Language and thought

A variety of different authors, theories and fields purport influences between language and thought.

Many point out the seemingly common-sense realization that upon introspection we seem to think in the language we speak. A number of writers and theorists have extrapolated upon this idea.

Different cultures use numbers in different ways. The Munduruku culture for example, has number words only up to five. In addition, they refer to the number 5 as "a hand" and the number 10 as "two hands". Numbers above 10 are usually referred to as "many".

Perhaps the most different counting system from that of modern Western civilisation is the “one-two-many” system used by the Pirahã people. In this system, quantities larger than two are referred to simply as “many”. In larger quantities, “one” can also mean a small amount and “many” a larger amount. Research was conducted in the Pirahã culture using various matching tasks. These are non-linguistic tasks that were analyzed to see if their counting system or more importantly their language affected their cognitive abilities. The results showed that they perform quite differently from, for example, an English speaking person who has a language with words for numbers more than two. For example, they were able to represent numbers 1 and 2 accurately using their fingers but as the quantities grew larger (up to 10), their accuracy diminished. This phenomenon is also called the "analog estimation", as numbers get bigger the estimation grows. Their declined performance is an example of how a language can affect thought and great evidence to support the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Language also seems to shape how people from different cultures orient themselves in space. For instance, people from the Australian Aboriginal community Pormpuraaw define space relative to the observer. Instead of referring to location in terms like "left", "right", "back" and "forward", most Aboriginal Nations, such as the Kuuk Thaayorre, use cardinal-direction terms – north, south, east and west. For example, speakers from such cultures would say "There is a spider on your northeast leg" or "Pass the ball to the south southwest". In fact, instead of "hello", the greeting in such cultures is "Where are you going?" and sometimes even "Where are you coming from?" Such greeting would be followed by a directional answer "To the northeast in the middle distance". The consequence of using such language is that the speakers need to be constantly oriented in space, or they would not be able to express themselves properly, or even get past a greeting. Speakers of such languages that rely on absolute reference frames have a much greater navigational ability and spatial knowledge compared to speakers of languages that use relative reference frames (such as English). In comparison with English users, speakers of languages such as Kuuk Thaayorre are also much better at staying oriented even in unfamiliar spaces – and it is in fact their language that enables them to do this.

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Wikipedia