Language Questions
- Ten words that come to mind when you think about language
Interesting, complex, unique, powerful, essential, helpful, long term, clever, creative, resourceful.
2. Have you ever thought about language and the power of language? Give 3 examples of language that help you to express yourself.
Language is always something that I constantly question and is amazed by. Many people never realize how crazy it is that we as humans, are able to communicate with each other so clearly in so many different ways. It hard to believe that if I spoke such a popular language such as English to someone who doesn’t speak it they would look at me with a blank face. Its truly mind blowing to see how different groups of people have come up with ways to communicate with each other from all over the world and how they are all so unique. Languages that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years have survived and are constantly changing throughout history which shows just how important they are to each person.
Language can be a haven for many people, including me. I find comfort in hearing my native language, bringing a new way to express myself. Language for me can be used to express myself in many ways whether its speaking with friends and family while also using it to write how I feel to express myself without having to verbally speak.
Ted Talk Notes
- Ability to transmit complicated thoughts
- Â Languages have different sounds, vocabulary, and structures
- Orient culture
- Difference in ability to order numerically, count, and color
- Different way of looking at time
- Languages may have limitations on different word while having a large variety of word choice on another word
- Languages can have grammatical gender
- Languages differ in how events are described
- Languages can be changed and create new ones
- The speaker highlights the fact that some cultures chose to not use the same systems that are more common in many languages such as the number or left and right system. Instead they use directions. (North, East, South, West…)
- Another example the speaker gave was the way other languages separate color and how English may just use the word blue while Russian will use two different words to describe the shade of blue it is.
- Languages may also use different descriptions such as English will say who did something, while another language such as Spanish will focus more on what happened and not who did it.
- There was also the masculine and feminine example where the speaker explained how Spanish and German will use this but for example, Spanish sun will be masculine and moon will be feminine and German would be the completely opposite.
- Lastly the five language shapes that were mentioned was big, deep, early, broad and weighty.
The presenter entertains her audience with interactions with her audience by making them participate in small activities to prove a point and using jokes connect with what she is speaking about. She has a clear voice and speaks smoothly to keep the audience from loosing interest.
Post Ted Talk Questions
Languages holds lots of ability’s as it has a huge impact on the way humans think. Different words in languages can either have limitations or contain more advantages depending on the culture and how they may interpretate each word. Different languages give the chance to learn many different skills, which in the video the speaker highlighted an Aboriginal group that had a above average ability to tell direction compared to an English speaker. Culture has a huge impact on languages and because of this may use different ways to describe everyday items. In the video the speaker explains how German and Spanish use masculine and feminine as a way to describe something. Even though they both use this in their language, they somehow still interpreted differently as Spanish uses sun as masculine and moon as feminine while German does that opposite which just shows how unique each language is.
I think that Lera Boroditsky was able to show enough evidence to make agree with her. She proved that languages does shape how we think by using strong evidence such as how different cultures choose to have their language use different genders, colors, structure, and descriptions.