Hidden Brain - Watch Your Mouth

If you're bilingual or multilingual, you may have noticed that different languages make you stretch in different ways. This week, we revisit a favorite 2018 conversation with cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky. She studies how the structure of the languages we speak can change the way we see the world. Then, a 2017 conversation with linguist and author John McWhorter, who shares how languages evolve, and why we're sometimes resistant to those changes.

Duration: 57m
Broadcast on: 03 Oct 2022
Audio Format: other

If you like today's show, be sure to check out our recent episode about how the culture we live in can shape the emotions we feel. And if you like our work, please consider a financial contribution to help us make many more episodes like this one.

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This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. If you grew up speaking a language other than English, you probably reach for words in your native tongue without even thinking about it. - (speaks in foreign language) - There are phrases in every language that are deeply evocative and often untranslatable. If you're studying a new language, you might discover these phrases not in your textbooks, but when you're hanging out with friends. - My name is Jennifer Jia Conne Cruz. - Jennifer moved to Japan for graduate school. - And I ended up living there for 10 years. - It took just one week of living in Japan for Jennifer to pick up an important new term. - (speaks in foreign language) - Here's what she says it means. - It's this phrase that describes something between I can't be bothered or I don't want to do it or I recognize the incredible effort that goes into something even though it shouldn't be so much of an effort. Still don't have a clear picture, imagine this. - It's a Sunday afternoon and it's raining outside and you're at home in your pajamas all nice and cuddly and maybe you're watching Netflix or something and you suddenly get a craving for potato chips and you realize that you have none in the kitchen and there's nothing else you really want to eat and maybe the convenience store, the shop is really not that far away. Maybe it's even less than 100 meters away but you just can't bring yourself to even throw your coat on over your pajamas and put your boots on and go outside and walk those 100 meters because somehow it break the coziness and it's just too much of an effort and you can't be bothered to do it even though it's such a small thing. So it's (speaks in foreign language) - The moment she heard it, Jennifer realized Mendexai was incredibly useful. - It describes this feeling so perfectly in such a wonderfully packaged encapsulated way and you can just, it rolls off the tongue and you can just throw it out (speaks in foreign language) I just don't want to do it. - If you're bilingual or you're learning a new language, you get what Jennifer experienced. The joy of discovering a phrase that helps you perfectly

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