So, I'll be speaking to you using language ... because I can. This is one these magical abilities that we humans have. We can transmit really complicated thoughts to one another. So what I'm doing right now is, I'm making sounds with my mouth as I'm exhaling. I'm making tones and hisses and puffs, and those are creating air vibrations in the air. Those air vibrations are traveling to you, they're hitting your eardrums, and then your brain takes those vibrations from your eardrums and transforms them into thoughts. I hope.
Obraćam vam se koristeći jezik... jer mogu. To je jedna od čarobnih sposobnosti koju posjeduje ljudski rod. Jedni drugima možemo prenijeti uistinu komplicirane misli. Upravo sada ustima proizvodim zvukove dok izdišem. Proizvodim tonove, zvižduke i zvukove, a oni stvaraju vibracije u zraku. Zračne vibracije putuju k vama, dolaze do vaših bubnjića, zatim vaš mozak preuzima te vibracije od vaših bubnjića i pretvara ih u misli. Nadam se.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
I hope that's happening. So because of this ability, we humans are able to transmit our ideas across vast reaches of space and time. We're able to transmit knowledge across minds. I can put a bizarre new idea in your mind right now. I could say, "Imagine a jellyfish waltzing in a library while thinking about quantum mechanics."
Nadam se da se to događa. Zbog ove sposobnosti, mi ljudi možemo prenositi svoje ideje kroz široki doseg vremena i prostora. Možemo prenositi znanje između umova. Upravo sad u vaš um mogu usaditi bizarnu novu ideju. Mogla bih reći: "Zamislite meduzu kako pleše valcer u knjižnici, dok razmišlja o kvantnoj mehanici."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Now, if everything has gone relatively well in your life so far, you probably haven't had that thought before.
Ako vam je do sada sve išlo relativno dobro u životu, vjerojatno niste pomislili na tako nešto.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
But now I've just made you think it, through language.
No sada ste upravo na to pomislili, kroz jezik.
Now of course, there isn't just one language in the world, there are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world. And all the languages differ from one another in all kinds of ways. Some languages have different sounds, they have different vocabularies, and they also have different structures -- very importantly, different structures. That begs the question: Does the language we speak shape the way we think? Now, this is an ancient question. People have been speculating about this question forever. Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor, said, "To have a second language is to have a second soul" -- strong statement that language crafts reality. But on the other hand, Shakespeare has Juliet say, "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Well, that suggests that maybe language doesn't craft reality.
Naravno, na svijetu ne postoji samo jedan jezik, diljem svijeta priča se oko 7000 jezika. Jezici se jedni od drugih razlikuju na sve moguće načine. Neki jezici imaju različite zvukove, drugi različite vokabulare, različite strukture, također, vrlo bitna stvar, različite strukture. Nameće se pitanje: "Oblikuje li jezik kojim govorimo naš način razmišljanja?" Riječ je o vrlo starom pitanju. Ljudi o njemu raspravljaju od pamtivijeka. Karlo Veliki, car Svetog Rimskog Carstva, rekao je: "Posjedovati drugi jezik jest imati drugu dušu." Snažna izjava da jezik oblikuje stvarnost. S druge strane, Shakespearova Julija rekla je: "Što je u imenu? Ono što zovemo ružom pod bilo kojom riječi jednako bi slatko mirisalo." Što sugerira da jezik možda i ne oblikuje stvarnost.
These arguments have gone back and forth for thousands of years. But until recently, there hasn't been any data to help us decide either way. Recently, in my lab and other labs around the world, we've started doing research, and now we have actual scientific data to weigh in on this question.
O ovim se argumentima raspravlja već tisućama godina. No sve donedavno nije bilo nikakvih podataka koji bi nam pomogli odlučiti se. Nedavno smo u mom, i drugim laboratorijima na svijetu, pokrenuli istraživanje, i sada imamo stvarne znanstvene podatke koji mogu odgovoriti na ovo pitanje.
So let me tell you about some of my favorite examples. I'll start with an example from an Aboriginal community in Australia that I had the chance to work with. These are the Kuuk Thaayorre people. They live in Pormpuraaw at the very west edge of Cape York. What's cool about Kuuk Thaayorre is, in Kuuk Thaayorre, they don't use words like "left" and "right," and instead, everything is in cardinal directions: north, south, east and west. And when I say everything, I really mean everything. You would say something like, "Oh, there's an ant on your southwest leg." Or, "Move your cup to the north-northeast a little bit." In fact, the way that you say "hello" in Kuuk Thaayorre is you say, "Which way are you going?" And the answer should be, "North-northeast in the far distance. How about you?"
Dopustite mi da vam kažem svoje najdraže primjere. Počet ću s primjerom zajednice Aboridžina u Australiji s kojom sam imala prilike raditi. Riječ je o zajednici Kuuk Thaayorre. Žive u Pormpuraawu, najzapadnijem dijelu poluotoka Cape York. Kod ove je zajednice zanimljivo da ne koriste riječi za "lijevo" i "desno", umjesto toga, sve izražavaju u smjeru strana svijeta, sjever, jug, istok i zapad. Kad kažem sve, zaista mislim na sve. Rekli biste nešto poput: "Mrav ti je na jugozapadnoj nozi." Ili: "Pomakni šalicu malo prema sjeveru-sjeveroistoku." U biti, Kuuk Thaayorre kažu "bok" na sljedeći način: "Kojim putem ideš?" Odgovor bi trebao biti: "Daleko, prema sjeveru-sjeveroistoku. A ti?"
So imagine as you're walking around your day, every person you greet, you have to report your heading direction.
Zamislite, dok hodate tijekom dana, svakoj osobi koju pozdravite, morate reći svoj smjer kretanja.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
But that would actually get you oriented pretty fast, right? Because you literally couldn't get past "hello," if you didn't know which way you were going. In fact, people who speak languages like this stay oriented really well. They stay oriented better than we used to think humans could. We used to think that humans were worse than other creatures because of some biological excuse: "Oh, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales." No; if your language and your culture trains you to do it, actually, you can do it. There are humans around the world who stay oriented really well.
No, tako biste se vrlo brzo naučili orijentirati, zar ne? Doslovce ne biste mogli pozdraviti nekoga ako ne biste znali u kojem smjeru idete. Ljudi koji pričaju ovakvim jezicima jako su dobro orijentirani. Orijentirani su bolje nego što smo mislili da ljudi mogu biti. Mislili smo da su ljudska bića gora od ostalih stvorenja zbog nekih bioloških isprika: "Nemamo magnete u kljunu ili na ljuskama." Ne, ako su vas jezik i kultura naučili, to zapravo možete učiniti. Na svijetu žive vrlo dobro orijentirani ljudi.
And just to get us in agreement about how different this is from the way we do it, I want you all to close your eyes for a second and point southeast.
Kako biste bolje shvatili koliko se ovo razlikuje od načina na koji mi to radimo, želim da na sekundu zatvorite oči i pokažete jugoistočno.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Keep your eyes closed. Point. OK, so you can open your eyes. I see you guys pointing there, there, there, there, there ... I don't know which way it is myself --
Držite oči zatvorenima. Pokažite. U redu, možete otvoriti oči. Vidim da ste pokazali tamo, tamo, tamo, tamo... Ni sama ne znam u kojem je to smjeru.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
You have not been a lot of help.
Niste bili od neke pomoći.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
So let's just say the accuracy in this room was not very high. This is a big difference in cognitive ability across languages, right? Where one group -- very distinguished group like you guys -- doesn't know which way is which, but in another group, I could ask a five-year-old and they would know.
Recimo da točnost ovdje nije bila na previsokoj razini. Postoji velika razlika u kognitivnoj sposobnosti u jezicima, zar ne? U jednoj jako raznolikoj skupini, poput vaše, ljudi ne znaju pokazati u kojem je smjeru što, dok bih u nekoj drugoj skupini mogla pitati petogodišnjaka i on bi znao.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
There are also really big differences in how people think about time. So here I have pictures of my grandfather at different ages. And if I ask an English speaker to organize time, they might lay it out this way, from left to right. This has to do with writing direction. If you were a speaker of Hebrew or Arabic, you might do it going in the opposite direction, from right to left.
Postoje i jako velike razlike u poimanju vremena. Ovdje imam fotografije svojeg djeda u različitoj dobi. Ako upitam govornika engleskog jezika da ih poreda kronološki, poredao bi ih ovim redoslijedom, slijeva nadesno. Ovo je povezano sa smjerom pisanja. Da ste govornik hebrejskog ili arapskog, možda biste ih poredali u suprotnom smjeru, zdesna nalijevo.
But how would the Kuuk Thaayorre, this Aboriginal group I just told you about, do it? They don't use words like "left" and "right." Let me give you hint. When we sat people facing south, they organized time from left to right. When we sat them facing north, they organized time from right to left. When we sat them facing east, time came towards the body. What's the pattern? East to west, right? So for them, time doesn't actually get locked on the body at all, it gets locked on the landscape. So for me, if I'm facing this way, then time goes this way, and if I'm facing this way, then time goes this way. I'm facing this way, time goes this way -- very egocentric of me to have the direction of time chase me around every time I turn my body. For the Kuuk Thaayorre, time is locked on the landscape. It's a dramatically different way of thinking about time.
Međutim, kako bi Kuuk Thaayorre, Aboridžini o kojima sam vam govorila, to učinili? Oni ne koriste riječi "lijevo" i "desno". Dat ću vam ideju. Kada posjednemo ljude prema jugu, vrijeme organiziraju slijeva nadesno. Kada ih posjednemo prema sjeveru, vrijeme organiziraju zdesna nalijevo. Kada ih posjednemo prema istoku, vrijeme prilazi tijelu. Koji je uzorak? Istok prema zapadu, zar ne? Za njih, vrijeme uopće nije ovisno o tijelu, ono ovisi o okolišu. Ako sam okrenuta u ovom smjeru, meni vrijeme ide ovako, ako gledam u ovom smjeru, vrijeme ide ovako. Ako gledam u ovom smjeru, ide ovako. Jako egocentrično s moje strane, da vrijeme ide za mnom svaki put kada se okrenem. Za Kuuk Thaayorre, vrijeme je određeno okolišem. Riječ je o izuzetno drugačijem načinu poimanja vremena.
Here's another really smart human trick. Suppose I ask you how many penguins are there. Well, I bet I know how you'd solve that problem if you solved it. You went, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight." You counted them. You named each one with a number, and the last number you said was the number of penguins. This is a little trick that you're taught to use as kids. You learn the number list and you learn how to apply it. A little linguistic trick. Well, some languages don't do this, because some languages don't have exact number words. They're languages that don't have a word like "seven" or a word like "eight." In fact, people who speak these languages don't count, and they have trouble keeping track of exact quantities. So, for example, if I ask you to match this number of penguins to the same number of ducks, you would be able to do that by counting. But folks who don't have that linguistic trick can't do that.
Evo još jednog pametnog ljudskog trika. Recimo da vas pitam koliko pingvina vidite. Kladim se da znam kako biste riješili taj problem. Išli biste: "Jedan, dva, tri, četiri, pet, šest, sedam, osam." Izbrojali biste ih. Svakog biste nazvali brojem, i zadnji broj koji biste rekli označio bi broj pingvina. Ovo je mali trik koji ste naučili kad ste bili mali. Naučili ste brojeve i kako ih primijeniti. Mali jezični trik. Ipak, neki jezici to ne čine, jer neki jezici nemaju precizne riječi za brojeve. Postoje jezici koji nemaju riječ "sedam" ili "osam". U stvari, ljudi koji govore ovim jezicima ne broje, i imaju problema s utvrđivanjem točnih količina. Ako vas, primjerice, zamolim da ovaj broj pingvina sparite s istim brojem patki mogli biste to učiniti brojanjem. No ljudi koji nemaju taj jezični trik to ne mogu učiniti.
Languages also differ in how they divide up the color spectrum -- the visual world. Some languages have lots of words for colors, some have only a couple words, "light" and "dark." And languages differ in where they put boundaries between colors. So, for example, in English, there's a word for blue that covers all of the colors that you can see on the screen, but in Russian, there isn't a single word. Instead, Russian speakers have to differentiate between light blue, "goluboy," and dark blue, "siniy." So Russians have this lifetime of experience of, in language, distinguishing these two colors. When we test people's ability to perceptually discriminate these colors, what we find is that Russian speakers are faster across this linguistic boundary. They're faster to be able to tell the difference between a light and dark blue. And when you look at people's brains as they're looking at colors -- say you have colors shifting slowly from light to dark blue -- the brains of people who use different words for light and dark blue will give a surprised reaction as the colors shift from light to dark, as if, "Ooh, something has categorically changed," whereas the brains of English speakers, for example, that don't make this categorical distinction, don't give that surprise, because nothing is categorically changing.
Jezici se također razlikuju prema podjeli boja, vizualnom svijetu. Neki jezici imaju mnogo riječi za boje, neki tek nekoliko riječi, "svijetlo" i "tamno". I jezici se razlikuju kod postavljanja granica među bojama. Na primjer, u engleskom jeziku postoji riječ za plavu boju koja obuhvaća sve boje koje vidite na zaslonu, ali u ruskom ne postoji samo jedna riječ. Govornici ruskog trebaju razlikovati svijetlo plavu boju, "galuboj", i tamno plavu, "sinij". Rusi imaju cjeloživotno jezično iskustvo razlikovanja ovih dviju boja. Kada ispitujemo ljudske granice u opažaju razlikovanja boja, vidimo da su govornici ruskog brži kod ovog jezičnog ograničenja. Brže će primijetiti razliku između svijetlo i tamno plave boje. Dok gledate ljudski mozak kako promatra boje, recimo dok se one polako mijenjaju od svijetle prema tamno plavoj, mozgovi ljudi koji koriste različite riječi za svijetlo i tamno plavu reagirat će iznenađeno tijekom promjene boja, u stilu "O, nešto se jako promijenilo", dok mozgovi govornika engleskog, na primjer, koji ne rade ovu kategoričku razliku, neće biti tako iznenađeni, jer se ništa izričito ne mijenja.
Languages have all kinds of structural quirks. This is one of my favorites. Lots of languages have grammatical gender; every noun gets assigned a gender, often masculine or feminine. And these genders differ across languages. So, for example, the sun is feminine in German but masculine in Spanish, and the moon, the reverse. Could this actually have any consequence for how people think? Do German speakers think of the sun as somehow more female-like, and the moon somehow more male-like? Actually, it turns out that's the case. So if you ask German and Spanish speakers to, say, describe a bridge, like the one here -- "bridge" happens to be grammatically feminine in German, grammatically masculine in Spanish -- German speakers are more likely to say bridges are "beautiful," "elegant" and stereotypically feminine words. Whereas Spanish speakers will be more likely to say they're "strong" or "long," these masculine words.
Jezici imaju sve moguće strukturalne uvrnutosti. Ovo mi je jedna od najdražih. Mnogo jezika ima gramatički rod: svaka imenica ima svoj rod, često muški ili ženski. I oni se razlikuju od jezika do jezika. Primjerice, "sunce" je ženskog roda u njemačkom, ali muškog u španjolskom, dok je "mjesec" obrnuto. Bi li ovo moglo imati ikakve posljedice na to kako ljudi razmišljaju? Misle li govornici njemačkog da je sunce više žensko, dok je mjesec više muškog izgleda? Zapravo, izgleda da je upravo tako. Ako pitate govornike njemačkog i španjolskog da opišu, primjerice, most, poput ovoga ovdje, "most" je gramatički ženskog roda u njemačkom, gramatički muškog roda u španjolskom. Govornici njemačkog prije će reći da su mostovi "divni", "elegantni", tipične ženske riječi. Dok će govornici španjolskog reći da su "snažni" ili "dugi", tipične muške riječi.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Languages also differ in how they describe events, right? You take an event like this, an accident. In English, it's fine to say, "He broke the vase." In a language like Spanish, you might be more likely to say, "The vase broke," or, "The vase broke itself." If it's an accident, you wouldn't say that someone did it. In English, quite weirdly, we can even say things like, "I broke my arm." Now, in lots of languages, you couldn't use that construction unless you are a lunatic and you went out looking to break your arm -- (Laughter) and you succeeded. If it was an accident, you would use a different construction.
Jezici se također razlikuju u opisivanju događaja, zar ne? Uzmite za primjer ovu nezgodu. U engleskom je u redu reći: "Razbio je vazu." U jeziku poput španjolskog, prije ćete reći: "Vaza je razbijena.", ili "Vaza se razbila." Ako je riječ o nezgodi, ne biste rekli da je netko to učinio. U engleskom, iako zvuči dosta čudno, možemo reći nešto poput: "Slomio sam si ruku." U mnogim jezicima ne biste mogli koristiti takav oblik osim ako ste ludi i išli ste sami sebi lomiti ruku. (Smijeh) I uspjeli u tome. Ako je riječ o nesreći, koristili biste drugačiju konstrukciju.
Now, this has consequences. So, people who speak different languages will pay attention to different things, depending on what their language usually requires them to do. So we show the same accident to English speakers and Spanish speakers, English speakers will remember who did it, because English requires you to say, "He did it; he broke the vase." Whereas Spanish speakers might be less likely to remember who did it if it's an accident, but they're more likely to remember that it was an accident. They're more likely to remember the intention. So, two people watch the same event, witness the same crime, but end up remembering different things about that event. This has implications, of course, for eyewitness testimony. It also has implications for blame and punishment. So if you take English speakers and I just show you someone breaking a vase, and I say, "He broke the vase," as opposed to "The vase broke," even though you can witness it yourself, you can watch the video, you can watch the crime against the vase, you will punish someone more, you will blame someone more if I just said, "He broke it," as opposed to, "It broke." The language guides our reasoning about events.
Ovo ima posljedice. Ljudi koji govore različitim jezicima obraćaju pozornost na različite stvari, ovisno o tome na što ih usmjerava jezik kojim govore. Pokažemo li istu nezgodu govornicima engleskog i španjolskog, govornici engleskog će zapamtiti tko je izazvao nezgodu, jer engleski zahtijeva da kažete: "On je to učinio: razbio je vazu." S druge strane, govornici španjolskog vjerojatno neće zapamtiti tko je krivac ako se radi o nezgodi, već će zapamtiti činjenicu da je riječ o nezgodi. Skloniji su zapamtiti namjeru. Dakle, dvoje ljudi gleda isti događaj, svjedoče istom zločinu, ali zapamte drugačije stvari o tom događaju. Naravno da ovo ima neizbježne posljedice za svjedočenja očevidaca. Također ima posljedice za optužbu i kažnjavanje. Dakle, govornicima engleskog pokažem nekoga kako razbija vazu, i kažem "Razbio je vazu." umjesto "Vaza se razbila.", čak i ako sami tome svjedočite, pogledate video, možete pogledati zločin nad vazom, više ćete kazniti nekoga drugoga, okrivit ćete nekoga drugoga više ako kažem "On ju je razbio." umjesto "Razbila se." Jezik usmjerava naše rasuđivanje događaja.
Now, I've given you a few examples of how language can profoundly shape the way we think, and it does so in a variety of ways. So language can have big effects, like we saw with space and time, where people can lay out space and time in completely different coordinate frames from each other. Language can also have really deep effects -- that's what we saw with the case of number. Having count words in your language, having number words, opens up the whole world of mathematics. Of course, if you don't count, you can't do algebra, you can't do any of the things that would be required to build a room like this or make this broadcast, right? This little trick of number words gives you a stepping stone into a whole cognitive realm.
Pokazala sam vam nekoliko primjera kako jezik uvelike može oblikovati naše razmišljanje, i to čini na razne načine. Jezik može imati veliki utjecaj, kao kod primjera prostora i vremena, gdje ljudi raspolažu prostorom i vremenom na potpuno drugačije načine. Jezik također može imati značajan utjecaj kao što smo vidjeli u slučaju s brojevima. Brojati u svom jeziku, imati riječi za brojeve, otvara cijeli novi svijet matematike. Ako ne brojite, ne možete se baviti algebrom, ne možete učiniti stvari poput gradnje ovakve dvorane, ili emitirati ovaj prijenos, zar ne? Ovaj mali trik s brojevima odskočna je daska u cjelovito kognitivno carstvo.
Language can also have really early effects, what we saw in the case of color. These are really simple, basic, perceptual decisions. We make thousands of them all the time, and yet, language is getting in there and fussing even with these tiny little perceptual decisions that we make. Language can have really broad effects. So the case of grammatical gender may be a little silly, but at the same time, grammatical gender applies to all nouns. That means language can shape how you're thinking about anything that can be named by a noun. That's a lot of stuff.
Jezik također može imati prijevremene učinke, kao što smo vidjeli u slučaju boja. Ovo su stvarno jednostavne, osnovne uočljive odluke. Cijelo ih vrijeme donosimo na tisuće, i jezik se uvlači u njih, uznemiravajući čak i sitne odluke koje donosimo. Jezik može imati uistinu široki utjecaj. Iako se slučaj s gramatičkim rodom može činiti luckastim, istovremeno, gramatički se rod primjenjuje na sve imenice. To znači da jezik može oblikovati kako razmišljate o bilo čemu što se može imenovati imenicom. A to je mnogo toga.
And finally, I gave you an example of how language can shape things that have personal weight to us -- ideas like blame and punishment or eyewitness memory. These are important things in our daily lives.
Naposljetku, pokazala sam vam primjer kako jezik može oblikovati nešto što jako utječe na nas, poput krivice ili kažnjavanja ili sjećanja očevidaca. Ovo su važne stvari za našu svakodnevicu.
Now, the beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is. Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000 -- there are 7,000 languages spoken around the world. And we can create many more -- languages, of course, are living things, things that we can hone and change to suit our needs. The tragic thing is that we're losing so much of this linguistic diversity all the time. We're losing about one language a week, and by some estimates, half of the world's languages will be gone in the next hundred years. And the even worse news is that right now, almost everything we know about the human mind and human brain is based on studies of usually American English-speaking undergraduates at universities. That excludes almost all humans. Right? So what we know about the human mind is actually incredibly narrow and biased, and our science has to do better.
Ljepota jezične raznolikosti otkriva nam genijalnost i fleksibilnost ljudskog uma. Ljudski umovi nisu stvorili jedan, već 7000 kognitivnih univerzuma. U svijetu se govori 7000 jezika. I možemo ih stvoriti još. Jezici su, naravno, živa materija, i možemo raditi na njima i mijenjati ih prema našim potrebama. Tragično je da gubimo toliko ove jezične raznolikosti cijelo vrijeme. Gubimo jedan jezik tjedno, i prema procjenama, u sljedećih sto godina nestat će pola svjetskih jezika. Još je gora vijest da upravo sada, gotovo sve što znamo o ljudskom umu i mozgu temelji se na studijama američkih studenata, govornika engleskog, na sveučilištima. To isključuje gotovo sve ljude, zar ne? Ono što znamo o ljudskom umu zapravo je nevjerojatno uskogrudno i pristrano, i naša znanost mora biti bolja od toga.
I want to leave you with this final thought. I've told you about how speakers of different languages think differently, but of course, that's not about how people elsewhere think. It's about how you think. It's 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?"
Želim vas ostaviti s ovom posljednjom misli. Rekla sam vam kako govornici raznih jezika različito razmišljaju, ali naravno, ne radi se o tome kako ljudi negdje drugdje razmišljaju. Važno je kako vi razmišljate. Kako jezik kojim govorite oblikuje vaš način razmišljanja. To vam pruža priliku da se zapitate: "Zašto razmišljam kako razmišljam?" "Kako bih mogao razmišljati drugačije?" Također, "Kakve misli želim stvoriti?"
Thank you very much.
Najljepša vam hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)