Table of ContentsHow Language Shapes The Way We ThinkConclusionReferencesLanguage shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about. – Benjamin Lee WhorfSay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Everything we do shapes the way we think. This is called the “butterfly effect.” Even the smallest change can cause the worst situations, such as disasters. Who we are, technically, is just a construct made from every situation we've been in and every person we've ever met. Everything that happens to us changes our brain on a chemical level. Even the way other languages ​​sound shapes the way we think. Different sounding languages ​​can trigger different associations, meaning you'll get different ideas from randomly scrolling through the verbal garbage your brain creates, which, again, makes you think differently. So in this essay we will explore how language shapes the way we think? Some languages ​​are more difficult to understand while reading, which means, for example, that you will read less if it is very difficult to do. The less knowledge your brain contains, the less it can also think. How language shapes the way we think If you've ever read George Orwell's 1984 work, then you know the idea behind Newspeak: by creating a language with limited grammar and vocabulary, the political party wants to limit the freedom of thought, reduce the number of “thought crimes”. “From thoughts to words, from words to action”. You cannot think of freedom if there is no word for freedom in your language. Erase the concept of freedom from history and no one will ever challenge your authority. The human brain has difficulty understanding things for which we don't have words. For example, ancient people – ancient China, ancient Greece, and Rome – didn’t even have the word “blue” in their language. There was no blue, you couldn't distinguish it from green or darker shades. Their literature depicts the world as a mostly black and white place with some red and yellow inclusions. This makes us think that perhaps the ancients saw the world as a murky place, devoid of almost any color. To this day, Amazonian tribes do not distinguish blue as a different color, but they have many shades of green. The same words in different languages ​​can differ significantly, as language transfers cultural history. An example of this would be jargon. Otherwise, neutral words, when translated, may suddenly become inappropriate. The only example that comes to mind at the moment is the fact that light blue in Russian means homosexual, which Russians generally don't like very much. For Poles, the alternative word means "hot", which is no easier to understand than "blue" at first glance. Simply not knowing the country's history can seriously limit your understanding of words. Blue meaning homosexual comes from the nobility (called blue-blooded people) who practice this. That makes more sense, doesn't it? Another example of how language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about are jokes, puns, and puns as a whole. Almost every bilingual person most likely knows that it is extremely difficult to translate a joke so that it is accurate 100% of the time. This is because many jokes are based on puns. Have you ever.