Press "Enter" to skip to content

Gravity of language on thoughts | Panos Athanasopoulos | TEDxUniversityofMacedonia


Translator: YANG YUAN Proofreader: Yolanda Zhang

thank you all

People often think that language can determine the characteristics of species

It also determines our attributes as human beings.

But the way different languages ​​describe the world

Different

If I speak in Greek now

Then for each noun and related words

I must be clear

The word is positive or negative.

Even if this term stands for an object, I must explain the part of speech

If I speak Dani (a Indonesian tribal language)

Can use only one word to describe black blue and green

Use another word to describe all other colors

In fact, most languages ​​in the world

There is no distinction between green and blue words

Instead, use cyan to indicate both

In the language of Muduruku (a tribe in northern Brazil) people count only 4

Any number larger than 4 is called

In some other languages, there is no exact description of the exact number of words

So I have been trying to answer this question for the past 20 years

How does the difference in language affect our thinking?

This question deepens the essence of human nature

Are we thinking the same way

Is there a difference in the way of thinking in different cultures?

Wittgenstein thinks the limit of language means

The limits of the cognitive world

On the other hand, scholars like Pinker and Chomsky think

The meaning of all language expressions is the same

You can easily express any concept in any language

It’s like playing a piece of piano melody with a guitar

But is it so easy?

The emotional and cultural details of the original poetry or novel

Difficult to express accurately in translation

Most of us can use multiple languages

To express the same idea

Because we speak foreign languages

But it is also often possible to realize the missing parts of different language conversions

For example, how do you translate cool into Greek?

We now look at a video that perfectly describes this situation

(Japanese) Director: You are sitting quietly in your study

A bottle of Suntory whiskey on the table

see it

Next, wholeheartedly soothing and looking at the camera tenderly

When we are talking about lines with old friends,

It’s like you’re a movie Bogie in Casablanca. Cheers are friends. It’s now Suntory.

Translation: Does the director ask you to turn and stare at the camera?

Bill Murray (BM, actor): Did he say this?

Translation: Look at these turns

BM: OK he let me from the right

Or turn it from the left

(Japanese) Translation: He is ready

He wants to know when he started shooting

You want him to turn to the left

Or turn to the right?

This is what he wants to know if you don’t mind

(Japanese) Director: Both sides

This kind of thing is not important

Do we have time to understand?

You must have a sense of urgency

Look slowly into the camera to be full of enthusiasm

Do we want passionate understanding?

Translation: Can you turn from the right suddenly?

Actors: Are these?

I feel like he talked more than this

(Japanese) Director: What are you talking about?

Isn’t it just a bottle of whisky?

Understand

It’s as if old friends meet again to be gentle and soothing

It’s very important to mobilize your emotional feelings

Translation: Like an old friend looking at the camera at the same time

Actors: Okay

PA: Bill Murray is a genius right

He gave up trying to understand the intention of the director

The director has a clear picture of the advertising content

But lost during the translation process

In fact, most of our world’s population

We are using more than one language in communication

The Gravity of Language to Our Ideas Embodies New Importance

Multilingual experience in everyday life

Just as the video shows

Convinced me that Earth people obviously do not speak only one language

But some experts think

Different languages ​​have different concepts of this proposition

Logically cannot be established

If not, how do bilinguals do?

If this proposition is established, bilinguals will always be in confusion.

And split personality

There are three arguments I want to clarify immediately

The first is when speaking a language

It is impossible to think in another language

In fact, this is precisely the bilingual and the second foreign language learner.

What has been done

How many times do you think in Greek when you speak English?

I still do this now

Even my English is very proficient

Even the translation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did the same

“…Playing a granary for people”

(laughter)

This actually has a special meaning in Greek

But it is meaningless in English

I think so

Although this sentence is indeed spoken in English

This recent error caused confusion on social networks

And was soon corrected

But this shows when using a language

It is entirely possible to think in another language

The coolest thing is that this conclusion is also reversed

I even discovered that sometimes I speak Greek but think in English

When I speak to the taxi driver in Thessaloniki in Greek

Thank you, thank you good morning

They are very surprised

My lab is from the brain activity of bilinguals

Discovered evidence of this synchronization

Thinking in one language while thinking in another language

Greek speaking people cannot easily

Classification of cucumber eggplant and pepper

Even if they actually belong to the same concept category

Vegetables

Although these words are expressed in English

The brain activity of bilinguals tells us

They are thinking about the word part of two words in Greek

In Greek, cucumbers are neutral

Eggplant and pepper are negative

The second argument I want to negate is

People can’t think in a “hybrid” way

Although not everyone thinks in a hybrid way

Whether we are bilingual or not

In fact, in the 20th and 21st centuries, we experienced some at a geometric rate.

From a variety of languages ​​and cultural backgrounds

Comprehensive concept

Changes in any language will not be static

The most crucial motivation behind the evolution of language

In terms of dual language environment

Is a synthesis of semantics between different languages

My lab found the Greeks in only one language

There is a clear distinction between dark blue and light blue

Correspondence with ble and galazio in Greek

There is no such situation in the English-speaking person’s head

But in the brains of bilinguals, they show a kind of hybrid-like cognition.

With first language and second language

Not the same

The last statement I want to refute is

It is impossible to think in another language

For many people

Learning another language is like becoming another person

Many bilinguals also include me

All recognize that it seems to be another person when speaking another language

Why is this so

Research shows thinking in mother tongue

It is often very sensitive to be done quickly in the subconscious.

Thinking in a foreign language

It is more systematic, more organized and conforming

We tend to rely more on logic than on feelings

Considering that we are

How natural it is to learn the results of mother tongue

We are immersed in parents and caregivers

Careful Care Unconditional Love in Learning Mother Tongue

And foreign languages ​​are often not so

Emotional classroom acquisition

This situation affects the way we make a value orientation

Imagine the only way if you save 5 lives

Is killing one person

Will you kill this man?

Or do you prefer to do nothing for the 5 people to survive?

Whether you believe it or not you decide

It depends on you are using your mother tongue

Still using a foreign language

Person speaking a foreign language in a study

More willing to use

The probability of a life-changing five lives is

Twice as many native speakers

This is a moral code that does not take human life

And without sacrificing the conflict between many people

Compared to choosing their own code of ethics

Using foreign languages ​​to increase the proportion of our choice of justice

not only that

People always have fear

For example, people are afraid of flying

A study shows if you consider

Danger of travelling by plane

When thinking about this in a foreign language

You tend to think that risk is lower and income is higher

Foreign language thinking allows us to jump out

Thinking frame that is deeply influenced by emotion thinks more logically

So if you’re afraid of flying, think about it in a foreign language

May not be so scared

Then based on evidence from bilinguals

We saw

It is entirely possible that two kinds of thinking modes coexist in one person

In fact, managing these two ways of thinking can make the brain healthier

Because studies have shown that bilinguals

People who speak only one language

At least 5 years old suffer from Alzheimer’s disease

So our language is either native or other foreign language

Has a profound influence on our understanding of the world and our own behavior

But we fell from the height of Babel Tower (it is said that due to the construction of the SkyTower, it provoked God to disrupt human language)

For social science and culture

What does language gravitation mean?

I want to show you two examples

This is the statement I showed before

Based on this statement I have been committed to confirm

Differences between languages

Not just vocabulary and pronunciation

There may be a more fundamental problem

Why Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker believe Martians exist

Not only do millions of people think so

Is there really life on Mars like David Bowie sang

Actually this Mars fever is in the 20th and 21st century

Very popular

It is presented through song films, science fiction, etc.

But when the heat of Martian life was born in the 19th century,

Is when a native English speaker is an astronaut

When reading an English version of an Italian work

Misunderstand the described Martian channel as life

Later astronomer Carl Sagan told a similar story

The story takes place in his 1980 work “Cosmos”

In the story Percival Lowell, an English-speaking astronaut

For an Italian astronaut Giovan Schiaparell

The 1877 Statement on the Martial Channel (Canali)

Very excited

Canali means river or ripple in Italian

However, it was translated as “Canal” in English.

The word implies artificial traces of exploitation

Suddenly there is a statement of life on Mars.

It is entirely possible that there will be rivers for human exploration.

Since then, there have been many experiments and missions to Mars.

But no traces of rivers or life existed

Percival Lowell mistakenly believes there is life on Mars

Just because of a word in his mother tongue

Forcing him to think so

And if a word can influence scientific thinking like this

Influencing popular culture

Imagine the entire language system people who speak the language

How much influence on their thinking

This also leads to my last argument

In the picture we can see that we participated

World Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Economists and linguists collaborate

Confirmed the various differences seen in the figure

Actually depends on the structure of the language

And the tendency to save money

On the left side of the figure

There are countries like Norway, Japan, Sweden

Good in saving this

Each country can be seen on the vertical axis

Proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) stored

On the right side of the figure

At the end like Britain

The United States also has Greece and other countries

National savings do not do a good job

These are all developed Western democracies.

What is the impact of this ability to save money?

The results show that these are all determined

How different languages ​​distinguish between present and future

The right side of the map

Speaking language

Will force people who speak this language

Distinguish what is happening now and in the future

This language is called the language of the future

The future language in Greek will speak

I eat now with my friends

I will eat with a friend tomorrow

Verbs sometimes change

There is also a linguistic barrier between now and the future

Make the future more distant

The connection with the present is also weaker

So people who speak this language

Deposits become more difficult for the future

Left side of the figure

The languages ​​spoken by these countries

It is not mandatory to distinguish verb tenses

This kind of language has become a language without future

In Swedish, you will speak like this in the future

I eat with my friends now and I eat with my friend Ming

The verb tense does not change

In these languages ​​you talk about the future

It’s like discussing the same

This equivalence deals with future and current claims

Let you think that now and the future are the same

So you will do more things that affect the future now

And more than that

In a single issue to all countries in the world

Many people in a survey

Limit some things like economic conditions

Religious and other conditions

Discover people who speak no country in the future

In fact, it is not easy to overweight

Less smoking

More inclined to use condoms

What do these behaviors have in common?

They all give priority to the future

So if you want to smoke less or save more money

Actually when you learn Japanese or Swedish

You are close to achieving this goal

Of course, this is also experimentally proven

It also leads to my conclusion

In general, we believe that the benefits of learning foreign languages ​​bring us

Nothing more than a better job prospect

Or let us ask for more convenience when traveling

Or convenient to order at a foreign restaurant

Of course these are very important things

But in fact the benefits of learning a foreign language are greater than we imagined

Learn new language

Is the only way to truly understand the thinking of others

Let you understand more what they will do

Why do they do this?

Why are these behaviors different from yours?

You can change someone

The best thing is

Learning a foreign language can change our own behavior

Let us be more flexible and adaptable to the new environment

You can change yourself

So learning to think in another language can change our behavior

Give us an efficient communication

And better understand the opportunities for different perspectives

But we are still in the doorstep of a challenging new world

In my Lancaster’s lab I and my colleagues are committed to

Training people with language-specific elements instead of the entire language

For example, does it distinguish the future?

This may change or enhance certain behaviors

For example, the ability to save money

Small changes may have a big effect

If you think about it, most of the revolution happens in fact.

In a diverse ecosystem

Become more flexible and adaptable by learning new behaviors

Gives you a greater chance to survive and become a better organism

If we practice thinking like this

Then we really built the Tower of Babel that could not be destroyed.

(Greek) Thank you all

(applause)

”

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *