Language

By Anonymous -
​No matter what language you speak, everyone in the world uses their language to describe their interactions with their external environment.  They also use their language to describe the thoughts that are going on their minds.  Regardless of the language we speak, we can all have very similar, if not the same, experiences as those who speak different languages then us.  People have filled their languages with tons of extremely vivid and descriptive words in order to be able to accurately portray their experiences to one another.  According to the author, “Our own languages are continuously nourished by these other voices- by the roar of waterfalls and the humming of crickets.  For the sound that unites all these words is that which the water itself chants as it flows between the banks.  If human language arises from the perceptual interplay between the body and the world, then language belongs to the landscape as much as it belongs to ourselves.”  He makes a great point, because our language is essentially a way for us to share our experiences of the external world as we experience them.  Without observation of the world, our language would be useless.
​However, do different languages that humans speak have different impact on the way they see the world?  Some languages in the world, like Portuguese, have words that are associated as either masculine or feminine.  Others consider some words masculine that languages like Portuguese deem feminine.  Also, there are languages, like English, that don’t associate their words to a specific gender.  Therefore, do those who speak languages that feminize/masculinize particular words subconsciously view the world with more gender prejudice than those who speak gender-neutral languages?  Attached is an article from the NY Times that investigates if language shapes how we think through a variety of experiments.


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