Fluency foreign language helps you see the world in a new light.
There is no need to repeat how dramatically different languages differ from each other: they can tell you about 25 cases of the Hungarian language, or give as an example more than one and a half hundred words related to snow and ice in the Sami languages, but everyone knows about the famous times of the English language, who had to teach them in school. On the other hand, we know that the worldview of different nations is also quite different, which is why we have a great variety of cultures on Earth. But usually we think that language only reflects the features of our vision, our thoughts and feelings. However, can language itself influence how a person thinks and feels?
Cognitive psychologists have been discussing this issue for a long time, but in Lately interest in it has increased many times in connection with the appearance of a series of works stating that - yes, language affects consciousness. So, in 1991 in the magazine Cognition an article was published that said that Koreans, compared to the British, pay more attention to how objects connect to each other, how well they fit together. In 1997 in the same Cognition a similar work appeared, but about the Japanese - they, as it turned out, prefer to group objects according to the material from which they are made, while English brings the form to the fore. Finally, in 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences An article was published in which it was said that Russian-speaking people distinguish shades of blue faster than English-speaking people. However, such works invariably met with objections of the kind that here we are dealing either with laboratory artifacts or with general cultural differences.
But, if consciousness really depends on the language structure, then bilingual people should have a mixed worldview, and many readers have probably already wondered if similar studies were conducted with those who speak several languages at once. This is exactly what Panos Athanasopoulos did ( Panos Athanasopoulos) from Lancaster University and his colleagues, who published their results in Psychological Science. Their experiment involved people speaking both English and German, either one or both. German and English have different emphasis on what is happening. If in English it is possible to explain very well at what time an event happened and how its different episodes relate to each other on the time scale, then in German more attention is paid to the circumstances of the action: where, how and why it happened.
If language does influence consciousness, then German-speaking and English-speaking individuals must see things differently. Both were shown a series of videos of people walking, running, diving or biking, but the meaning of their actions was not entirely obvious. For example, a video of a woman walking was filmed in such a way that it could be assumed that she had a goal and she was walking towards a specific building - or that she was walking aimlessly down the street. And on such scenes, the participants in the experiment were still asked to decide whether the person in the video had a goal or not.
It turned out that German speakers in 40% of cases were looking for a specific goal in what is happening on the screen, while English speakers - only in 25%. (We emphasize that we are not talking about a right or wrong answer here, both interpretations, both goal-setting and aimless, had the right to exist.) We can say that the Germans were focused on possible consequences action, while the British were more interested in the action itself.
Well, what about bilingual people? They occupied an intermediate position, partly obeying the language they had learned. If a German who speaks English fluently was in his home country during the experiment and was spoken to in German, then he was still focused on the goal of the action. If the experience was set in the UK and in English, then the bilingual Germans switched to the action itself. Of course, here we can also talk about the influence of the general cultural environment. However, the next version of the experiment showed that the matter is still in the language. People were asked while watching a video to say aloud a set of numbers, in German or in English - so, according to the authors of the work, it was possible to temporarily activate one language and “lull” another. It turned out that the perception of the video changed depending on which language was active: if a person counted aloud in German, then he was looking for the purpose of what was happening (“a woman is going to come”), if the score was in English, then the accent was already on the action itself (“the woman is just walking”). If the counting language changed during the experiment, then the perception of what was seen changed as well.
It can be said that another language in literally expands our consciousness and makes us look at the world differently. And here, of course, a lot of questions arise. For example, do all languages equally influence perception, does kinship between them play a role, on what other conditions does their influence depend, and whether it also extends to abstract reasoning. So far, psychologists have been able to see the "trace of the language" at the moment when the language was active, but maybe it somehow affects the consciousness even at the moment when we do not speak it? However, it is not necessary to attribute all the features of the worldview to the account of native - or non-native - speech. After all, there are indeed a great many cultural factors, and in real life they can either contribute to the linguistic influence on consciousness, or, on the contrary, reduce such an influence to nothing.
Lera Boroditsky
Lera Boroditsky is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Symbolic Systems at Stanford University. It explores how the language we speak affects our thinking.
My translation, do not blame me.
People interact with each other in a dizzying array of languages that differ from each other in an unimaginable number of nuances. Does the language in which we communicate shape our image of the world, our thinking, our way of life? Do people think differently just because they speak different languages? The mindset of polyglots - does it stay the same as they move from language to language?
These questions are in contact with almost all the main subjects of controversy in the science of consciousness. They are discussed by philosophers, anthropologists, linguists and psychologists, they have a significant impact on politics, religion and law. But apart from the constant debate, one has to admit that until recently there has been very little empirical work on this topic. For a long time, the hypothesis that language shapes consciousness was considered at best unverifiable, and at worst – and much more often – simply wrong. Research in my lab at Stanford University and at MIT has provided a different perspective on this issue. We collected data all over the world: in China and Greece, Chile and Indonesia, Russia and Australia. And here's what we managed to understand: indeed, people who speak different languages think differently. Even minor trifles of grammar can have a profound effect on our worldview gradually. Speech is a unique human gift, fundamental to the very experience of being human. Evaluation of its role in the formation of our consciousness raises us one step higher in understanding the very nature of man.
I often start lectures by asking the audience: what cognitive ability are you most afraid of losing? Most answer: vision. Some choose hearing. Sometimes a witty student says that she would be afraid to lose her sense of humor or her fashion sense. Almost no one answers spontaneously: "I would be afraid to lose my speech, language." But even if someone loses sight or hearing, or even was born without it, this loss will not hurt to get quite a wide social experience. Blind and deaf people can make friends, get an education, work, start a family? But those who do not speak - what is their existence? Will they make friends? Will they be able to study and find a job? Will they create a family? Language is such a fundamental part of our experience, such a deep component of human existence, that it is difficult to imagine life without language. But what is language: a tool for expressing thoughts or something that forms these thoughts?
The vast majority of questions about the quantity and quality of the influence of language on the way of thinking begins with the banal observation that languages differ from one another. And how different! Consider a hypothetical (highly hypothetical) example. Suppose you want to say: "Bush read Chomsky"s latest book." the pronunciation of "read" depends on the tense of the verb - we must pronounce not "reed", but "ed". For example, in the Indonesian language it is not necessary, and it is impossible, to change the verb by tenses. If we take Russian, then we will have to change our the verb "read" not only by tense, but also by gender.If the sentence is about Laura Bush, then we should say "Bush read", and if George W. Bush himself mastered Chomsky's work, then we have to say "Bush read." Moreover, the Russian language also changes the verb by aspect, that is, it gives them the opportunity to indicate the completeness or, on the contrary, the incompleteness of the action! It is necessary to use different forms of the verb "read". In Turkish, it is required to include in the verb how exactly you received the information. One form applies if you have seen George Bush read Chomsky with your own eyes, and a completely different one if you have read about it, heard it somewhere, and even if George Bush himself told you about it.
Obviously, languages require different things from their speakers. But does this mean that speakers of different languages perceive the world and think about it differently? Do those who speak English, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish differ in paying attention, classifying, and remembering their experiences just because they speak different languages? For some scientists, the answer to this question is obvious. They exclaim: just look at the way people speak! There is no doubt that those who speak different languages cannot ignore different things and encode the same messages in different ways. Only because the languages are different.
The other side of the barricades, however, does not consider the differences in the manner of speaking any convincing. All our linguistic proofs are insufficient, they give only a small part of the information available. The fact that English speakers do not put the same information into the verb as Russian speakers or Turkish speakers does not mean that English speakers do not pay attention to what is relevant for Russian speakers and Turkish speakers. It just means that English speakers don't talk about it. It is quite possible that all the inhabitants of the Earth think the same way, notice the same nuances, but speak about them differently.
And those who believe in cross-linguistic differences believe that everyone is not able to respond in the same way to the same things. If that were the case, learning other languages would be easy and enjoyable. Unfortunately, learning a new language (especially one far removed from the ones we know) is never easy. We have to pay attention to the new, different from the usual set distinctive features. Whether it's the nuances of being in Spanish, the obviousness in Turkish, or the form of the verb in Russian, learning these languages requires more than cramming a dictionary - close attention to very specific things that allow you to get necessary information and include it in your speech.
These a priori arguments in the debate over whether language shapes thought have been going around in circles for centuries. Some argued: language cannot but form thinking, while others argued: on the contrary, language cannot form consciousness. Not too long ago, my research group and a few others found ways to empirically test the key hypotheses of this age-old controversy, with amazing results. Instead of arguing what should be true or cannot be true, I propose to establish the truth experimentally.
So, I invite you to Pormpurau, a small settlement of Australian Aborigines in the north of the continent, off the west coast of Cape York. Let's listen together how the Kuuk Taayorre people define their location in space. Instead of the words usual for European languages - left, right, back, forward - defining the space relative to the observer, they, like many other indigenous people of Australia, use the terminology of the cardinal points: north, south, east, west. . Moreover, the names of the cardinal points are used in all situations, even when “an ant is sitting on your southeast leg” or “you need to move the mug a little north-north-west.” This feature has a very obvious consequence: either you are constantly oriented in the cardinal directions, or you cannot communicate. The usual greeting in the Kuuk Taayorre language is: “Where are you going?”, And the answer is something like “To the south-south-east, not far.” And if you don’t decide on the direction of the world, you still won’t get off with a simple “Hello”.
The result is a stark difference in orientation ability and spatial awareness between speakers of languages based on absolute position in space (e.g. Kuuk Taayorre) and speakers of languages based on the state of things relative to the speaker (e.g. English). Simply put, those who communicates in languages like Kuuk Taayorre much better than English speakers at navigating in space and tracking their location, even in unfamiliar places and unknown rooms. And helping them - in fact, forcing them - is nothing but language. Having trained their attention in a certain way, native speakers of the Kuuk Taayorre language show results in orientation that seem to be beyond human strength. And since space is a fundamental realm of thought, the difference in the way we think doesn't stop there. Based on ideas about space, a person builds more complex, more abstract images. Representations of time, number, scale, kinship relations, morality, emotions depend on how we imagine space. So if the Kuuk Taayorre think differently about space, do they think differently about, say, time? To test this hypothesis, Alice Gaby, my collaborator, and I went to Pormpurau.
So, we conducted an experiment: we gave the subjects sets of pictures that depicted a certain time sequence: for example, growing up a person, growing a crocodile, eating a banana. The task of the subjects was to arrange the pictures in order of time. We tested each one twice, and the purpose of the testing was to establish the direction of the upload. If you ask English speakers to lay out the time sequence, they will arrange the cards from past to future, from left to right. Hebrew speakers are more likely to lay out the cards from right to left, showing that the direction of the writing plays an important role here. And what about peoples like Taayorre, who don't use the words "left" and "right"? How will they act?
The Taayorre laid out cards from left to right no more often than from right to left, and no more often away from themselves than towards themselves. But their layout was not random; there was a pattern very different from that of English speakers. Instead of laying out images from right to left, they laid them out… from east to west. Thus, if they sat facing south, the cards lay down from left to right, if facing north, from right to left, if facing east, towards themselves, and so on. And this despite the fact that we never told the subjects in which direction they were sitting. The Taayorre already knew this (much better than I did), but also spontaneously used spatial orientation to demonstrate their ideas about time.
A person's ideas about time differ depending on the language in which a person speaks and thinks. It is not uncommon for English speakers to talk about time in horizontal spatial metaphors (say, "the best is ahead" or "the worst is behind"). But Chinese speakers use vertical metaphors for time (the next month is called the lower one, and the last one is called the upper one). It has been confirmed that Chinese speakers are significantly more likely to talk about time "vertically" than English speakers. But does this mean that Chinese speakers are significantly more likely to think vertically about time than English speakers? Let's do a simple thought experiment. I stand in front of you, point to a point in space and say: “This point is today. Where would you place tomorrow? When answering this question, English speakers almost always place "tomorrow" on a horizontal line with "today". However, Chinese speakers often point vertically: seven to eight times more often than English speakers.
Even basic aspects of perception can be influenced by language. For example, English speakers prefer to talk about time in terms of length (“short conversation”, “our meeting is taking too long”), while Spanish and Greek speakers use terms of quantity: “long time”, “big time”, “small time”, not long or short. Our study of such a basic cognitive ability as the estimation of the duration of an event demonstrates that subjects speaking different languages also differ in parameters related to the metaphor of their native language. (For example, if asked to estimate duration, English speakers are more likely to be confused by information that is related to distance: for example, if a longer line lingers on the screen longer than a shorter one. Greek speakers are more easily confused by the magnitude criterion when screen, a fuller container lingers longer.
Then an important question arises: are these differences provoked precisely by the language of communication or by some other aspect of culture? Of course, the fates of people who speak English, Chinese, Greek, Spanish and Kuuk Taayorre differ in myriad aspects and nuances. How do we know that it is language that creates differences in their thinking, and not some other cultural aspect?
There is only one way to answer this question: teach the experimental group a new language and explore how the new knowledge influenced the way they thought. In our laboratory, native English speakers are trained in the methods of describing time that are characteristic of other languages. In one such study, English-speaking subjects were trained to use size-related metaphors to describe duration (as in Greek), to describe duration (as in Greek, where jokes like "the movie is long as a snot" are common) or "vertical" metaphors. to describe the passage of time, as in Chinese. Since English speakers have learned to talk about time in these metaphors, their cognitive representational system has become similar to that of Chinese speakers or Greek speakers. This suggests that language patterns may play a causal role in the creation of mental constructs. In practice, this means that by learning a new language, we acquire not only new way to express ourselves, but gradually mastering a new way of thinking. Apart from abstract concepts like space and time, languages differ profoundly from each other even in basic aspects of visual perception, such as describing color. Different languages have a markedly different palette. In some languages, there are much more names of colors than in others, and the classification of colors often does not coincide, and the boundaries of color designations in different languages do not intersect.
To test how differences in color terminology lead to differences in color perception, we compared the ability of Russian and English speakers to distinguish shades of blue. In Russian, there is no single word that would denote that set of shades that English speakers call "blue." Any Russian clearly distinguishes between blue and cyan, while for the British these are lighter and darker shades of the same blue. Does this distinction mean that "blue" shades of blue are easier for Russian speakers to separate from "blue" shades than for speakers of other languages? Yes, experience shows that this is exactly the case. Russian-speakers quickly distinguish between their blue and blue, which are called in Russian by different words, than English-speakers, who call all these shades in one word: "blue". The British do not show any difference in reaction time.
Later, the advantage of the Russian language disappeared, because the subjects were asked to perform a verbal intervention task (in parallel with distinguishing colors, read aloud a string of numbers). But when the intervention was not verbal, but spatial (memorizing a certain visual pattern), the Russian-speaking subjects retained the advantage. The loss of advantage when performing verbal intervention indicates that it is speech, verbal behavior that is involved in the most basic judgments of perception - and language itself creates a difference in perception between native speakers of Russian and English.
When Russian speakers do not have normal access to speech while performing the verbal intervention task, significant differences between Russian speakers and English speakers disappear.
Even those linguistic nuances that at first glance seem insignificant have a far-reaching impact on our perception of the world. Let's take gender. In Spanish and other Romance languages, nouns are either feminine or masculine. Many other languages divide nouns into several different genders (grammatical gender in this context would mean something like a class or type). For example, in some Australian languages there are sixteen genders, including classes of hunting weapons, canine, luminous things, or - remember the famous book of cognitive linguist George Lakoff - "women, fire and dangerous things."
What does it mean for a language to have a gender category? First of all, this implies that the words referring to different kinds, are grammatically modified differently, and words belonging to the same gender are grammatically modified in the same way. Language requirements can change by gender pronouns, adverb and verb endings, participles, numerals, and so on. Let me give you an example: to say in Russian "my chair was old", that is, "my chair was old", you must bring both the pronoun, the verb and the adjective into agreement with the gender of the noun "chair", masculine. That is, use the words "mine", "was", "old" - masculine words. In the masculine gender, one should also talk about a male living being, for example: my grandfather was old. And if, instead of talking about a chair, we mention a bed, which is feminine in Russian, or about your grandmother, then we will have to use the feminine gender: mine, was, old.
Do the masculine gender of the word "chair" and the feminine gender of the word "bed" make Russian speakers perceive chairs to some extent like men, and beds to some extent similar to women? It turns out yes. In one of our studies, we asked German-speaking and Spanish-speaking subjects to describe objects that belonged to different genders in German and Spanish. And what? The resulting descriptions varied according to grammatical gender. For example, in the description of the key - and this is a masculine word in German, and feminine in Spanish - German speakers chose epithets like "hard", "heavy", "serrated", "iron", "with a beard", "useful". At the same time, Spanish speakers preferred adjectives like "golden", "artsy", "small", "cute", "shiny", "tiny". To describe the bridge, which is feminine in German and masculine in Spanish, German speakers used the words "beautiful", "elegant", "fragile", "peaceful", "graceful", "slim", and Spanish speakers used "big" , "dangerous", "long", "powerful", "heavy", "towering". Even if the survey was conducted in English, a language devoid of gender, the overall picture remained the same. The results were also confirmed on non-linguistic tasks, in particular, on the search for similarities between two drawings. Thus, it should be recognized that aspects of the language as such themselves influence the way of thinking of native speakers. Teaching English-speaking subjects new grammatical gender systems affects the representation of certain objects to the same extent as this training affects German-speaking and Spanish-speaking subjects. Obviously, even the slightest grammatical accidents, such as arbitrary attribution to a noun of one kind or another, can affect ideas about very specific objects.
There is no need to confirm this effect in the laboratory; just look with your own eyes at, say, a fine art gallery. Look at personifications, that is, the ways in which abstract concepts—death, sin, victory, time—have been given a human image. How does the artist determine what gender death or time should be? As it turned out, in 85% of cases he does not have to choose; the gender of an abstract concept is predetermined by its grammatical gender in the language of the artist. So, for example, German artists more often depict death in a male guise, unlike Russians, who are more inclined to depict death as a woman.
The very fact that grammatical features, such as gender, can affect our thought process is amazing. And how persistent these quirks are: for example, grammatical gender applies to all nouns, and therefore affects how native speakers think about everything that can be denoted by nouns. That is, about all objects of the visible and invisible world!
I gave several examples of how language shapes our ideas about space, time, colors and objects. Other studies are concerned with how features of language influence the interpretation of events, the perception of causal relationships, concentration of attention, awareness of physical reality, the perception and experience of emotions, expectations from others, risky behavior, and even the choice of profession or spouse. . Taken together, these results demonstrate that language processes invade fundamental areas of consciousness, unconsciously taking us from basic concepts of perception and cognition to the most sublime abstract constructions and vital decisions. Speech occupies a central position in our experience of human existence, and the language in which we speak creates the ways of our thinking, perception of the world, being.
“A person has always thought about the word, his own speech, his native language. Already in ancient times, the arrangement of words, their meanings, the secrets of their compounds were studied. Today, a very simplified view of the role of language in the life of society dominates - language is considered only a means of communication, a tool for transmitting information. In accordance with this understanding, it does not matter at all what language to use, what language to speak, as long as it is sufficiently widespread and information-rich. This approach to understanding the role of language is very narrow and stems from ignorance of the nature of language. Yes, language arose from the needs of communication and serves the exchange of information ”- F.N. Fatklistov.
A rather serious and good idea of the Tatar scientist F.N. Fatklistova relies on the stereotypical template of the "big bang theory" and the teachings of Darwin. Language as the Sun, Moon, Earth, Man, animal and plant world did not arise by themselves. They are born. The Mari language specifically speaks - yylme shochyn (the language was born), mlande shochyn (the earth was born), keche shochyn (the sun was born). There is no such phrase in the Mari language that it arose, the language was born, it has progenitors - the demigods Surt Yumo.
In ancient mythology, Apollo is considered the Olympian god of prophecy and oracles, healing, plague and disease, music, song, poetry, archery, and protection of the young. He was born on the island of Delos, where his mother Leto ended up by accident, driven by the jealous goddess Hera, who forbade her to enter solid land.
Aton in the ancient Egyptian story "The Tale of Sinuhe" describes the deceased king as a god rising to heaven. He was depicted as a solar disk with rays extending from it, which ended in hands.
In Mari cosmogony and cosmology significant place occupies Shnui On - Kuryk Kugyz, Ir Keche, Porlemdruk - these are his names. So it was customary in antiquity - a person elevated to the rank of gods received many names. Note. People who lived in different countries, in different periods, and the words end in "on" - Aton, Apollo, Shnuy On. Greek language, according to Wikipedia, does not allow revealing the etymology of the name Apollo. The Mari language very easily reveals the meaning and essence of names:
Apollo - "He"- this is a warrior, leader, "apal" (apol)- stray, alien. And how can they not be a stranger, stray on a strange island, so the natives always perceive a newly appeared on their territory.
Aton - his full name sounds like Ra-Horus. His name was the light of the solar disk and people, praying and rejoicing, raised their hand to the Sun and perceived and filled with the energy of the Sun. Aton - "He"- warrior, leader "and those"- this is a vessel, volume, capacity. The word is associated with storage utensils. This is confirmed by the word "Athlete", which sounds in Greek as "Athlon" - "he" + "ate". Literally, an athlete is a voluminous, healthy warrior.
People, throwing up their hands to the Sun, meditated, perceived energy - yumylten ulyt- practiced transcendental meditation.
In the 1930s in America, an employee in the fire department published his discovery, where he points out that the structure of language determines the structure of thinking and the way of knowing the outside world. Having studied the Navajo language well, he saw that there are no adjectives as a special part of speech. Instead, a verb is used and they are very complex, they carry rich lexical and grammatical information, i.e. there is a description of the world through action. In reality, this people is in motion, in continuous motion and currently leads a nomadic lifestyle. It is concluded that language influences thinking and acts as a co-organizer of the way of life and behavior of society.
Opening the Russian-Chechen dictionary in the library, I felt trembling and excitement in my hands, knowing the mentality of the Chechens, I wanted to see in this ancient language with an alphabet that covered the vast sound-background spectrum of the Universe (15 vowels and 32 consonants). At the end of the verb form, the u-segment sound "ar", signifying "decency, conscience and decency."
Reading the verb forms of Chechen words
Hyukhar - felling (action)
Aradalar - exit (action)
Hyehar - training
Dēgar - embroidery
Kechdar - preparation,
that feeling of excitement, creative satisfaction arose in me, which, probably, all researchers experienced. The Chechen language fully assured me of the correctness of my thoughts and confirmed the Sapir-Whorfe hypothesis that the structure of language determines the structure of thought.
After that, one should not be surprised at the heroism, steadfastness, courage of the Chechen people, they are coded by the demigods for military prowess and courage. This is a warrior people, they are the defenders of honor, conscience, dignity, shame - the foundations of Divine Love. Truth is on their side - Ash, the basic basis of cosmofundamentalism. If the Navajo language dictates movement to the people, then the verb form of the Chechen language, ending in "ar" directs the people to achieve and establish honor, conscience and dignity. It would not be complete to overlook the Farsi language, an ancient language that is represented in modern times by the Tajik language.
Tajik words-verbs
go - raftan
sleep - shobratan
stand - rostodan
give - dodan
end in y-sound information segment "an" (eng), meaning something narrow: a throat in a dish, a hole in things, a passage, an entrance. Is it any wonder after that that the Ferghana Valley is the most densely populated place in the world, about “rubber apartments” in Moscow, where many Tajiks comfortably coexist in one room.
The structure of the Tajik language is coded for thinking to have many friends, relatives, children and live as a single friendly family even in a limited "ang" space. Having revealed the meaning of the words of the verbal form of the Chechen and Tajik languages and the significance of the names of the ancient gods from the position of the Mari language, the question involuntarily arises: where does the Mari language and the people as a whole lead the Mari language and where does their thinking direct?
The verb form of the Mari language ends with "ash" (pooch, nalash, malash), meaning "truth", i.e. to God-Truth (Ash Yumo). The Mari language is the most ancient language in Europe - a divine gift for humanity. In the language itself, the Knowledge of the Universe and about the Universe, about God, about the meaning of life and about life itself, incarnation, evolution of the Soul and about essence is encoded and encrypted. The Mari words are collected very simply and are easy to understand, just as we understand in school in chemistry that matter consists of several dozen chemical elements, from which the whole variety of the material phenomenal manifested world is assembled.
All the words of the Mari language are collected in an agglutinative form from "u" - sound information segments:
Ash - memory, truth
Al - goodness
Il - divine light
Ir - natural, wild
Ar - conscience
Shu - health
Kut - the presence of the soul
ӧrt - self-control, the totality of Reason and Consciousness
sham - consciousness
or - fortress, center
ak - value
and others, which are recruited no more than the chemical elements in nature.
See what it looks like in reality:
- ilash(live) assembled from two segments: "silt"(divine light) and "ash"(true). Please note that this word gives a specific answer about the meaning of life, for which a person appeared on earth - to know "divine light - truth."
A restless person, all in motion, in search, and again the Mari word “oshkylash” (movement) reveals and indicates why a person was born and where he should move in life.
- oshkylash: "osho"(enlightened) "kyl"(connection), "ash"(true). The Word instructs that all our thoughts, all our movements should be directed towards the enlightened truth, towards God - Ash Yumo.
Mari word "she R" means "warrior of heroic strength." You notice that the u-segment is used for the warrior "ar", which is inherent in the Chechen language of the verb form. But in the Mari word is used in the noun form to refer to a warrior-hero. Unfortunately, I don’t know the Chechen language, but I noticed that Chechen nouns end in “ash”, which means truth in the Mari language:
Donkey - var-r-ash
Mountain - lamnash
Window - Korash
All foreign words: dumbbells (gantelash), dumplings (galnash), cutlets (kotletash) - are edged with a block "ash"(true), which I probably assume means "kotletash" (true cutlet), "nardash" (true backgammon). This thought already sends us back to the theory of metalanguage, discovered by the Polish mathematician Alfred Tarski, that "the assessment of the truth of a statement about objects is the privilege of the metalanguage." In this connection, I remind you that the entire verb form of the Mari words, and the Chechen noun form ends with the u-segment of the sound information block "ash"(true) and fit well into Al.Tarsky's theory of metalanguage. Translation of the very meaning of the word "shomak" (shamak) means that the words themselves are valuable consciousness ( sham- consciousness, ak- value) and they carry a divine energy charge.
The morphology and phonetics of the Mari hieratic form of the language are inscribed and immanent in the Universal vortex u-stream, in which the rune-philological information structure is implied, which, judging by the Mari metalanguage, consists of deterministic dominant divine values "shu", "sher", "al", "ash", "ir", "sham" etc.
Language develops while it functions, i.e. as long as native speakers use it. It follows from this that each linguistic personality constantly, at every moment of communication unconsciously participates in the development of the language of which she is a native speaker.
Thinking on our own
Suppose some native speaker of the Russian language decided not to deafen the final voiced consonants in his Russian speech “in the English manner”. Will this "linguistic fiction" venture succeed? Obviously not: this will require from the speaker not only the impossible - constant control over pronunciation, but also the breaking of his articulatory base.
Surely you have noticed that the word term is pronounced differently: [t "e] rmin or [te] rmin. Undoubtedly, you will evaluate the first pronunciation as normative, corresponding to the modern orthoepic norm, and the second as non-normative, incorrect. Meanwhile, a solid pronunciation [ te]rmin, according to our observations, in last years spread in the speech of the young Russian-speaking generation.
With your personal pronunciation of a particular word, you contribute to the development of the language, determining either the preservation of the norm, or its loosening, and possibly its future change. It is important that the speaker himself does not think at all not only about such “global” consequences of his pronunciation error, but even about How he pronounces the word.
You have the right to object: all these examples are from the field of phonetics, and our phonetic skills are maximally automated and subconscious.
The results of observations of the phonetic side of the language allow scientists to talk about the spontaneity, spontaneity or unconsciousness of the laws of language development. This is confirmed by the appeal to other aspects of the language, even to such a “conscious” level as vocabulary. For example, the failed attempts of V.I. 14, p. 577-578]. In this regard, it is appropriate to recall the words of Wilhelm Humboldt, who argued a lot and interestingly on the development of language and the role of man in this process: “How insignificant is the power of a loner before the mighty power of language.”
So, an individual, constantly unconsciously participating in the change and development of language, is not able to consciously influence the direction of language development. But society, represented by some of the most creative and authoritative representatives, writers and linguists, and relying on such public institutions as the school, scientific institutions, the media, has great potential.
Excursion into history
The most interesting example of such a conscious and successful intervention is the history of the Czech language in the 19th century, associated with the activities of the so-called "wake-ups" - scientists and public figures who saw their goal not only in awakening national self-consciousness and liberation from the centuries-old Germanization of culture and language, but and in concrete actions for language improvement. They really succeeded in replacing Czech many German (and not only German) borrowings in proper Slavic words, for example: bayonet - bodak, assault - utok, storm - boige, calm - bezvetn, plug - zasuvka and so on.
All linguists, however, agree that the intervention of society is still limited to normalizing activity => [Ch. 15, p. 618] and the implementation of a certain language policy in a difficult language situation => [Ch. 16, p. 664-666]. In addition, it can only be successful if the general trends and laws of language development are correctly taken into account.
Well aware of the impossibility of complete control over the development of language as a natural sign system, linguists
Russian scientists will choose the so-called "cultural-specific linguistic expressions" such as the Russian word "maybe". On the example of such "untranslatable" words and expressions, they will trace how speakers of different languages and representatives of different cultures convey their experience of understanding reality. Since not only individual words, but also facial expressions, gestures, and eye movements have cultural characteristics, studies of this kind fit into a broad semiotic context.
Scientists of the Moscow Pedagogical state university and some other educational organizations won a grant from the Russian Science Foundation to conduct a joint comparative study of cultures with Taiwanese scientists through the analysis of languages. The grant is designed for 2016-18. and involves financing in the amount of 6 million rubles a year from the Russian side, Taiwanese scientists will work at the expense of the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan. From the Taiwanese side, the Center for the Study of the Brain, Mind and Learning takes part in the project National University Zhengzhi (Research Center for Mind, Brain and Learning, National Chengchi University RCMBL, NCCU).
Are language and consciousness connected?
“In line with the scientific discussion set by the German philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, we start from the idea of a certain connection between language and the picture of the world fixed in this language. This idea, which still causes controversy and needs experimental verification, was in the era of romanticism commonplace" says Dmitry Dobrovolsky, head of the team of linguist-researchers of the Moscow State Pedagogical University within the framework of this project, - "According to the ideas of Humboldt, the speaker builds his statement, not so much by putting a finished thought into a linguistic form, but by building a thought with the help of language. Perceiving this message, the listener does not "unpack" other people's thoughts, but, speaking modern language, activates the corresponding conceptual structures in his mind. From the position on the connection between language and thinking naturally follows the position on the active role of specific languages in the formation of a model of the world or "linguistic worldview", as Humboldt called it. If language initially takes part in the origin of thought, thought cannot be free from the corresponding linguistic expression. Since each language conceptualizes the world in its own way, in a unique way, thoughts formulated in different languages cannot be completely identical.
Specialist literature describes cases in which bilinguals feel they need to "translate themselves". For example, Russian emigrants in the United States have difficulty with the expression I miss you, which does not fully correspond to the English I miss you. In the same way, when a mother says to her teenage son who has had various troubles, sorry for you, she expresses a meaning that she could not express in English. Everything that can be said in English in such a situation (I’m sorry for you or You poor thing) differs in meaning and feeling from what the Russian word pity expresses.
Of particular interest is the difference between the Russian phrases Don't be angry!, Don't be offended! and English Don't be angry. For the English-speaking audience, the sentences Don’t be mad/angry and Don’t be upset/offended sound like accusations of inappropriate behavior, they do not aim to make amends for some unpleasant incident and return positive feelings. In Russia, the phrases Don't be angry!, Don't be offended! are traditional means for maintaining close relationships, they interpret the behavior of the one to whom they are addressed as resentment and overreaction (poouting and overreacting) and imply that the person is too sensitive and even unreasonable (unreasonable).
For people who don't live in the English language, it's hard to imagine the huge role the Don't be unreasonable script plays in the lives of people living in the English speaking world. It is based on an attempt to positively influence the emotional state of the partner. In Russian, a similar effect is produced by the phrases Don't be angry!, Don't pout! They work in a similar way impersonal constructs with the words sorry, sorry, insulting, annoying, sad or incomprehensible (why), which, as it were, express not only the thoughts and feelings of the speaker, but are also designed to positively affect the emotional state of the listener.
“Now the debate has resumed whether language affects thinking, and if so, to what extent,” commented linguist Alexei Shmelev, professor at Moscow State Pedagogical University, “But it can be considered established that some ideas about the world are prompted to us by the language we speak. So, for native speakers of the Russian language, it seems almost obvious that people think with their heads, but feel with their hearts. Thinking, we can scratch our heads, and when we are worried, we grab our hearts. And only when we get acquainted with other languages that paint a different picture of the participation of bodily organs in mental life, we can realize that these ideas are suggested to us by the peculiarities of the behavior of the words head and heart in Russian. Interestingly, for carriers Chinese thoughts and good feelings concentrated in the heart, and bad feelings - in the stomach.
Professor Shmelev believes that the problem of “national character” is generally difficult to consider, because if in the case of the thinking of one person the subject is understandable, and you can change his reactions to certain words (for example, eye movements while reading or pronouncing them), then speak about the "psychology of the people" is difficult: who is the subject, the bearer of this phenomenon? Where is it materially represented?
At the same time, our language fixes the generally accepted practice: for example, the expression “snack” suggests that a Russian person is disposed after drinking alcohol to a heart-to-heart conversation and does not want to immediately plunge into a state of intoxication. While the American, for example, tends to drink quickly and move on to dancing. And there is practically no analogue of the word "snack" in English. Thus, certain approaches are fixed in the language, ways of understanding the situation and attitude to the process of drinking together, which should turn into a conversation about life.
After Russian scientists select and analyze hard-to-translate Russian expressions, their Taiwanese colleagues will track how native Chinese learners of Russian master these expressions. It will also be held comparative analysis eye movements of Russian and Chinese readers of a Russian text with culturally specific expressions (we are talking about Taiwanese studying Russian).
In this project, the analysis of translation is aimed at solving linguistic, semiotic and cultural problems. Numerous scientific experiments have shown that thinking is to some extent determined by language. Usage modern instruments analysis will allow you to understand which aspects of the meaning indicate the cultural specificity displayed by the compared languages. In addition, the functioning of translation as a kind of intercultural communication, the influence of the native Chinese language on the study of Russian and students' understanding of cultural-specific linguistic expressions of the language being studied will be studied.
As a result, scientists will identify culturally significant information that remains not explicit in the original text and is found only when it is compared with the translation, as well as implicit information that appears in the translated text and is relevant for comparing the respective cultures.
According to the results of the study, the Russians will be able to better understand their culture and language, and the residents of Taiwan will be able to assess the extent to which they have mastered the most difficult expressions of the Russian language. Thus, representatives of our countries will be able to better understand each other and their cultural and specific features.
“The comparative study of cultures should make as much use as possible of objective data and, above all, the results of independent linguistic analysis. As a rule, studies of this kind focus on a limited number of “untranslatable” or difficult-to-translate language units, which are considered as “keys” to some features of the culture served by the corresponding language, ”says the head of the Department of Theory of Language and English Studies at the Institute of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication of the Moscow State University, Dr. Philological Sciences, Professor Georgy Teimurazovich Khukhuni, - “At the same time, the very concept of “untranslatability”, being generally intuitively clear, does not receive a definition that would allow it to be quantified; thus, the assessment of the "degree of untranslatability" remains subjective.
“This project is close to the topic of our current research within the framework of the RFBR grant. Using EEG, we study the perception by bilinguals of pairs of Russian and English words that are similar in sound or meaning,” comments Nikolai Novitsky, senior researcher at the HSE Center for Cognitive Studies, “Bilingualism is a very hot topic in modern psycholinguistics. To see this, just look at the materials of the most important scientific conferences in this area, such as AMLAP (Architectures and mechanism for language processing) and the annual meeting of the Society for the neurobiology of language. However, I do not fully agree with the position of the authors regarding the relationship between language and thought, which is formulated by the categorical statement that "numerous scientific experiments have shown that thinking is largely determined by language." This concept, also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, is far from universally accepted in science and, in its extreme form of linguistic determinism, has been empirically refuted (the famous Inuit discussion about the names of snow). In popular form, the arguments against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, including experimental data, are summarized in Steven Pinker's book The stuff of thought. Of course, the connection between language and culture is indisputable, but we should rather talk about the influence of language on culture, and not vice versa. Ultimately, the very possibility of translation - with the rare exception of "untranslatable" expressions that interested the authors, speaks of the universality of the language as a whole.
