How do we perceive languages?
Understanding languages, speech and humans
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The topic for today is "How do we perceive languages?".
For today's issue, I curated the content from a few YouTube videos and some blogs which talked about how languages, bilingualism and its benefits.
Reading this newsletter would honestly save you around 35 minutes and you will be able to learn as much as I did. Hop in then, this is going to be a fun ride!
🧠How do our brains process speech?
An average 20 year old knows somewhere between 27,000 and 52,000 words. Most of these words take even less than a second to pronounce. It means that whenever our brain listens to a word, it needs to make a quick decision that which of these thousands of words matches the incoming signal.
About 98% of the times, the brain chooses the correct words. IN LESS THAN ONE SECOND. (Imagine your GPU doing that)
Now, how is this possible? The most accurate explanation would be that "Our brain works with parallel processors and it can do multiple things at the same time".
Most theories assume that each word we know is represented by a separate processing unit that has just one job - To assess the likelihood of incoming signal matching that particular word. Imagine each of these orange boxes as a different processor, with one word assigned to each of them.
These processors are like patterns of firing activities of different neurons in the brain's cortex. Here is a simple explanation of how things work:
Just when you hear the beginning of a word, several thousands of such units (processors) get activated because based on that little information, there are many possible matches.
Just listening to sound of C might trigger the processor of words like "cat", "camel", "crocodile" etc. which are represented by the yellow circles. The black ones are inactive processors which get eliminated.
As the word goes on, more and more units lose activity. We come closer to the result once we start getting more data.
Well before the end of the word, just one firing pattern remains active corresponding to one word. This is called Recognition Point. It also means that whenever we hear a word, there is an explosion of words and their meanings in our brain and by the time we reach the recognition point, the brain has settled on one interpretation.
Those of you who know about Machine Learning and NLP might be able to understand this better.
🤔 How language shapes the way we think
Because of language, we humans are able to transmit our ideas across vast reaches of space and time. It enables us to share knowledge across minds. Only through language, I can put a bizarre new idea in your mind right now. Imagine, "An Octopus with just 2 legs, solving questions about Quantum Physics." See, how easy it is to imagine things that don't exist.
But there are around 7000 languages spoken all around the world, and all of them differ from one another in some way. Different languages have different sounds, different vocabularies and most importantly, different structures. But, does the language we speak shape the way we think? Does it really shape the reality for us? Let's look at an example.
There is a native community in Australia, who speaks Kuuk Thaayorre language. In Kuuk Thaayorre, they don't use words like "left" or "right", instead everything is in cardinal directions, North, South, East and West. So there normal conversations may sound something like - "Move your cup to the north-northeast a little bit".
The way they say "Hello" is also different. In Kuuk Thaayorre, they ask "Which way are you going?" and if you have to answer, you'll say "Southeast in the far distance, how about you?" Now this may sound weird to an English speaker, but it is pretty normal to them. In fact, people who speak languages like this stay oriented really well. They actually stay oriented better than what we expect humans to be. We might not have a biological way to be so sure about our directions, but if your language and culture trains you to do it, you can learn to stay oriented pretty well.
Languages differ in the way we describe events too. In English, you can easily say "I broke my arm" and people would know what you mean. But in some languages, you couldn't use that sentence construction unless you are a lunatic who really tried to break his own arm and succeeded.
People who speak different languages have different reactions to accidents. If you show the same accident to an English speaker and a Spanish speaker, the English speaker is more likely to remember who did it, because in English we say "He broke the vase". While a Spanish speaker might not remember who did it but will definitely remember that it was an accident, as Spanish construct of the sentence is more like "The vase broke".
Two people, who saw the same incident may have different things to say about the incident and none of them is lying. That is the beauty of perception that roots from the language you speak.
Now you know that how the language that you speak shapes the way that you think, and that gives you the opportunity to ask, "Why do I think the way that I do?", "How could I think differently?" and also, "What thoughts do I wish to create?"
There's an inseparable link between language, culture and cognition. If you're learning language in a classroom you are trying to achieve something specific, but when you're immersed in the culture and speaking it, you're thinking in a completely different way.
🧩 Random facts and a question
I can speak 2, write 2 and understand 3 languages. If you count dialects (often called "boli" in Hindi) too, I can understand 5.
How many languages do you speak and understand?