How language shapes the way we think | Lera Boroditsky

TED Talks Daily

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 31 December 2018

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

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."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a special archive presentation of TED Talks Daily.
0:05.4	This TED Talk features cognitive scientist Lara Beridzzi, recorded live at TED Women 2017.
0:14.4	So I'll be speaking to you using language because I can.
0:19.5	This is one of these magical abilities that we humans have.
0:22.6	We can transmit really complicated thoughts to one another.
0:26.6	So what I'm doing right now is I'm making sounds with my mouth
0:30.6	as I'm exhaling.
0:31.6	I'm making tones and hisses and puffs.
0:34.6	And those are creating air vibrations in the air.
0:39.8	Those air vibrations are traveling to you.
0:46.3	They're hitting your eardrums, and then your brain takes those vibrations from your eardrums and transforms them into thoughts.
0:50.0	I hope.
0:51.0	I hope that's happening.
0:53.2	So because of this ability, we humans are able to transmit our ideas
0:58.0	across vast reaches of space and time.
1:00.5	We're able to transmit knowledge across minds.
1:05.2	I can put a bizarre new idea in your mind right now.
1:08.4	I could say,
1:10.0	imagine a jellyfish waltzing in a library while thinking about quantum mechanics.
1:17.3	Now, if everything has gone relatively well in your life so far,
1:20.2	you probably haven't had that thought before.
1:23.3	But now I've just made you think it through language.
	...

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