to the varying environments where I would use either languages when growing up; Growing up, I would mainly only use Chinese when talking to my family members and occasionally guests that would come over that only speak Chinese. Obviously it was expected that I talked with respect to these guests and I suppose that might have had an influence on my association with Chinese. English on the other hand, I would use when talking with my friends and my sister, where I was allowed to talk in a more casual tone I suppose. One thing that was brought up with Tanemura sensei during one of our interpreting classes which is relevant, is how whether or not when speaking in Japanese over the phone, one might been obligated to bow while saying certain things (greetings, thanking someone, etc). Even though I havn't been learning Japanese for a long time, I thought it was true that there is a sense of obligation to bow during certain exchanges even when not in person. It's quite interesting the amount of subconsciously learned cultural associations people learn with regards to objects, routines, or even simply abstract concepts such as time as mentioned in the article.