Travel to a faraway country and the first thing you’ll probably notice is the language. Language isn’t something that we typically appreciate—until we’re in a new place and the air around us is humming with an unfamiliar cadence we struggle to understand. Without a common language, how far can gesturing and translator apps get you? The value of language far exceeds a simple communication medium—its formalities, layers of syntaxes, and nuanced tones convey complex messages with cultural significance. For instance, many east asian languages like Korean have a more expansive range of familial terms specifying details like birth order and maternal versus paternal relatives, which reflects and reinforces a more collectivistic worldview. This article explores the psychology behind language, illustrating how the words we use can affect cognition across various cultures.

 

Universalities of Language

             Before discussing how languages differ across societies, it is important to understand the larger context of human speech. Psychologists have found that language is one of the unique phenomena that seems to be ubiquitous regardless of time, place, or type of civilization. Unlike social constructs like writing or arithmetic, language is an inborn human ability that children can organically invent; evidenced by the fact that nearly 50% of twins will invent a secret language as toddlers. Speech abilities first arise when babies are around 3 or 4 months old, and after a nonsensical “Babbling Stage” children are able to form words by around 1 to 2 years of age. Around age 2, children exhibit telegraphic speech, or bare-bone phrases like “go car” that are gradually strung together into elaborate structures that incorporate grammar and semantics. Some psychologists like Noam Chomsky have proposed that this extraordinary propensity for language is due to a “Language Acquisition Device,” or specialized region of the human brain. Even from a young age, language may influence cognition—psychologists like Harvey & Reese propose that infantile amnesia, or a lack of early memories, is partially due to babies’ limited language equating to a limited ability to encode experiences. Languages around the world greatly differ in the number of phonemes (smallest unit of distinct sound like “k”) and morphemes (smallest unit of meaningful sound like “cat”) they contain. To illustrate, English has 44 phonemes, while Spanish only has about 24. In general, we lose neuroplasticity and the capacity to learn a new language over time, and the later in life we are introduced to a new language, the weaker our fluency will be.

 

Differences in Language

             As children grow up and use language to describe the world around them, the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis comes into play. First proposed in the 1930s by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, this hypothesis states that different languages can lead to differences in how we experience and perceive the world. Since then, psychologists have investigated this claim through real-world investigations. One of the most prominent researchers is cognitive science professor Lera Boroditsky, who studied a group of aboriginal people in Australia who spoke the language Kuuk Thaayorre. Remarkably, she found that all community members, including young children, had a knack for discerning which cardinal direction (north-south-east-west) they were facing at all times, demonstrating a high level of spatial intelligence uncommon in other cultures. To explain this difference in cognitive abilities, Boroditsky proposed that the language of Kuuk Thaayorre, which requires using the cardinal directions of north-south-east-west to describe relative position rather than terms like left or right, played a role in how the community members oriented and perceived the world. Interestingly, the people who spoke Kuuk Thaayorre also had a different conceptualization of time; rather than the English convention of reading time as left to right, or the Hebrew convention of arranging time from right to left, the aboriginal people indicated that time always flowed from East to West, which could mean up-down or right-left depending on the speaker’s orientation.  

             The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis goes hand-in-hand with Linguistic Determinism, which controversially proposes that language precedes thought, that is, our ability to think of new ideas is constrained by the words we have. However, psychologists nowadays tend to prefer the idea of Linguistic Relativity and argue that the relationship between language and thought is a two-way street. For instance, researchers have found that in collectivist cultures like Japan it is more common to describe stories, specifically accidents, in a way that omits the person responsible (i.e. saying “the statue fell” rather than “Bill knocked over the statue”) as a standard convention of speech. However, the way English language is arranged places more emphasis on directly identifying the cause-and-effect or placing blame on the agent. This difference in syntax reflects a difference in cultural values, and may influence how situations are remembered and framed.

             The words that exist also vary between languages and cultures. For instance, the German word “Schadenfreude,” grasps at a concept that does not clearly translate into English—a pleasure derived from watching others fail. Even though no exact word like that exists in English, English speakers still experience this blend of emotion—but some would argue that English speakers are less prone to labeling and explicitly acknowledging it. Language can also influence sensory perception. Researchers found that since Russian contains two words for light and dark blue, sinij and goluboj, when given a gradient of blues, Russian speakers were more likely to see the shades as two separate colors and could distinguish them faster. 

 

References

Boroditsky, L. (2024, February 20). How Language Shapes Thought. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-language-shapes-thought/ 

Green, R. (2023, August 27). The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: How language influences how we express ourselves. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/the-sapir-whorf-hypothesis-7565585 

Harley, K., & Reese, E. (1999). Origins of autobiographical memory. Developmental Psychology, 35(5), 1338.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis – an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. (n.d.). https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/sapir-whorf-hypothesis 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Speech and language developmental milestones. National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/speech-and-language 

Winawer, J., Witthoft, N., Frank, M. C., Wu, L., Wade, A. R., & Boroditsky, L. (2007). Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 104(19), 7780-7785.