Learning New Languages Opens Up Your Worldview

The Wall Street Journal: “New cognitive research suggests that language profoundly influences the way people see the world.” Here are some highlights:

• Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.
• In one study, Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn’t remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped: “The vase broke itself,” rather than “John broke the vase.”