Imagine a classroom where trees stroll around, reciting poetry. A bizarre image, right? Yet, simply by using language, I’ve just prompted you to conceive something entirely novel. This illustrates the profound influence language can have on our minds.
It’s a well-established idea that language reflects our thoughts, but what about the way we think? The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or linguistic relativity, posits that the language we speak shapes our cognitive processes. With approximately 7,000 languages spoken globally, it’s clear that linguistic diversity could lead to diverse ways of thinking. But does language merely influence what we think, or can it actually make us, in certain ways, cognitively sharper?
A phone, a pair of glasses and a cup of coffee, arranged on a table to illustrate spatial relationships.
Consider this: Where did you leave your phone in relation to your glasses in the image above? Most English speakers would instinctively say “to the left of the glasses,” demonstrating our reliance on relative spatial terms. However, this isn’t universal. Ask someone from an Aboriginal community in Australia, and they might respond, “The phone is to the northwest.” The Guugu Yimithirr language replaces relative directions like “left” and “right” with absolute directions: “north,” “east,” “south,” and “west” (Boroditsky, 2011). Similarly, in Belize and Mexico, a speaker of Mopan or Totonac might describe the phone’s location as “at the nose of the glasses,” using an intrinsic frame of reference related to the object itself (Majid, Bowerman, Kita, Haun, & Levinson, 2004).
This concept of absolute and intrinsic reference frames may seem unusual to English speakers accustomed to relative directions. Yet, adopting an absolute directional system might offer cognitive advantages in spatial orientation. Research indicates that speakers of languages like Guugu Yimithirr possess superior navigational skills. In one study, when asked to arrange photos in chronological order, they consistently oriented them from east to west, regardless of their facing direction. Even when facing south or north, they maintained this absolute orientation, showcasing a constant awareness of cardinal directions instilled by their language (Boroditsky, 2011). This linguistic training allows them to maintain a strong sense of direction, even in unfamiliar environments.
Beyond spatial perception, our understanding of time also varies across languages, impacting cognitive processes. The same photo-ordering task revealed that English speakers typically arrange time from left to right, while Hebrew speakers, whose language is written right to left, order time in the opposite direction (Boroditsky, 2011). This highlights how writing direction, influenced by language, can shape our mental timeline.
Furthermore, consider how different languages conceptualize time itself. As a Cantonese speaker, I describe “last year” as “seung6 nin2” (up year) and “next year” as “ha6 nin2” (down year), portraying time in a vertical dimension. While a vertical time concept may seem unconventional to English speakers, it may contribute to enhanced temporal reasoning. A study comparing English and Mandarin speakers found that Mandarin speakers, who often use vertical metaphors for time, were faster at determining the temporal order of months (Boroditsky, Fuhrman, & Mccormick, 2011). When asked if March precedes April, Mandarin speakers responded more quickly, suggesting that their linguistic framing of time might facilitate temporal sequencing. This suggests that Mandarin speakers’ vertical conceptualization of time might contribute to a more efficient cognitive processing of temporal order compared to English speakers’ horizontal timeline.
Language’s influence extends to mathematical abilities, particularly in early numerical cognition. Take the number “99.” For English speakers, “ninety-nine” comes almost instantly, reflecting the relatively straightforward structure of English number names. However, for speakers of languages like French and Danish, expressing “99” is less direct. In French, it’s “quatre-vingt-dix-neuf,” literally “four-twenty-ten-nine,” and in Danish, “ni-og-halvfems” translates to “nine and a half twenties.” These convoluted systems contrast sharply with Mandarin Chinese, where “99” is “jiǔ-shí-jiǔ,” meaning “nine-ten-nine,” mirroring the base-10 decimal system directly. East Asian languages like Japanese and Korean share this transparent numerical structure.
This linguistic transparency in East Asian counting systems may contribute to a stronger foundational understanding of mathematics. Research indicates that children who count in East Asian languages exhibit a better grasp of the decimal numeral system from a young age. When second-grade students were asked to represent numbers like 42 using blocks, children from Japan and Korea were more likely to correctly use four ten-blocks and two unit-blocks compared to their peers from the US, France, or Sweden (Miura, Okamoto, Kim, Steere, & Al, 1993). This suggests that the structure of their native language directly impacts children’s early mental representation of numbers and place value. As a trilingual speaker of Mandarin, Cantonese, and English, I personally find numerical processing more intuitive in the “East Asian” style, further highlighting the subtle yet powerful influence of language on our cognitive frameworks.
In conclusion, the languages we speak profoundly shape our cognitive landscape, influencing how we perceive space, time, and even numbers. While the question of whether learning “complex languages” directly makes one “smarter” is nuanced, it’s evident that linguistic diversity fosters diverse cognitive strengths. Languages, with their unique structures and conceptual frameworks, train our minds in distinct ways, highlighting the fascinating interplay between language and thought and suggesting that perhaps, in different ways, speakers of different languages exhibit unique forms of “smartness” shaped by their linguistic environments.
Further Reading:
- TED Talk by Lera Boroditsky: “How language shapes the way we think”
- Book: Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages
- BBC Future: “Why you might be counting in the wrong language”
- Scientific American: “How Language Shapes Thought”
- Cognition: “Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently?”
- Trends in Cognitive Sciences: “Can language restructure cognition? The case for space”
- Journal of Educational Psychology: “First graders cognitive representation of number and understanding of place value: Cross-national comparisons: France, Japan, Korea, Sweden, and the United States.”
References:
- Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.
- Boroditsky, L., Fuhrman, M., & Mccormick, K. (2011). Do English and Mandarin speakers think about time differently?. Cognition, 118(1), 123-129.
- Majid, A., Bowerman, M., Kita, S., Haun, D. B., & Levinson, S. C. (2004). Can language restructure cognition? The case for space. Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(3), 108-114.
- Miura, I. T., Okamoto, Y., Kim, C. C., Steere, M. E., & Al, M. C. F. (1993). First graders’ cognitive representation of number and understanding of place value: Cross-national comparisons—France, Japan, Korea, Sweden, and the United States. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(1), 21.
