Blog 5

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

I found this article on the NY Times website, and picked it because the title intrigued me to start with. It starts off by talking about an article that was published 70 years ago that stated that your native language limited the capacities in which you can think. Ever since the publishing of that article, people have been sensationalizing the topic and have continued to expound on this until it was decided that the idea was ridiculous. Now, the subject has been revived and new research has come to light to open up the topic once again.

I thought the most interesting thing is that just the structure of language has limitations that it imposes on how we think about what we say and hear. I agree with the article that you can't really help how you think if your native language has groomed you to assign genders to objects, etc. I do want to learn more about the topic. What makes English speakers think the way they do, and how is that different from someone speaking German or Italian? The topic applies to the whole world because it sites the differences we have in our thought and speech patterns are inherent depending on the language we learned as children.