Can language influence thoughts and actions?

"Could your language affect your ability to save money?"  the TED announcer asked as he introduced a recent podcast.  I was doing a daily walk using an iPhone plugged into earphones when I heard this intriguing title.  Two of my favorite topics rolled into one talk - language and economics!

This TED talk was done in February 2013 by behavioral economist Keith Chen from Yale University.  He and his colleagues have been testing an hypothesis concerning the correlation between language structures and monetary savings rates.

Here is the gist of his argument.  Feeding my inner grammar nerd was the observation that some languages (like English) have special structures for future time. Chen calls these languages "futured languages."   We say, "It will rain," adding "will" to the verb, or "It is going to rain," using a progressive form of the verb "to go"  to talk about a future event.

How we conceptualize the world in English

Other languages, like Chinese, do not use a different form of the verb for past, present or future. Chen categorizes them as "futureless languages."  The Chinese sentence would contain the equivalent of the plain verb, "rain."

And since I am often fretting about family money matters (especially trying to find the right balance between spending and saving), I was also intrigued by the idea that my native language structures could be influencing my bank account!

The conclusion reached by Chen (after much statistical analysis) was that when people speak a language that requires a new structure for the future, they tend to disassociate the present from the future, making it harder to save for the future.  The citizens of the United States and Great Britain fall into this category. In Chinese and Finnish, on the other hand, speakers do not change the verb from present to future tense, so they do not see the future as distant, and therefore tend to save more.     

As I thought about the Chen study, a red flag was raised in my mind from the field of Linguistics about the relationship between language and thought.  Linguists have rejected the strongest form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which states that our language determines how we think about the world. However, linguists do discuss a weaker form of the hypothesis, which allows for some investigation of the issue.

Another reason the Chen study interested me was that it supported my contention that language (and Linguistics, the study of language), has a connection to so many other important topics, in this case, Economics.  I used to tell my Linguistics students, "Linguistics has its finger in everyone else's pie."

If the idea that there is a connection between language and thought interests you as much as it does me, you may want to watch this 12 minute video of Keith Chen presenting his ideas  TED talk.  At the end of the presentation, Chen states that he is looking for tools to make us better savers. And speaking for myself, I do believe that is an idea worth investigating!   

Learning Irish just because

Several months ago, I started learning Irish (or Irish Gaelic) on Duolingo.  It is one of four languages I practice daily on either the laptop, the iPad, or the iPhone ( Yes, I am a certified language nerd).

The other languages I work on, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, are ones I studied at school, so I am really just reviewing and expanding language knowledge.  What I needed was the challenge of learning a language from absolute scratch.

So, why did I choose Irish, you may well ask?  It was an intuitive decision, but maybe I can explain what drew me to choose Irish from that seductive list of languages offered by Duolingo.

First, let me say that practicality did not enter into my Irish decision.  Many language learners have job opportunities, family ties, cultural interests, or significant others that lead them to select one language over others.  I have only a  family story about the vague possibility of Scots-Irish ancestors and a four-day trip to Dublin, Ireland planned in the spring.  The possibility that I may actually speak to or understand an Irish speaker in The Temple Bar hovers between slim and none (as we say in West Texas).

But there is a certain romance in learning an ancient language that was first written down in 4th century A.D. The Irish language has served a population that has lived through centuries of often turbulent history.

Irish was on a downward spiral brought about by political and economic factors until the Gaelic Revival of the 1890's.  It is now on an upward spiral in this century, and who doesn't love an underdog that has a chance of surviving?

And then there is the soft, lyrical sound of spoken Irish.  Ah, so pleasing to the ear. Here is a two minute Youtube video of the President of Ireland giving a St. Patrick's Day message in 2008. Just let the beautiful sounds wash over you.

Yet another draw to Irish was the challenge of a new grammar.  Irish is what is identified as a VSO language, meaning that the verb usually is placed at the beginning of the sentence, followed by the subject and then by the object. For example, Caithim an hata means "I wear a hat," but the literal translation is "Wear I hat."   English, my native language, is a SVO language, so my brain is used to looking for the subject in first position in a sentence. It's good brain training to make oneself think in a different way.  (Have you ever heard the recommendation to brush your teeth with the opposite hand or take a new route to work?  Same idea!)

Another challenge is matching the sounds of Irish to the written word.  And this is truly a challenge for me!  Who would think that Irish for plural you, sibh, sounds like [ʃɪvʲ]?  I'm constantly losing challenges on Duolingo exercises that give me an Irish audio clip and ask me to write or translate it.  I often find myself talking back to the program and saying "Whaaaaaaat?"

When I work on a more familiar language, I sometimes daydream, or let myself get distracted by the cat, the beautiful weather, or my next household duty, but when I am studying Irish, it requires my full concentration.

And isn't a short escape from everyday life a true pleasure?

Speak more slowly! I can't understand you!

Understanding and speaking a second language.  The same skill or two different skills?

For anyone who has tried to acquire a second language, the answer is obvious.  Understanding and speaking are separate skills that seem to be two sides of the same coin, but unfortunately they do not always develop simultaneously in our brains.

The ability to understand spoken language has in the past been labeled a passive skill.  Nothing could be further from the truth! When someone speaks to me in a foreign language, I can feel my brain working overtime, trying to make meaning.

Some people I know will answer the question, "Do you speak Spanish?" by apologizing and saying, "No, but I can understand it."  No apology needed here!  Being able to understand another language is a great accomplishment.  

On the other hand, few people will admit, "I speak Spanish, but I have trouble understanding it." Have you ever been hesitant to try out your new foreign language for fear that someone might respond with a bunch of sounds that your brain can't match to words?  I have!

How does it happen that a person can produce language but not understand it? In a new language, I can acquire vocabulary, sounds, and structures so that I can put together sentences. But I still may not have the ability to understand spoken language.

The crucial difference is perhaps this:  When I speak,  I am in control of what I say.  If I don't know the word for bananas, I can avoid talking about bananas. If I have trouble producing a certain sound, I can avoid words with that sound.  (Note:  You will never hear me say ferrocarril in Spanish. Those two trilled r sounds would be the death of me.)   And if I feel insecure about a certain structure (for example, the rather exotic Portuguese future subjunctive), I can reword my sentence to avoid the use of the difficult structure.  

But when someone speaks to you in a foreign language, who knows what they are going to say- possibly words you have never heard of, sounds you have never produced, and complex structures that you may never conquer? Ah, if only those fluent speakers would agree to speak to you using just language that you have already mastered!

Lots of language being produced here!

  

At one point in second language instruction, teachers were encouraged to provide students with a "Silent Period." This was a period of time in beginning language classes when students would only hear the new language but were not required to speak it.  The idea was that infants have an extended silent period (approximately from birth to 18 months of age) when they can take in language and let their brains make sense of it before they begin to produce language.

This probably isn't going to happen!

What a luxury a Silent Period would be for an adult language learner!  Wouldn't it be relaxing  to listen and understand your new language without feeling the urgency to speak?  But in our speeded-up world, few people have time for a Silent Period.  Advertisements for language learning software that promise "Learn Spanish in 15 days"  give us the impression that we should learn a new language in the same time it might take me to master a new app on my phone.

Successful language acquisition is like the turtle in the race with the hare.  Slow and steady wins the race.  But what a great prize awaits us!

Making language mistakes isn't all bad!

I have been fascinated recently about how a small change in my favorite web-based language learning tool, Duolingo has made a big change in my language habits. As much as my head believes that making errors is an accepted, even necessary, part of learning a language, my heart still wants to produce perfect language. And I know I am not alone in this fantasy.

When I first started using Duolingo, about a year ago, the program was presented like a video game. In most instances, you were given three hearts in the upper right hand corner of the screen at the beginning of each exercise set. 

For each mistake you made, you would hear music with a tone going from higher to lower tone and watch a heart disappear, turning from red to grey. Losing a heart was similar to losing a life in a video game. No fun! 

When your three hearts were gone, you heard more downbeat music and received this message from an apologetic Duolingo owl.

Cursing at the owl (though I tried it frequently) had no effect on my status.  It was back to the beginning to try again.

Granted, an opportunity was available to gain a one-heart refill before you started an exercise by spending four hard-earned lingots, the currency of Duolingo.  I spent my lingots with much more abandon than I do my U.S. dollar savings account, because I really, really hated losing all of my hearts and having to start over again.  Having one extra heart gave me a little wiggle room.

One day, I logged on to Duolingo, and instead of seeing hearts at the top of the screen, I saw a bar.

In this new system, if I answer a question correctly, the bar advances.  If I make a mistake, the bar retreats. And I do hear a downbeat music sound when my answer is not accepted.  But the beauty of this new approach with the bar instead of hearts is that I can keep trying to score correct answers for as long as I want, without ever "dying" (so to speak).

You may not think this change is a big deal!  But I can assure you that it has had a positive psychological effect on my language learning! I'm free!  I can play with language, try out creative responses, and produce language at a faster pace.  If I make an error, I pay it little mind, much as I should do when practicing a new language in the real world of give and take communication.  No fear language learning is what I experience.

Because the new bar system is not yet available on mobile devices, I find I gravitate more and more to my old laptop in order to use the web-based program. Many thanks to Duolingo for being at the forefront of language acquisition.  I think it's a bunch of fun!