WEBVTT - Ep28 "Does your language shape your thinking?" 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:10.240 Are there really dozens of words for snow in northern cultures? 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:13.440 And what did the movie Arrival have to do with 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:18.919 how we speak language? Why are Russians better than Americans 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:23.520 at distinguishing certain shades of blue? And what does any 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:27.040 of this have to do with space or time or gender? 0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:36.240 And how your language shapes your thinking. Welcome to Inner 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:38.199 Cosmos with me David Eagleman. 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:42.120 I'm a neuroscientist and author at Stanford and in these 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:45.720 episodes we sail deeply into our three pound universe to 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:49.760 understand why and how our lives look the way they do. 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:03.920 Today's episode is about language, and specifically a question about 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:08.959 how your language interacts with your thinking. Now, if you've 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:11.200 been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.640 that I often start off talking about how the brain 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:19.920 is locked in silence and darkness inside our skulls, and 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:23.440 all we ever get are trillions of spikes coming in 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:27.920 and running around there, and our perception is constructed from that. 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:32.560 But it's also true that wherever you grow up, whatever 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.360 spot on the planet you happen to drop in on, 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:40.760 you are taught a particular language. Now, does the language 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:44.120 you learn tell you what to pay attention to in 0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:48.160 the world. Does it change your perception of the things 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:50.680 around you? And if so, does that mean that if 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.240 you grew up with a different language you might see 0:01:54.280 --> 0:01:57.920 the world a little differently. So that's the question we're 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.200 going to look at today. Does the language you speak 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:05.280 modify the way that you think? So let's start in 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:10.160 the eighteen eighties with a young man traveling through northern Canada. 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:14.000 His name was Franz Boaz, and he was an anthropologist, 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:18.399 and he met and fell in love with the Inuit natives, 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:21.440 and he worked to take on their diet and to 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:25.080 learn their language, and he ended up writing a book 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:30.040 in nineteen eleven called Handbook of American Indian Languages, and 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:33.480 in it he reported that they have many many words 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:38.120 for snow. For example, he pointed to the different words 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:43.000 for snow on the ground versus snow falling, and there 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:49.160 were subtleties like achille kog for softly falling snow and 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:54.400 piegnartog for the snow that is good for driving sled. 0:02:54.919 --> 0:02:57.400 His point is that when you look at English, it 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:02.280 doesn't divide the types of snow as finely. So you've 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.440 probably heard this claim that Inuit natives have lots of 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:10.440 words for snow. And while the public loved this, among linguists, 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.880 this snowballed into a big debate about whether it was true. 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:18.959 Many linguists turned a cold shoulder to this as an 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.919 urban legend. They said that it came from neglectful study 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:27.679 and was then magnified by journalists. Some linguists have gone 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.840 so far as to label it the Great Eskimo Vocabulary hoax. 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:35.400 But the debate about this isn't over. There was a 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:39.800 study published a few years ago that suggested Boaz was correct. 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:44.960 The study showed that the Inuit language in Nuktitute does 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.160 have at least fifty words for snow. These studies authors 0:03:49.240 --> 0:03:51.760 point out as could be guessed that these aren't just 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:56.120 different ways of saying snow, but instead they referenced different 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.520 types of snow, like wet snow, dry snow, drifting snow, 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:05.600 and the paper suggests that Boaz's observations were accurate and 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:09.760 that the Inuit do indeed have a rich vocabulary for 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:12.280 the stuff that you and I might just call by 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:17.880 one word now. Obviously, it's easily imaginable and understandable that 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:22.000 if you're surrounded by snow, you'll develop lots of distinctions 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.000 for it. All snow is the same to me, or 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:27.680 maybe I have snow that's good for skiing or not 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:30.440 good for skiing. But if you're surrounded by it all 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:34.680 the time, and your hunts depend on subtle differences in it, 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:37.760 and your livelihood depends on subtle differences in it, then 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:41.520 you'll get good at making those distinctions. And by the way, 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.599 cultures who live in warmer climates, like the Aztec speaking 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:50.560 their language Nahwattle, use only a single broad term that 0:04:50.720 --> 0:04:54.119 means snow, and it includes other cold things like ice. 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.320 So the idea is that our language is shaped by 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:02.760 the need for efficient communication. Brains want to come up 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:06.960 with words that are exact and informative to other brains 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.839 in the community, and they want to be able to 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:14.200 produce these with minimal effort. In other words, you don't 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:18.000 want to have to use a six syllable word for 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:20.880 a word that you use a lot, like dog or cow, 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:25.560 but you might use longer, less efficient words for concepts 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.360 that you don't need to refer too much, like anti 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:35.600 disestablishmentarianism or anachronistic or sesquipedalian. So, using snow as an example, 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:40.200 if your community subdivides this into lots of words. That 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:44.200 requires more effort to store all these words, but it's 0:05:44.320 --> 0:05:49.360 worth it if you get a big gain in informativeness. 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:53.760 So wherever you find things frequently referenced in language, then 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:59.200 you find finer grained categories appearing. And this is how 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:04.279 you get communication. So the way that we talk about 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:09.000 the world is shaped by our environment and our experiences 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.599 in the world. For the Inuit, snow is an important 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:16.159 part of their environment and their language reflects this. So 0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:19.520 this is how language gets shaped. But there's a debate 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:23.320 that's been raging in the linguistics community for a century, 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:27.640 and that is, if you grow up speaking a particular language, 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.160 does it make you think differently? In other words, if 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:34.080 you grow up in a language with lots of distinctions 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:38.839 for snow in the vocabulary, do you actually see snow differently? 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:41.120 When you look out the window. You don't just see 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:46.280 falling white stuff, but do you perceive distinctions that would 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:50.080 be invisible to me? And does your language shape your thought? 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:53.839 Does it restrict or expand what you are able to see? 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.720 So let's start with the twenty sixteen movie Arrival, which 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:01.240 was based on the novella story of Your Life by 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:04.479 Ted Chang, and for reasons of not spoiling it if 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:06.760 you haven't seen it, I'll leave out the details. But 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.559 this movie is about alien ships coming to the Earth 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:14.240 and they just hover there and we meet the protagonist 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:18.520 played by Amy Adams, because the military can't figure out 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:21.920 how to communicate with the aliens, and so she's called 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:25.880 in as a linguist. Can she figure out how to 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:30.080 communicate with these aliens? And in this story she ends 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:34.640 up learning the alien's language, and at the end, once 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:38.720 she speaks this new language, she's able to perceive the 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.960 world differently. And in fact, some of you may have 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:44.520 seen this movie but didn't catch this part of it. 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:49.360 The aliens have a different relationship with time, and once 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.040 Amy Adams learns to speak like they do, she can 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:58.320 see time like they do. Now. Although Arrival is a 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:00.960 work of fiction, I talked with Head Chang about this, 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:05.200 and indeed he based this on this longstanding debate about 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:10.000 whether and how your language shapes your thinking, And really 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:13.280 the debate began in Earnest a century ago. There were 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:17.520 two linguists who thought about this idea, and they proposed 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:21.200 that maybe language isn't just the output of how we think. 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:25.000 But instead, when you teach a child language, you're actually 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:29.000 shaping how they can think, or how they can see 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:33.280 the world, or how their mind can cogitate. These two 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:37.960 linguists were named Edward Sapier and Benjamin Wharf, and the 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:42.280 idea that language shapes thought became known as the Sapier 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:46.480 Wharf hypothesis. Now we can divide this into the strong 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.800 version and the weak version of the hypothesis. The strong 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:55.479 version states that language determines thought, meaning that the structure 0:08:55.520 --> 0:09:00.240 of a language actually limits what its speakers can and 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.600 think about. So if you don't have a word for 0:09:02.679 --> 0:09:05.760 something in your language, you can't even conceive of it. 0:09:06.720 --> 0:09:12.440 The weak hypothesis states that language influences thought, meaning that 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:16.400 the structure of your language can affect how you think 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:18.720 about the world. I'll cut to the chase here and 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:23.640 say that the strong hypothesis that language determines thought has 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:27.360 not held up against testing, but there is evidence supporting 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.240 the weak hypothesis. As an example that we'll get into 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:35.320 in a moment, some languages have different ways of dividing 0:09:35.400 --> 0:09:39.559 up the color spectrums, so they might verbally distinguish two 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:44.240 neighboring colors whereas your language might just use a single 0:09:44.280 --> 0:09:48.440 word that encompasses both colors, and the evidence suggests that 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:52.200 speakers of that other language are better at seeing, better 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:57.120 at distinguishing between those different colors, between different shades than 0:09:57.160 --> 0:10:00.400 you are because they have words for them. Is this 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:04.880 because the language itself is influencing their perception or is 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.440 it simply because they're more familiar with these colors because 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:09.840 they have separate words for them. We'll get back to 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.440 that momentarily, but either way, they get the difference between 0:10:13.520 --> 0:10:16.800 these colors better than you do, just as a function 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:21.000 of the language that they speak. Now, the extent of 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:25.680 language's influence on your thinking is debated, and in part 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:29.839 this is because it's really hard to design good experiments 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.760 that can isolate the effects of language on your cognition 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:38.160 from other factors about your culture and your environment. And 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:42.200 also a lot of people are bilingual or multilingual, so 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:46.160 their cognitive processes might be shaped by the interplay of 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:50.640 multiple languages, so it's not always straightforward to test this. 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.160 But that said, our language does seem to play a 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:58.120 role in shaping how we think and perceive the world, 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:03.040 and that's not so surprising. After all, language provides a 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:09.360 framework for organizing and categorizing thoughts and experiences. The words 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:13.640 and labels we use to describe things can influence how 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:18.600 we mentally organize the world around us, and our language 0:11:18.600 --> 0:11:23.080 is what we use to express complex and abstract ideas, 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:29.079 and the availability of specific words or phrases can affect 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:34.280 how effectively and precisely we can communicate these ideas, or 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:38.679 take something subtle, like gendered nouns. A lot of languages 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:42.640 use gendered nouns, meaning each object is either a male 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.760 or a female. English doesn't have this, but lots of 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:48.840 languages do, and there's a lot of study on how 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:53.200 that leads speakers to notice different things. Like the word 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:57.080 bridge in one language might be male and female in another, 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:01.359 and so people who speak those languages will often describe 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:05.920 different things about the same bridge, whether it's strong or 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:10.840 it's sleek, depending on their native language. And of course, 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:14.119 as I mentioned, the words and concepts that are prominent 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:17.800 in your language influence what you pay attention to, like 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:22.880 the differences in snow or colors. Now, I recently made 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:27.120 an episode on the idea of translating animal language, where 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:33.120 we talked about using AI to decode communication between say, dolphins, 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:37.600 or between whales, or between songbirds. And the idea behind 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.880 that comes out of research showing that all human languages 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:46.800 share a similar structure, where the words each sit in 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:50.720 a network of meaning related to each other. And you 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.600 can plot this out and see that languages have a 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.680 particular shape to them, and so researchers are interested in 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:01.280 whether that same shape could be success fully applied to 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:05.640 decoding animal languages. But one of the possibilities I brought 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:09.920 up is that an animal language might contain concepts that 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:13.160 we don't have any way to understand, and so those 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:17.440 parts of the space would be totally uninterpretable to us. 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:21.760 And that's because the sensorium of an animal, the kind 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.240 of signals that can pick up from the world, might 0:13:24.480 --> 0:13:29.280 influence their concepts what they can think about. And so 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:31.959 if we just keep that idea in mind, that's really 0:13:31.960 --> 0:13:52.040 the heart of the question that we're asking today. There's 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.200 been so much excitement in machine learning about the similar 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:59.120 structures of human language, but what we're asking today is 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:01.720 in what ways are are they different, even if only 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:06.640 subtly different, and how might that map onto differences in 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:11.600 human thought or experience. Even though we all emerged from 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:15.679 the same origins recently, and all have the same brain structure. 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:22.280 Culture and history modify the details of languages. So to 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.840 understand this better, I called up my colleague, the cognitive 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:30.240 scientist Lira Boroditsky, and I asked her, does the language 0:14:30.280 --> 0:14:32.640 you speak change how you think? 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:40.400 What a great question. Certainly, research in my lab and 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.360 many other labs over the last thirty years is shown 0:14:44.440 --> 0:14:47.440 that the structure of the language that you speak changes 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:50.320 the way you think, changes the way you see the world, 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:55.080 the way you feel, what you pay attention to. And 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.360 what's emerging from all of that research is this idea 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:04.440 that human minds construct not just one cognitive universe, but 0:15:04.520 --> 0:15:08.720 actually many thousands of cognitive universes. Right, every language is 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:14.600 its own little inner cosmos, and every language gives you 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.920 a different perspective not just on the physical world, but 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:23.280 also on the incredible complex invented worlds that we humans 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:27.880 create that allow us to think about complex things like 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:32.440 our inner universes or the cosmos, or the kinds of 0:15:32.480 --> 0:15:35.680 things that allow us to play chess, or compose symphonies 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.960 or do really high level mathematics. Every language is its 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:45.880 own little set of tools for creating those very complex 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:48.720 ideas and ends up with very different complex ideas as 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:49.160 a result. 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:53.440 So you grew up speaking Russian, Yeah, so give us 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:57.160 a sense of the differences between English and Russian and 0:15:57.280 --> 0:15:59.440 what that might lead to in terms of thinking about 0:15:59.440 --> 0:15:59.960 something different. 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:03.920 Sure, I can give you a couple of basic differences. 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:07.400 Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, so every 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:12.360 now and is masculine or feminine, and so people who 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:16.880 speak languages like that end up actually assigning some gender 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:21.200 stereotypically gendered properties to things that don't have gender, like 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:27.040 toasters or gloves or plants, things like that. Russian, in 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:32.080 the perceptual realm makes an obligatory distinction between light blue 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:36.240 and dark blue. So things that English calls blue for 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:40.200 Russian speakers, the light part of the blue spectrum is 0:16:40.280 --> 0:16:43.440 gulaboy and the dark part is seeny, and you have 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:45.240 to call them by different names. They are just two 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:49.440 different color words like blue and green and English. And 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:52.160 what we find is that people who speak languages like 0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:55.880 this actually do make a sharper distinction perceptually between those 0:16:55.920 --> 0:17:00.560 two colors, and very early on their brain and starts 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:04.680 treating those two colors as categorically different. So if you're 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.000 looking at the brain of say a Greek speaker Russian speaker, 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.280 looking at a stream of colors, when it changes from 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.280 the light blue category to the dark blue category, the 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.840 brain gives us very fast surprise response like Ooh, something 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:21.040 categorically has shifted. But if you're looking at the brain 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:24.359 of an English speaker where they're all just blue, then 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.680 you just get this nice, smooth function. The brain isn't 0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:31.399 alarming at saying, oh, you've changed something. So that tells 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:36.040 us that language sneaks into even the very finest, little 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:40.960 tiny decisions that your brain is making about the perceptual world. 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.560 Just looking at colors is not such a hard conceptual task, 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.240 but even there, language is interfering. 0:17:49.119 --> 0:17:53.159 And what about examples across cultures with for example, time 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:53.920 and space. 0:17:56.280 --> 0:17:58.959 Yeah, so both of us are very interested in how 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:03.080 people think about and across lots and lots of cultures. 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:07.719 What we see is people think about time using ideas 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:12.200 from space, so they're using metaphors, they borrow spatial representations 0:18:12.200 --> 0:18:15.639 to think about time. But the way that space is 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:18.120 used to talk about time and to think about time 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:21.159 differs from culture to culture. Let me give you some examples. 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:24.320 So in English we talk about the best being ahead 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:26.000 of us and the worst being behind us. So the 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.320 future is in front of us and the past is behind. 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:32.000 And we used to think maybe this is a biological necessity, right, 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:34.760 because of course we walk forwards, not backwards. We have 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:36.840 eyes on the front of our heads, not on the 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:39.600 backs of our heads. But then it turns out there 0:18:39.600 --> 0:18:41.680 are lots of cultures that put the past in front 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:45.840 and the future behind, and for them that's the more 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:48.960 natural way, they say, because of course you know what 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:52.040 has already happened. The past is no and it's manifest, 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:54.399 that's why it's in front of your eyes, whereas the 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:58.439 future is unknown. So what humor is for us to 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:00.439 think that the future is in front of ours, to 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:03.199 think that we can see it. To them, that seems absurd. 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:06.280 There are differences in how people think about time, even 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:09.360 based on how their language is written. So, for example, 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:12.360 if your language is written from left to right, events 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:14.719 unfold in your mind from left to right. If your 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.480 language is written from right to left, like Arabic or Hebrew, 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:22.920 that events will unfold from right to left. Some languages 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:25.720 have a strong vertical dimension for time, so for example, 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:28.960 in Mandarin, the past is up in the future is down, 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:32.879 and so Mandarin speakers have this strong vertical orientation for time. 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.040 My favorite example comes from some work that I got 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.680 to do in Aboriginal Australia, and so there's this group 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:41.720 called the kook Tire that I had a chance to 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:46.280 work with with my colleague Alice Gabee. And in kook 0:19:46.359 --> 0:19:49.240 Tire you don't use words like left and right to 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:52.480 talk about space. Instead everything is in north south east 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:56.480 west space and really everything. There are a lot of 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.240 languages like kuk Tire where you would even say, oh, 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:04.399 there's an ant on your north northwest leg and of course, well, 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.160 if your body that's no longer than north northwest leg, 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.480 you have to recalculate. The way you say hello and 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.680 coop Tire is to say which way are you going? 0:20:14.200 --> 0:20:17.119 And the answer should be something like north northwest in 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:20.280 the far distance, how about you? So even to get 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.040 past hello, you have to be oriented, and this is 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:27.960 very different from the way most Western folks orient themselves. 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:30.680 Most of the time we're thinking about space with respect 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:33.879 to our bodies, not with respect to the landscape. So 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:36.960 for me, the question was how do folks like this 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:40.280 think about time. If it's true that we use ideas 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:43.200 from space to think about time, but these folks think 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:46.639 about space with respect to the landscape, how do they 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:51.160 think about time? So I made up a very simple task. 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:53.360 I have a set of picture cards. I give them 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.399 to you, and they might be, say, pictures of my 0:20:56.440 --> 0:21:00.440 grandfather at different ages, and I just say, put these 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:03.200 in the correct order, and so you lay them out 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:06.040 on the ground in some order that you think is correct. 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:08.879 But what I'm interested in is what is the orientation 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:12.080 with respect to your body or the respect to the landscape. 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:17.679 And what we find is if a cook tire speaker 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:21.600 is sitting facing south, they'll put the cards out from 0:21:21.680 --> 0:21:24.800 left to right. If they're sitting facing north, they'll put 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:28.040 the cards out from right to left. If they're sitting 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:31.119 facing east, they'll put the cards out coming towards their body. 0:21:32.080 --> 0:21:34.399 So if you do a little mental rotation in your mind, 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.600 think about what the pattern there is. Well, it's from 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:41.119 east to west right, It's always in the same direction 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:43.760 in the landscape, it just goes in different directions of 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.240 the respect to the body. And as an English speaker, 0:21:47.280 --> 0:21:49.119 I look at that and they think, oh, how strange 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.040 time is flowing in different directions for them, depending on 0:21:52.040 --> 0:21:54.840 which way they're facing. But another way to think about 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:57.320 that is no, actually time is always flowing in the 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:01.399 same direction for them east to west landscape. And it's 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:04.560 so strange that for me, time shifts every time I 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:07.040 move my body right. So if I'm facing this way, 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:09.440 then time goes this way. If I'm facing this way, 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:11.560 then time goes this way. If I'm facing this way, 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:15.000 then time goes so ego centric of me to make 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:20.080 the dimension of time change anytime I turn so to me, 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:25.240 that's a really wonderful example about the potential also of 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.359 the human mind, because in order to be able to 0:22:28.600 --> 0:22:31.280 organize time that way, you have to be oriented in 0:22:31.320 --> 0:22:34.119 a way that we used to think humans couldn't be oriented. 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:37.240 We used to think it was beyond human capability to 0:22:37.480 --> 0:22:40.480 be able to keep track of your orientation at all times. 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:46.040 And it turns out not only was it not impossible, 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:48.280 it's not even that hard. You just have to try. 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:52.199 It's just a mental practice that you start, and in 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:55.040 these cultures and cultures like the kouk Tire, it's constantly 0:22:55.080 --> 0:22:58.720 reinforced socially because you have to use the language. The 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:03.320 language requires you to be oriented, and so to me, 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:06.040 this is always a really putent reminder of how much 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:09.399 more is available for our brain to do that is 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:12.840 not just what we're used to, but what we could 0:23:12.840 --> 0:23:29.480 do if we just try out a couple things. 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:32.760 How do you suppose it got started in the Koukti. 0:23:32.920 --> 0:23:36.439 One possibility is that it just gets passed along from 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:40.120 generation to generations, so people have to become very aware 0:23:40.160 --> 0:23:45.320 of the landscape. Another possibility is that there's some genetic things, 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:48.240 such as they have slightly more magnetite in their inner 0:23:48.280 --> 0:23:51.480 ear and they're more sensitive to the orientation of the planet. 0:23:51.920 --> 0:23:55.440 I'm just curious how you think about why that happens 0:23:55.480 --> 0:23:57.800 in some cultures and why it doesn't happen in others. 0:23:58.640 --> 0:24:01.080 Yeah, so it happens in culture all over the world, 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:06.080 and it happens this property of using absolute space instead 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:09.560 of terms like left or right happens in all kinds 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:12.919 of different environments. So sometimes it's people who live in 0:24:12.960 --> 0:24:16.160 dense forests, and sometimes it's people who live in barren deserts, 0:24:16.240 --> 0:24:19.600 and sometimes it's people who live in mountains, and sometimes 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:23.320 it's seafaring people, and sometimes it's landlocked people. So you 0:24:23.359 --> 0:24:26.439 can kind of find it in every geographical environment. So 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:29.840 I don't think the geographical environment is the best predictor 0:24:30.359 --> 0:24:34.159 of this. I don't think we have any evidence that 0:24:34.200 --> 0:24:36.960 there's a genetic component, and I can give you a 0:24:36.960 --> 0:24:40.840 couple of anecdotal reasons for it. One is, if you 0:24:40.880 --> 0:24:44.240 look at people living in the same community, let's say, 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:48.200 in the same village where they're bilingual or some people 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:52.280 are stronger, and one language that's an absolute orientation language, 0:24:52.280 --> 0:24:56.240 in another language that's a relative left right orientation language. 0:24:56.720 --> 0:24:59.800 The way people stay oriented in the way they gestured 0:24:59.840 --> 0:25:02.879 to depends on the language that they're dominant in, not 0:25:03.160 --> 0:25:05.960 on you know, anything else. They're all related, they're all 0:25:05.960 --> 0:25:07.680 part of the same village, as part of the same 0:25:07.720 --> 0:25:12.080 genetic pool, right, And so you can find even within 0:25:12.119 --> 0:25:16.120 a very very small genetic community, variation based on language 0:25:16.119 --> 0:25:20.679 exposure rather than on geography or other things. And in 0:25:20.680 --> 0:25:24.560 my own experience, you know, I spend a lot of 0:25:24.560 --> 0:25:28.040 time outside. I love to go hiking, and i go 0:25:28.200 --> 0:25:32.159 mushroom hunting, and I'm constantly traveling and finding myself in 0:25:32.200 --> 0:25:34.919 new places. It would have been extremely useful for me 0:25:35.040 --> 0:25:38.679 to develop an ability to stay oriented as well as 0:25:38.720 --> 0:25:41.119 the kuktai or stay oriented. There have been lots of 0:25:41.119 --> 0:25:43.560 times in my life where it would have been really useful, 0:25:44.400 --> 0:25:47.080 And the first time that I really felt it was 0:25:47.160 --> 0:25:50.600 when I was spending time in this community. Because when 0:25:50.640 --> 0:25:53.080 you don't know which ways which they're people treat you 0:25:53.119 --> 0:25:55.960 like you're stupid, but because you kind of are by 0:25:56.000 --> 0:25:59.880 local standards, right. And I remember after about a week, 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:03.679 I was walking along and suddenly I saw this window 0:26:03.720 --> 0:26:06.159