As you know, I’ve been reading Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett. In the book, he posits the theory that the development of language was critical for the development of consciousness. It makes sense, since we seem to “think” in words. I remember that by my last year of French class in high school I was even thinking in French in my next class. He also provides a very intersesting quote from Hellen Keller (from Wrentham, btw):

Before my teacher came to me, I did know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequeately that uncscious, yes conscious time of nothingness… Since I had no power of thought, I did not compare one mental state with another. ~Helen Keller, 1908

So our consciousness is dependent on and shaped by our language. Dennett says:

It is plausible to maintain that the details of a natural language - the vocabulary and grammar of English or Chinese or Spanish - constrain a brain in the manner of a high-level programming language. (p. 302)

The implications of this are very interesting. If a language does not have any words for something, we not only have no way to express it, but we have no way to even THINK it. The language that you speak can have a very profound way on the way you think. Here are two examples recently in the news:

• In yesterday’s New York Times, there was an article about people that speak Aymara. In this language, they describe the past as “ahead of them” and the future as “behind them.” This is apparently because of the importance they place on knowledge: past, known knowledge is in front to be seen, and future unknown knowledge is hidden behind them. But I wonder what other affects this has on their thoughts. Perhaps the one-way motion of time is simply because we have no words to describe it any other way.
• The other example is from the current (June) issue of Scientific American Mind. An article discusses a study where researchers gave personality tests to people that were bilingual. The tested the speakers with personality tests in both English and Spanish. And it turns out their personailities are quite different depending on which language they are speaking at the time!

So our language clearly affects how we think very much. This raises lots of interesting questions. What is our language missing? What things can we not even think about because there are no words for them? How do the thoughts of Spanish or German or Chinese speakers differ from our thoughts? This makes me really feel that I should try to become fluent in a second language, preferably one much different than English.