How Speakers of Different Languages Think Differently

If your native language has words only for “up, down, left and right,” but not “east, west, north and south,” how would you ever “find your bearings”? Yet in a small Indigenous community in Australia, a five-year-old girl can point north without hesitation, even though her language has no words for relative spatial directions such as “left” and “right.”

The linguist Lü Shuxiang once told this joke:

You are translating a novel and learn that the main character has a cousin. You translate it as “younger male cousin.” Then you discover the cousin is a woman, so you change it to “younger female cousin.” Next you learn she is older than the protagonist, so you change it to “older female cousin.” A little further on, you discover that she belongs to the generation above the protagonist, so you change it again to “distant aunt.” Then you find out she is on the father’s side, so she has to become a distant paternal aunt. But even that may be wrong: she could be the protagonist’s distant aunt by marriage.

Beyond spatial perception and the way family relationships are described, speakers of different languages also differ in many other aspects of thinking. These include how they understand time and space together, how they remember witnessed events and interpret the same facts from different perspectives, how easily they learn new things, their ability to calculate, and even how they perceive their own gender.

Being Bilingual Is Like a Workout for the Brain

A study from Northwestern University argues that speaking two languages trains the brain, much like “brain exercise,” and keeps it healthier. People do crosswords and other activities to maintain their mental fitness, but learning and using two languages can have stronger effects, including on attention, inhibition and the ability to decode sounds. Earlier studies also suggested that bilingualism can help protect against Alzheimer’s disease. On average, bilingual people develop dementia four years later than monolingual people; even when symptoms appear, they are on average three years older when they first seek treatment.

Researchers also consider musicians a bilingual group. By that logic, it is beyond dispute that programmers are clever. People who speak several foreign languages seem to observe more sharply and react more quickly when facing mental challenges, even when those challenges have nothing to do with language.

Interestingly, a study by British scientists suggests that “speaking Chinese takes more mental effort.” The researchers point out that speakers of different languages decode speech in different ways. One reason Chinese can seem intimidating to foreigners is that the same syllable can mean different things when spoken with different tones. The researchers believe the brain decodes Chinese in a way similar to how it processes music: more areas of the brain are engaged, and more mental effort is required.

Thinking in a Foreign Language Can Make Us More Rational

A psychology study from the University of Chicago found that thinking in a foreign language creates a useful “cognitive distance.” It can encourage analytical thought and reduce unconscious, emotional reactions. “Given that more and more people use foreign languages in daily life, this finding also has long-term significance,” the study says. People who know another language may use it when making financial decisions, and thinking in that language may encourage them to pause and consider their choices.

Language vs. Thought

Language and thought are related. Language can influence the structure of people’s thinking and their cognition.
Memory is the brain’s “working space,” where information is processed and integrated. If information retrieved into working memory is expressed in a way that makes it difficult to manipulate, processing becomes harder and thought and cognition may be affected.
A richer language allows related information to be expressed and stored in richer ways. When that knowledge is retrieved into working memory, it can support cognition.
Language is one kind of symbolic system. In theory, all symbolic systems affect the structure of thought and cognition in the brain, through broadly similar principles and mechanisms. A good symbolic system can make information processing more direct, intuitive and efficient.
If a person’s native language does not make fine distinctions about something, while another language does, learning that second language can improve the person’s ability to understand it. The limitations in cognition and thought imposed by the native language can then be partly overcome.