Translator: Eleni Tziafa Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Thank you.
It is often said that language is a species-defining characteristic.
What makes us human?
But different languages have different ways
of organising the world around us.
So, if I was giving this talk in Greek,
I would have to specify for every noun,
and every word related to that noun,
its correct grammatical gender: masculine, feminine or neutral.
And I'd have to do this even if the noun refers to an object.
If I was a speaker of Dani,
I'd use one word to describe all black, blue and green colors,
and another word for all the rest.
In fact, most of the world's languages
don't have separate words for green and blue,
and instead use a grue term to refer to both.
Mundurukú speakers have number words only up to four.
Anything larger than that is described as "a handful."
Other languages have no exact number words at all.
So the question I've been trying to answer for the past 20 years is this:
What is the gravity of these language differences on our thought?
This question goes right to the core of what makes us human.
Do we all think the same?
Or are there fundamental differences in thinking between different cultures?
Wittgenstein believed that the limits of his language
meant the limits of his world.
On the other hand, scholars like Pinker and Chomsky
believe that meaning is the same in all languages.
You can express any concept in any language
as easily as transferring the same melody from the piano to the guitar.
But is it really that easy?
A translation of a poem or a novel can never reproduce exactly
the thoughts, emotions, cultural details of the original.
Many of us or most of us in this room can use a different set of sounds
to express the same ideas
because we can speak another language.
But how often have we felt lost in translation?
How do you translate "too fancy" in Greek, for example?
Well, I am going to show you a clip that describes this experience perfectly.
(Japanese) Director: You are sitting quietly in your study.
And there is a bottle of Suntory whiskey on top of the table.
See?
With wholehearted feeling, slowly, look at the camera, tenderly,
and as if you are meeting old friends, say the words.
As if you are Bogie in Casablanca, saying, 'Cheers to you guys,' Suntory time!
Interpreter: He want you to turn, look in camera. Okay?
Bill Murray: That's all he said?
Interpreter: Yes, turn to camera.
BM: Right, does he want me to turn from the right
or turn from the left?
(Japanese) Interpreter: He has prepared and is ready.
He wants to know, when the camera rolls,
would you prefer that he turns to the left,
or would you prefer that he turn to the right?
And that is the kind of thing he would like to know, if you don't mind.
(Japanese) Director: Either way is fine.
That kind of thing doesn't matter.
We don't have time, Bob-san, okay?
You need to hurry. Raise the tension.
Look at the camera. Slowly, with passion.
It's the passion that we want. Do you understand?
Interpreter: Right side ... and with intensity, okay?
BM: Is that everything?
I mean, it seemed like he said quite a bit more than that.
(Japanese) Director: What you are talking about
is not just whiskey, you know.
Do you understand?
It's like you are meeting old friends. Softly, tenderly. Gently.
Let your feelings boil up. Tension is important! Don't forget.
Interpreter: Like an old friend and into the camera.
BM: Okay.
Panos Athanasopoulos: Okay. Bill Murray, genius, right?
So, he gives up trying to understand.
The director has a very specific vision for the commercial,
but it gets lost in translation.
Now, in a world where the majority of its population,
in fact, uses more than one language in order to communicate,
the gravity of language on our thoughts takes on a new importance.
Bilingual real life experiences
captured by examples like the one I've just shown you
have convinced me that Earthlings clearly don't speak a single language.
But according to some experts,
the proposition that different languages have different concepts
is logically impossible
because what about bilinguals?
If it were true, then bilinguals would be constantly confused,
and have a split personality.
So, here are three myths that I want to dispel right away.
The first one is that it's impossible to think in language A
while speaking language B.
But in fact, this is precisely what bilinguals and second language learners
do all the time.
How many times have you thought in Greek while speaking English?
I still do it,
even though my English proficiency is very advanced.
Even the translators of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs do it.
" ... picking a fight for someone else's barn."
(Laughter)
Okay, well, this has a very specific meaning in Greek,
but it's completely meaningless in English -
I hope, I think -
even though English words are used.
Now, this error in meaning caused chaos in social media a few weeks ago,
and it was immediately corrected.
But it shows how it's very possible to think in one language
while using the other.
The remarkable thing is that the reverse is also true.
I even catch myself speaking Greek while thinking in English.
While I am here I say, (Greek) "Thank you; you are welcome; good morning"
to Thessaloniki taxi drivers
and they are very surprised when I do that.
My lab has shown evidence of this parallel processing
from bilingual brain activity,
using one language while thinking in the other.
Greek speakers would not so easily group
cucumber together with aubergine and pepper
even though they all belong to the same conceptual category:
vegetables.
Although the words are presented in English,
the bilingual's brain activity is telling us that, in fact,
they're thinking about the words' grammatical gender in Greek.
And in Greek, cucumber is neutral,
while aubergine and pepper are feminine.
The second myth I'd like to dispel
is that it is impossible to think in a "hybrid" manner.
But don't we all think in a hybrid manner anyway,
regardless of whether we are bilingual or not?
In fact, it is this synthesis of concepts from different languages and cultures
that we're experiencing at a geometric rate
in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Language, any language, is not static, it changes all the time.
It is a synthesis of meaning between different languages
in bilingual situations that is one of the key driving forces
behind language change.
My lab has shown that Greek monolingual brains
make a huge distinction between dark and light blue,
corresponding to "ble" and "galazio,"
in a way that English speaking brains don't.
But bilingual brains show hybrid perception
that is different from both the first language
and the second language.
The final myth I want to dispel
is that it is impossible to think differently in a second language.
Well, for many people,
learning another language is like becoming another person.
Many bilinguals, including myself,
say that they feel like a different person when speaking their different languages.
Why is that?
Studies show that thinking in our first language
is fast, unconscious, very often emotional.
Thinking in our second language
is more systematic, analytical and rule-governed.
We tend to rely more on logic than emotion.
And this is natural
if we think about how we learned our native or first language,
through our parents, care-givers,
people that smothered us with love and other emotions.
Second or foreign languages are often acquired
in less emotional classroom contexts.
The gravity of this affects the way we make moral judgments.
Imagine that the only way you can save the lives of five people
is to kill one person.
Would you kill the one person?
Or would you do nothing and let all five people die?
Believe it or not, your choice depends
on whether you make it in your native language
or in a foreign language.
So in one study, people using a foreign language
were much more willing,
they were twice as likely to sacrifice one life to save five,
rather than using their native language.
This is a conflict between moral rules, "don't take a life,"
and the greater good, "don't let all five people die."
Using a foreign language increases the weight of the greater good
compared with moral rules.
And it doesn't stop there.
People have fears.
One of them is the fear of flying, for example.
Well, in one study, it was shown that if you think
about the possible dangers of travelling by aeroplanes,
you tended to perceive the risks as lower and the benefits as larger
if you were thinking about it in your foreign language.
So a foreign language allows us to break free
from deep-seated, emotional biases and think in a much more logical way.
So if you're afraid of flying, think about it in your second language,
you may not be as afraid.
Okay, well, based on the evidence from bilinguals,
we see that it's very possible
for two minds to coexist in the same person.
In fact, managing this coexistence, keeps your brain healthy,
because studies show that bilingual speakers
show the onset of Alzheimer's and dementia
at least five years later than monolinguals.
So our languages, whether native or second or third,
bear heavily on our understanding of the world and on our behaviour.
But how far down from the Tower of Babel do our languages throw us?
What are the implications of the gravity of language
for society, science and culture?
I want to show you two examples.
Here's the quote I showed earlier.
Now based on this claim, I've been arguing
that differences between different languages
are deeper than just differences in vocabulary and sounds.
But perhaps there's another more basic question we need to ask.
Why do Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker believe in Martians?
And it's not just them, it's millions of humans.
Is there really life on Mars, as David Bowie sings?
Well, this Mars mania has dominated popular culture
in the 20th and 21st centuries,
with songs, movies, science fiction, novels and so on,
but the life on Mars mania started in the 19th century,
when an English-speaking amateur astronomer
read an English translation of an Italian work
describing canals on Mars.
The late astrophysicist Carl Sagan provides a description
of how this happened in his 1980 book "Cosmos."
So Percival Lowell, this the English speaking astronomer,
"was electrified by the announcement in 1877
by an Italian astronomer, Giovanni Schiaparelli,
of canali on Mars ...
Canali in Italian means channels or grooves,
but was promptly translated into English as canals,
a word that implies intelligent design."
Suddenly, the idea that there was life on Mars
seemed entirely possible, somebody must have built those canals.
We've sent so many automated laboratories and missions to Mars,
not one piece of evidence has been found of either canals or of life.
Percival Lowell was fooled into believing there was life on Mars
because a single word in his native language
forced him to do so.
And if a single word has such power over scientific thinking
and popular culture,
imagine what entire languages may do to the minds
of a whole population of speakers.
Which turns me to my final point:
In this graph you see the countries belonging
to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Now, economists here, in collaboration with linguists,
have shown that the variation you see in the graph
is down to the structure of your language
and the tendency to save money.
So, on the left side of the graph,
there are countries like Norway, Japan and Sweden,
who do quite well in terms of savings.
Here on the vertical axis you see the percentage of Gross Domestic Product
that each country manages to save.
On the right side of the graph,
on the very end there, you see countries like the United Kingdom,
the United States and Greece,
who aren't doing so well in terms of national savings.
Now, these are all Westernized, developed, democratic countries,
so what are the differences in the ability to save?
It turns out that it's all down
to how languages separate the present from the future.
The languages spoken
in countries belonging on the right side of the graph
force the speakers to say different things
depending on whether an event is happening now or in the future.
They're so-called "futured" languages.
So in Greek, a "futured" language would say something like:
"I eat dinner with a friend now,
and I will eat dinner with a friend tomorrow."
There is a linguistic barrier between the present and the future
that makes the future seem more distant,
more disconnected from the present.
And because of this, speakers of these languages
may find it more difficult to save for the future.
The languages spoken
in the countries clustered towards the left side of the graph
make no such demand from their speakers.
They're so called "futureless" languages.
So in Swedish, a "futureless" language, you'd say:
"I eat dinner with a friend now, and I eat dinner with a friend tomorrow."
The verb stays the same.
So in these languages, you talk about the future
as you would talk about the present.
And this identical way of talking about the present and the future
leads you to also feel, think about them, identically.
So you take more actions in the present that have consequences in the future.
And it doesn't stop there.
In a questionnaire given out to a number of people,
across a number of different countries,
controlling for a range of things, like socioeconomic status,
religious affiliations and so on,
it was found that speakers of "futureless" languages
were, in fact, less likely to be overweight,
less likely to smoke,
more likely to use condoms.
What do these behaviours have in common?
They all weigh more future benefits.
So you want to smoke less and save more money?
Well, here's something, you learn Japanese or Swedish,
and you're on your way there.
Well, this has to be proven in a laboratory, of course,
scientifically, but it brings me to my conclusion here.
Typically, we think of the benefits of learning a second or foreign language
as giving us better job prospects,
or allowing us to get by on our travels, if we have to ask for directions
or order at a restaurant.
Sure enough, those are important things.
But the payoff is far bigger than we ever imagined.
Learning new languages
is the only way to understanding the minds of other people,
come closer to understanding how they are going to behave,
why they behave the way they do,
and why this behaviour may be different from your own behaviour.
You can transform others.
And the amazing thing is
that learning new languages will also change our behaviour,
allow us to become more flexible and adaptable to new situations.
You can transform yourself.
So learning to think in another language can change our behaviour,
give us a chance to communicate better,
be more understanding of different points of view.
But we're at the very beginning of a brave new world.
In my laboratory at Lancaster, the goal for me and my colleagues is this:
to train people, not in entire languages, but in specific language elements,
like marking the future or not,
that may change or enhance certain behaviours,
like the ability to save money.
Small changes can make a big difference,
and if you think about it, this is how all of evolution works.
In a system characterised by diversity,
becoming flexible and adaptable by quickly learning new behaviours
gives you more chance for survival, makes you a better organism.
If we can do this for the mind,
then we have truly built an indestructible Tower of Babel.
(Greek) Thank you.
(Applause)