Deutscher's description of how language can influence how we think is really quite thought provoking. Like that guy who wrote the article for MIT claimed, it's not the case that language shapes how we can think, but how we're, as Deutscher describes it, obliged to think. It's not that we can't understand concepts that may not exist in our language, it's just that we're not forced to use them all the time, as in the example of future tense with Chinese versus in English. I think it's kind of amazing though, how different languages can shape people's perceptions of objects, like bridges in German versus in Spanish due to them being gendered nouns, and how the Germans thought that they were more sleek and curvy due to them being 'feminine', and the Spanish thought they were sturdy and manly. Even more incredible, perhaps, was how Guugu Yimithirr speakers experience the world so fundamentally attached to the idea of cardinal directions. These linguistic idiosyncrasies remind me of how Japanese people often bow when they're speaking on the phone out of habit. It makes me wonder how English shapes, or I suppose instructs me to think on a day to day basis. I think that by learning Japanese, it's helped force me to focus on conveying different pieces of information that may or may not be deemed more important in it, like the lack of personal pronouns, I, me, you, etc. and how using them can convey different kinds of information (place in the social hierarchy, relationship, etc.).
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