Are there really dozens of words for snow in northern cultures?

And what did the movie Arrival have to do with how we speak language?

Why are Russians better than Americans at distinguishing certain shades of blue. And what does any of this

have to do with space or time or gender and how your language shapes your thinking?

Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me David Eagleman.

I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford.

And in these episodes, we sail deeply into our three-pound universe to understand why and how

our lives look the way they do. Today's episode is about language and specifically a question about how your language interacts with your thinking.

Now, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know that I often start

off talking about how the brain is locked in silence and darkness inside our skulls, and all we ever

get are trillions of spikes coming in and running around there. And our perception is constructed

from that. But it's also true that

wherever you grow up, whatever spot on the planet you happen to drop in on, you are taught

a particular language. Now, does the language you learn tell you what to pay attention to in the world. Does it change your

perception of the things around you? And if so, does that mean that if you grew up with a different

language, you might see the world a little differently? So that's the question we're going to

look at today. Does the language you speak modify the way that you think?

So let's start in the 1880s with a young man traveling through northern Canada.

His name was Franz Boaz and he was an anthropologist. And he met and fell in love with the Inuit natives. And he worked to take on their

diet and to learn their language. And he ended up writing a book in 1911 called Handbook of

American Indian Languages. And in it, he reported that they have many, many words for snow.

For example, he pointed to the different words for snow on the ground versus snow falling.

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