We all know that language is a means of communication. It is a means of thinking. We cannot think without language. If we try to think without language say using symbols, our thought process will be very ambiguous and confused.
The fact that language is one of the foundation of thinking lead to the fact that it can affect the way we think, the way we perceive things.
Let’s understand it through different examples
1. Color Perception – Let’s take one of the most famous example. In Russian, light blue and dark blue have separate words i.e goluboy and siniy. So Russians tend to have cognitive separation between these two colors. They are quicker and more accurate to distinguish light blue and dark blue than English speakers.
2. Time perception – It is seen that speakers of languages which does not have separate words to distinguish between present and future are more aware about their future. They are less likely to smoke as they are aware about its consequences in future. Also they are more likely to save for future.
3. Memory perception – Language may affect the way in which we remember any event. Structure of a language determines whether a sentence is subject focused or object focused. The choice of words, especially adjectives also affect what we remember and how we remember.
4. Emotional perception – It is similar to color perception. If a language has separate words for different emotions, speakers would find it easier to perceive and navigate those emotional feelings. And it would be easy to distinguish between different feelings.
In a nutshell we can say that language affect how we perceive things and distinguish between different objects and feelings. If an object have different words to describe itself in a language depending upon its quality, people will find it easy to distinguish between its qualities.
So clearly language is more influential than we think. We can also conclude that multilinguals ( who know multiple languages) can see a particular thing form different perspectives. It is a good news for you if you are a bilingual or multilingual.