There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world -- and they all have
different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we
think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language -- from
an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of
left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian -- that suggest the
answer is a resounding yes. "The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it
reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is,"
Boroditsky says. "Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but
7,000."
Read more
There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world -- and they all have
different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we
think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language -- from
an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of
left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian -- that suggest the
answer is a resounding yes. "The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it
reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is,"
Boroditsky says. "Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but
7,000."
Read less