Take the word bridge - if it's feminine in your language, you're more likely to say that bridges are beautiful and elegant. And nobody wishes that we hadn't developed our modern languages today from the ancient versions. We call this language Gumbuzi. Hidden Brain - KQED | News, Radio, Podcasts, TV So you may start with moving your southwest leg in, but then you have to move your northeast leg out. The phrase brings an entire world with it - its context, its flavor, its culture. In the final episode of our Relationships 2.0 series, psychologistHarry Reis says theres another ingredient to successful relationships thats every bit as important as love. And it's not just about how we think about time. VEDANTAM: I understand that there's also been studies looking at how artists who speak different languages might paint differently depending on how their languages categorize, you know, concepts like a mountain or death. Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, by Harry T. Reis, et. Could this affect the way, you know, sexism, conscious or unconscious, operates in our world? UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #16: Not figuratively, it's literally MCWHORTER: Yeah. GEACONE-CRUZ: And you're at home in your pajamas, all nice and cuddly and maybe, watching Netflix or something. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: (Speaking foreign language). BORODITSKY: It's certainly possible. Bu So we did an analysis of images in Artstor. That's the way words are, too. And if people heard the sounds a little differently and produced them a little differently, if there were new meanings of words - very quickly whatever the original meaning was wouldn't be remembered. Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, by Robert A. Emmons, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1986. It goes in this pile. But time doesn't have to flow with respect to the body. VEDANTAM: There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often untranslatable. But if you ask bilinguals, who have learned two languages and now they know that some genders disagree across the two languages, they're much less likely to say that it's because chairs are intrinsically masculine. That is the direction of writing in Hebrew and Arabic, going from right to left. Whats going on here? It is the very fabric, the very core of your experience. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Course Hero is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university. This is Hidden Brain. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Speaking foreign language). So I just think that it's something we need to check ourselves for. Elon Musk's brain chips, starvation in Somalia and Greek anguish VEDANTAM: This episode of HIDDEN BRAIN was produced by Rhaina Cohen, Maggie Penman and Thomas Lu with help from Renee Klahr, Jenny Schmidt, Parth Shah and Chloe Connelly. It's exactly how old English turned into modern English. But somehow they've managed, not just by randomly bumping into each other. Listen on the Reuters app. So for example, English speakers, because they're very likely to say, he did it or someone did it, they are very good at remembering who did it, even if it's an accident. You know, lots of people blow off steam about something they think is wrong, but very few people are willing to get involved and do something about it. This is HIDDEN BRAIN. She once visited an aboriginal community in northern Australia and found the language they spoke forced her mind to work in new ways. Psychologist Ken Sheldon studies the science of figuring out what you want. It can be almost counterintuitive to listen to how much giggling and laughing you do in ordinary - actually rather plain exchanges with people. Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. But what if there's a whole category of people in your life whose impact is overlooked? Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships. Of course, eventually, the Finnish kids also figured it out because language isn't the only source of that information, otherwise it would be quite surprising for the Finns to be able to continue to reproduce themselves. But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. But, in fact, they were reflecting this little quirk of grammar, this little quirk of their language and in some cases, you know, carving those quirks of grammar into stone because when you look at statues that we have around - of liberty and justice and things like this - they have gender. Just saying hello was difficult. And they said, well, of course. Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. But what we should teach is not that the good way is logical and the way that you're comfortable doing it is illogical. Social Functionalist Frameworks for Judgment and Choice: Intuitive Politicians, Theologians, and Prosecutors, by Philip Tetlock, Psychology Review, 2002. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks but when you're hanging out with friends. So one possibility for bilinguals would be that they just have two different minds inside - right? So they've compared gender equality, gender parity norms from the World Health Organization, which ranks countries on how equal access to education, how equal pay is, how equal representation in government is across the genders. Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-being, Goal Striving, Need Satisfaction, and Longitudinal Well-being: The Self-Concordance Model, Personal Strivings: An Approach to Personality and Subjective Well-being, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. VEDANTAM: Languages orient us to the world. If you liked . Now, many people hear that and they think, well, that's no good because now literally can mean its opposite. If a transcript is available, youll see a Transcript button which expands to reveal the full transcript. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. Who Do You Want To Be? - Hidden Brain (pdcast) | Listen Notes He's a defender of language on the move, but I wanted to know if there were things that irritated even him. That is utterly arbitrary that those little slits in American society look elderly, but for various chance reasons, that's what those slits came to mean, so I started wearing flat-fronted pants. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. He's a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and the author of the book "Words On The Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally).". Today in our Happiness 2.0 series, we revisit a favorite episode from 2020. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. Transcript The transcript below may be for an earlier version of this episode. GEACONE-CRUZ: It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged, encapsulated way, and you can just - it rolls off the tongue, and you can just throw it. This takes kids a little while to figure out, and he had all kinds of clever ways to ask these questions. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, direct support to Hidden Brain by making a gift on our Patreon page, sponsorship opportunities on Hidden Brain. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, by Amy Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, 1999. They're supposed to be painting something very personal. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. VEDANTAM: For more HIDDEN BRAIN, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter. And as you point out, it's not just that people feel that a word is being misused. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. But if they were sitting facing north, they would lay out the story from right to left. John, you've noted that humans have been using language for a very long time, but for most of that time language has been about talking. Those are quirks of grammar literally in stone. But I think that we should learn not to listen to people using natural language as committing errors because there's no such thing as making a mistake in your language if a critical mass of other people speaking your language are doing the same thing. And very competent adults of our culture can't do that. Hidden Brain: You, But Better on Apple Podcasts 50 min You, But Better Hidden Brain Social Sciences Think about the resolutions you made this year: to quit smoking, eat better, or get more exercise. And I did that. I'm Shankar Vedantam. : The Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Benefits of Sharing Positive Events, Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. We couldnt survive without the many public radio stations that support our show and they cant survive without you. And then if you are going to be that elliptical, why use the casual word get? But is that true when it comes to the pursuit of happiness? But I find that people now usually use the word to mean very soon, as in we're going to board the plane momentarily. VEDANTAM: It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important, VEDANTAM: There isn't a straightforward translation of this phrase in English. But does a person who says that really deserve the kind of sneering condemnation that you often see? As you're going about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. I know-uh (ph) is there, or something along the lines of babe-uh (ph). And I don't think any of us are thinking that it's a shame that we're not using the language of Beowulf. I think language can certainly be a contributor into the complex system of our thinking about gender. VEDANTAM: Time is another concept that is also central to the way we see and describe the world. Hidden Brain. VEDANTAM: Around the world, we often hear that many languages are dying, and there are a few megalanguages that are growing and expanding in all kinds of ways. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: (Speaking foreign language). Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. So when the perfect woman started writing him letters, it seemed too good to be true. and pick the featured episodes for your show. All rights reserved. This week on Hidden Brain, we revisit a favorite episode exploring what this culture means Jesse always wanted to fall in love. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. In this episode, we explore how long-term relationships have changed over time and whether we might be able to improve marriage by asking less of it. And, I mean, really, it sounds exactly like that. And it irritates people, but there's a different way of seeing literally. Our transcripts are provided by various partners and may contain errors or deviate slightly from the audio. How do you balance the imperative of teaching correct usage? But that can blind us to a very simple source of joy that's all around us. Put this image on your website to promote the show -, Happiness 2.0: The Only Way Out Is Through, Report inappropriate content or request to remove this page. Something new will have started by then, just like if we listen to people in 1971, they sound odd in that they don't say like as much as we do. I saw this bird's-eye view, and I was this little red dot. I said, you know, this weird thing happened. But as Bob Cialdini set out to discover the keys to influence and persuasion, he decided to follow the instincts of his childhood. Learn more. Many of us believe that hard work and persistence are the key to achieving our goals. And as odd as that sounds, I can guarantee you if you watch any TV show with women under a certain age or if you just go out on an American street and listen, you'll find that that's a new kind of exclamatory particle. The only question was in which way. You may also use the Hidden Brain name in invitations sent to a small group of personal contacts for such purposes as a listening club or discussion forum. There are signs it's getting even harder. The fun example I give my students is imagine playing the hokey pokey in a language like this. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #10: (Speaking Russian). Sometimes, life can feel like being stuck on a treadmill. So for example, if Sam grabbed a hammer and struck the flute in anger, that would be one description, like, Sam broke the flute. Whats going on here? VEDANTAM: How the languages we speak shape the way we think and why the words we use are always in flux. Relationships 2.0: What Makes Relationships Thrive | Hidden Brain Media If you take literally in what we can think of as its earliest meaning, the earliest meaning known to us is by the letter. All episodes of Hidden Brain - Chartable Hidden Brain Episodes Happiness 2.0: The Reset Button Many of us rush through our lives, chasing goals and just trying to get everything done. It should be thought of as fun. So what happens is that once literally comes to feel like it means really, people start using it in figurative constructions such as I was literally dying of thirst. And then 10 years later when they're 49, you say, well, that picture of you at 39 is what you really are and whatever's happened to you since then is some sort of disaster or something that shouldn't have happened. BORODITSKY: I had this wonderful opportunity to work with my colleague Alice Gaby in this community called Pormpuraaw in - on Cape York. But actually, that's exactly how people in those communities come to stay oriented - is that they learn it, (laughter) right? One study that I love is a study that asked monolingual speakers of Italian and German and also bilingual speakers of Italian and German to give reasons for why things are the grammatical genders that they are. This is Hidden Brain. And I kind of sheepishly confessed this to someone there. BORODITSKY: And Russian is a language that has grammatical gender, and different days of the week have different genders for some reason. Later things are on the right. And one day, I was walking along, and I was just staring at the ground. So the way you say hi in Kuuk Thaayorre is to say, which way are you heading? And you say that dictionaries in some ways paint an unrealistic portrait of a language. Let's start with the word literally. VEDANTAM: Our conversation made me wonder about what this means on a larger scale. I'm Shankar Vedantam. ADAM COLE, BYLINE: (Singing) You put your southwest leg in, and you shake it all about. We always knew that certain species of animals had abilities to orient that we thought were better than human, and we always had some biological excuse for why we couldn't do it. Does a speaker of a language, like Spanish, who has to assign gender to so many things, end up seeing the world as more gendered? It Takes Two: The Interpersonal Nature of Empathic Accuracy, What Do You Do When Things Go Right? L. Gable, et. That kind of detail may not appear. So I think that nobody would say that they don't think language should change. But we have plenty of words like that in English where it doesn't bother us at all. Copyright Hidden Brain Media | Privacy Policy, Read the latest from the Hidden Brain Newsletter. Look at it. FDA blocks human trials for Neuralink brain implants. And so he suggested it might be the case that the arbitrarily assigned grammatical genders are actually changing the way people think about these days of the week and maybe all kinds of other things that are named by nouns. Perceived Responses to Capitalization Attempts are Influenced by Self-Esteem and Relationship Threat, by Shannon M. Smith & Harry Reis, Personal Relationships, 2012. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: (Speaking foreign language). You're not going to do trigonometry. This week, we kick off a month-long series we're calling Happiness 2.0. This is NPR. You can find the transcript for most episodes of Hidden Brain on our website. So - but if I understand correctly, I would be completely at sea if I visited this aboriginal community in Australia because I have often absolutely no idea where I am or where I'm going. So you have speakers of two different languages look at the same event and come away with different memories of what happened because of the structure of their languages and the way they would normally describe them. All episodes of Hidden Brain - Chartable When she was 12, her family came to the United States from the Soviet Union. And to our surprise, 78 percent of the time, we could predict the gender of the personification based on the grammatical gender of the noun in the artist's native language. And maybe the convenience store or the shop is really not that far away. But, if you dig a little deeper, you may find that they share much more: they might make the same amount of money as you, or share the, We all have to make certain choices in life, such as where to live and how to earn a living. Subscribe to the Hidden Brain Podcast on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode. In this favorite episode from 2021, Cornell University psychologist Anthony Burrow explains why purpose isnt something to be found its something we can develop from within. But it's exactly like - it was maybe about 20 years ago that somebody - a girlfriend I had told me that if I wore pants that had little vertical pleats up near the waist, then I was conveying that I was kind of past it. All of the likes and, like, literallies (ph) might sometimes grate on your nerves, but John McWhorter says the problem might be with you, not with the way other people speak. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Purpose can also boost our health and longevity. Long before she began researching languages as a professor, foreign languages loomed large in her life. If the language stayed the way it was, it would be like a pressed flower in a book or, as I say, I think it would be like some inflatable doll rather than a person. And this is NPR. This week, in the fourth and final installment of our Happiness 2.0 series, psychologist Dacher Having a sense of purpose can be a buffer against the challenges we all face at various stages of life. podcast pages. When we come back, we dig further into the way that gender works in different languages and the pervasive effects that words can play in our lives. I'm Shankar Vedantam. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? We recommend movies or books to a friend. But it's a lovely example of how language can guide you to discover something about the world that might take you longer to discover if you didn't have that information in language. So it's, VEDANTAM: The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized mendokusai was incredibly. And they asked me all kinds of questions about them. VEDANTAM: Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive science professor at the University of California, San Diego. And if that is true, then the educated person can look down on people who say Billy and me went to the store or who are using literally, quote, unquote, "wrong" and condemn them in the kinds of terms that once were ordinary for condemning black people or women or what have you. For example, he might take a bunch of pictures of boys and girls and sort them and say, OK, this is a boy. But what happens when these feelings catch up with us? But can you imagine someone without imagining their gender? Many of us rush through our days, weeks, and lives, chasing goals, and just trying to get everything done. So I think it's something that is quite easy for humans to learn if you just have a reason to want to do it. And so even though I insist that there is no scientific basis for rejecting some new word or some new meaning or some new construction, I certainly have my visceral biases. Hidden Brain If you missed it, Think back to the last time someone convinced you to do something you didn't want to do, or to spend money you didn't want to spend. Hidden Brain - Transcripts al (Eds. Sometimes you just have to suck it up. They believe that their language reflects the true structure of the world. See you next week. VEDANTAM: If you're bilingual or you're learning a new language, you get what Jennifer, experienced - the joy of discovering a phrase that helps you perfectly encapsulate a. feeling or an experience. Cholera and malnourishment await Somalis fleeing . So maybe they're saying bridges are beautiful and elegant, not because they're grammatically feminine in the language, but because the bridges they have are, in fact, more beautiful and elegant. Follow on Apple, Google or Spotify. And a girl goes in this pile. VEDANTAM: I understand that if you're in a picnic with someone from this community and you notice an ant climbing up someone's left leg, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to tell that person, look, there's an ant on your left leg. It's natural to want to run away from difficult emotions such as grief, anger and fear. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Dont Know, by Adam Grant, 2021. There's not a bigger difference you could find than 100 percent of the measurement space. Now, in a lot of languages, you can't say that because unless you were crazy, and you went out looking to break your arm, and you succeeded - right?