Linguists tell us that there are about 7,170 languages spoken around the world presently. Realistically, give or take a language as they sometimes go extinct (or if you’re at a fourth-grade slumber party, they often get invented; see: Pig Latin.)
The point is, language isn’t only a tool for communication. The words we use and the order, tenses, and inflection we give them can literally influence how we perceive time, color, emotions, and everything in between. Some call this linguistic relativity, and many have been delving into it at great length to explore just how much our language affects our worldview.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis puts forth the idea that our culture, hence our specific languages, truly shape how we think about the world around us. In an article for Verywell Mind, contributing writer Rachael Green explains that the entire concept was the brainchild of anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir and his student, Benjamin Lee Whorf. (She notes that, despite their names being in the title, “they never formally co-authored a definitive hypothesis together.”)
How many colors do you have for ‘blue?’
The way we perceive color is an interesting example. Green shares, “Color is one of the most common examples of linguistic relativity. Most known languages have somewhere between two and twelve color terms, and the way colors are categorized varies widely. In English, for example, there are distinct categories for blue and green. But in Korean, there is one word that encompasses both. This doesn’t mean Korean speakers can’t see blue, it just means blue is understood as a variant of green rather than a distinct color category all its own.”
Russian speakers, on the other hand, have more color descriptions than English speakers. Green shares, “The colors English speakers would lump under the umbrella term of ‘blue’ are further subdivided into two distinct color categories, ‘siniy’ and ‘goluboy.’ They roughly correspond to light blue and dark blue in English. But to Russian speakers, they are as distinct as orange and brown.”
Which direction are are you headed?
This also refers to directions and an understanding of locations. “For example, in Guugu Yimithirr, a language spoken by Aboriginal Australians, spatial orientation is always described in absolute terms of cardinal directions,” Green explains. “While an English speaker would say the laptop is ‘in front of’ you, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker would say it was north, south, west, or east of you.”
As a result, Aboriginal Australians have to be constantly attuned to cardinal directions because their language requires it (just as Russian speakers develop a more instinctive ability to discern between shades of what English speakers call blue because their language requires it).
We don’t have a word for that
There are many other ways in which our language affects the wiring of our minds and, thusly, the way we take in our surroundings. Of course, there are words that we don’t even have in the English language to express a feeling or emotion.
Green gives the example of the German word ‘Gemütlichkeit.’ The English, she says, translate it into “cozy” or “friendly.” But that’s not really an exact translation. The actual connotation refers to a “particular kind of peace and sense of belonging a person feels when surrounded by people they love or feel connected to.” Perhaps even just having the word could change how an entire culture interacts?
The Aymara people
Content creator Travis James Mayo, who regularly posts linguistic (and other sociology-related) online content, introduced followers to the Aymara people, who primarily live in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile in the South American Andes. He explains that in their language, for example, “the past is in front of you and the future is behind you.” He further explains this isn’t just a metaphor. “Aymara speakers gesture forward when talking about the past. And they gesture behind them when talking about the future.”
He beautifully notes that researchers asked the Aymara people why this was the case. “The past is in front of you because you can see it. You have memories and evidence of it. You know what it looks like. The future is behind you because you cannot see it, and it hasn’t happened. You have no evidence of it. You can’t know its shape. So in Aymara, you walk forward into what you know. And what you don’t know comes up behind you.”
Mayo references Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science at The University of California San Diego, Rafael Nuñez, who studied this phenomenon. “He found that English speakers don’t just describe time differently. They experience it differently. English mapped time onto a horizontal line running left to right, past to future, with you moving forward towards what’s coming. That felt natural, obvious, and universal. Until the Aymara showed us it wasn’t any of those things. It was just a choice the language made. And once that choice was made, the mind built its entire experience of time around it.”
A language with no numbers or colors
In fact, in a different video, Mayo explains that the Pirahã language has “no numbers, no colors, no creation myth, no past, no future.” He adds, “The people who speak it may experience reality in a way that has no equivalent anywhere else in the world.”
He adds a question to ponder: “If the direction of your time inside your mind was given to you by language, what else about your experience of reality is just a choice someone else made that you’ve been living inside of ever since?”
