Do we think differently in different languages?

Hello John !

Thank you for this topic, because I'm just so interrested about it! Coming from a bachelor's degree in linguistics, it's a question I've always tried to answer, but it's particularly complex and has no closed answer, but just hypothesis. It is extemementally difficult, if not impossible, to provide reliable scientific answers about thought without going through its verbalization.

If thought is unique to the Human as Descartes said, it is universal in the same way that language is universal. Chomsky said that whatever language we thinks in the same way.
Nowadays there is a growing interest in thinking directly related to its linguistic expres​sion(Thinking for speaking).

According to the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf and its Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language would build our ideas about the world. It would give us access to meaning, while constraining our possibilities: we could only think within the framework set by our language. He also said "The borders of my language mean the borders of my world".

I totally agree with this hypothesis and also what is said in the video. In my opinion, each language is connected to a past, and therefore a culture, which gives it a different plan of reality from another language. The language of a linguistic community shapes the thoughts of the speakers of that community.

The grammar of a language structures the way of thinking to express our thoughts verbally.
And, if we are talking about the same person who is multilingual, we often consider that we change our personality when we change our language.
When we are asked to think in a language, in English classes for example, we have to think about the grammatical structure of the language we learn, how to organize our thinking according to the grammatical structures imposed by this language. We can also think in the "language of thought" that would be universal and made up of mentalisms (mental pictures).

I could still say a lot about that, but it would go way too far … lol

Such an excellent question ! I appreciate to learn things about this.
I totally join the lady who talk about the very gendered side of french language. It offers us a binary version of the world, like things are considered as feminine ou masculine (by the way I hope we'll more include the non-binarity in our ways of thinking).

Every language has a personality, a way of seeing world, people, society. It's interessant to learn the maximum of languages we can, because on one hand it helps our brain to develop new capacities and neural connections. On the other hand it's useful, to travel, open your social life and ambitions to others countries, and to understand how life can be nuanced according to the language spoken, praticed.

An excellent thing to do, if we'll have children later, is to talk to them in French and in English during their first months of life. They'll be more willing to be bilingual (maybe we can put a third language but it's maybe enough) and our children have to perfectly master English in this society.

I can't bring scientifical things like Lauralee and Adé' here, because I have no knowledge about it, but I'll be interested in the sharing of others informations about languages.

When I think about what I'll write on the forum I think in franglais sometimes (I love that ). My mind is mixing my two ways of thinking and I have to verify what I wanted to say precisely.

I'm not sure I was in the specific theme of this question but I tried my best.

Have a good evening y'all, see u.

Hi everyone!

What an interested question! It reminds me a question I'm wondering for few years: In which language deaf people are thinking?? Anyway it's another topic.
I found interesting to watch this video because when I was in Greece I lived with British, Italian, Turkish, Uruguayan, German... So it was one of our topic of conversation. And I never saw the grammatical structure of a language as an influencer of the way of thinking before these conversations and this video.
With those elements I think a polyglot will be more open-minded than a monolingual person.

hey
as caroline said, it reminds me a question that i always ask my self: in which language people think ? we can debate on this topic next week maybe
i think that speaking several languages ​​gives you access to other cultures which allows you to think differently, it shapes our way of thinking

for example in the French  we can easily distinguish between the masculine and the feminine whereas we can't do it in other languages like in english
an other example, the personal pronoun "tu" is used to talk to someone we really know, and "vous" is used to talk with someone we respect, older persons, a groupe of people, otherwise in english we just use "you" in all the situations.
i loved this video, beacause i love foreign languages, it always fascinated me, and push me to choose foeign languages in my bachelor's degree. We should learn more languages ​​so we can understand other's culture and express ourselves in different ways
See you

I think the use of "tu" and "vous" as opposed to "you" is an interesting point. Does it make you look at the world differently when you have to sub-divide your language rather than thinking of everyone as "equals". To me it must but maybe you don't think so.

i dont know... i would rather prefer "you" because it puts everybody on the same équals footing (i don't know if my sentence is correct) whereas in frecnch we must be careful to use the right pronon with the right person, it categorize people.

Hello,

I admit that Caroline’s question is interesting and I never really asked myself the question: how do deaf people think ?

However, I think that the way of thinking doesn't differ according to the language we speak but according to our education, our life, our experiences etc. But according to the country where we live (therefore the language we speak) we will think differently, because not all countries have the same wealth or the same rules, principles.
That’s a very interesting question....

We can see that different languages strcture the world. This permits differents types of relations in the world. Maybe the language can influence how you see the world. But I don’t think that language change the way to think of people. I don’t see the link between language and the way to think. You can be Chinese, Belgian, French, you think differently because you are a different person not because you have a different language or culture. It makes no sense for me.