“Do the structure of particular languages affect the way we attend to, encode, represent, remember, and reason about the world?” I have featured this phenomenally interesting topic many times on this blog (see Enfield, Boroditsky, Knobe and Boroditsky, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o). The implications of this research are huge. I strongly recommend this brilliant, action-packed lecture by Lera Boroditsky (1:40 hrs), whose major experimental research findings, in her own words, can be summarized as follows:

1. People who speak different languages think differently.
2. Many aspects of language shape thinking: grammar, lexicon, orthography…
3. Language meddles in even low-level perceptual decisions.
4. Learning new languages can change the way you think.
5. Sometimes, people think differently when speaking different languages.
6. In bilinguals, both languages are at least somewhat active.
7. Learning a new language can change the way you speak your native language.
8. Each language provides its own cognitive toolkit, [and] encapsulates the knowledge and world view developed over thousands of years within a culture.

In short, “languages really shape how we construct reality”. Wow, didn’t Nagarjuna get it right (and so did Wittgenstein, from a different philosophical lineage nearly 1800 years later)!

(Thanks to Robin Varghese, 3QD. The video above may not show up in all feed readers. Another article here.)