A recent study showed how language can affect the way people think about space, which in turn can affect how they think about time. Participants were given a set of cards that showed a temporal progression such as a man aging. English speakers tended to arrange the cards from left to right, while Hebrew speakers placed them from right to left.
Kuuk Thaayorre, an Australian aboriginal language, does not have words for 'right' and 'left'. All spatial relationships are described using cardinal directions, e.g north, south, east and west. These speakers arranged the cards differently depending on how they were sitting, so that the cards always went from east to west. If the person was facing north they would place the cards from right to left, and if they were facing west the cards would start close to their body and move away.
BTW I got that trivia idea from an Economist article that I had read. Ever since reading that article my dear husband loves to talk about my "north" arm, or "southwest" leg. Just to remind me that there is a whole civilization out there with whom I would not be able to speak because I am so bad at directions.
BTW this is still only the second-coolest language trivia I have found in my life, the first being the McGurk effect which I blogged about back in the day here.
3 comments:
RE: the McGurk Effect ~ that's wild; I heard "la la", but it definitely changed to "ba ba" when I closed my eyes.
I liked this. And thanks for the link to the newsletter, I will look at it in the future. And also glance through past issues. I love languages. My mother tongue is German, but the language I speak the best is French and I am not doing bad in English. Throughout my life, when I was living in countries I always learned, in daily life, local languages. And you will, soon, read about it in a post,
These are examples of reasons why people do not understand each other when you think that they do.
I once spent a whole day talking to chinese people believing they understood everything and they didn't They only liked me because when I talked I also drew pictures and they could understand that.
lol So they stayed close to me lol
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