Thinking and language

Our thinking depends on our language. When thinking, we are ‘speaking’ with ourselves. Therefore our language influences our view of things. But can we all think the same despite different languages? Or do we think differently because we speak differently? Every people has its own vocabulary. In some languages certain words are missing. There are people who do not distinguish between green and blue. They use the same word for both colors. And they have a harder time identifying the colors! They cannot identify different hues and secondary colors. They have problems describing the colors. Other languages have only a few words for numbers. Speakers of these languages can't count so well. There are also languages that don't recognize left and right. Here the people speak of north and south, east and west. They have a very good geographic orientation. But they don't understand the terms right and left. Of course, not only our language influences our thinking. Our environment and everyday life also shape our thoughts. So what role does language play? Does it set limits on our thoughts? Or do we only have words for what we think? What is cause, what is effect? All of these questions remain unanswered. They are keeping brain researchers and linguists busy. But this issue affects us all… You are what you speak?!

Guess the language!

Danish is the native language of approximately 5 million people. It is a member of the North Germanic family of languages. That means that it is related to Swedish and Norwegian. The vocabulary of these three languages is almost identical. If a person speaks one of these languages, he can also understand the other two. Therefore, there is some doubt that the Scandinavian languages are different languages. They could just be regional forms of a single language. Danish itself is divided into many different dialects.

However, these are increasingly supplanted by the standard language. In spite of this, new dialects emerge, particularly in the urban areas of Denmark. They are called social dialects. With social dialects, the pronunciation of words reveals the age and social status of the speaker. This phenomenon is typical for the Danish language. It is much less distinct in other languages. This makes Danish a particularly exciting language.