the language that you use changes the way that you perceive the world ...Decline In Languages Leads to Decline In Indigenous Biological Knowledgehttps://phys.org/news/2021-06-decline-languages-indigenous-biological-knowledge.htmlAround the world, more than 7,000 languages are spoken, most of them by small populations of speakers in the tropics. Papua New Guinea (PNG), where nine million people speak 850 languages, is the most linguistically diverse place on Earth.
Unfortunately, a new study of secondary school students in PNG shows that the ability to speak Indigenous languages is declining precipitously in the younger generation. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was led by Alfred Kik, a postgraduate student from the Western Highlands of PNG, the first ever PNG researcher to lead a paper in the journal.
UConn's Robert Colwell, Distinguished Research Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Emeritus Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and a coauthor of the study, served as an international evaluator of Kik's Master's thesis at the University of PNG, the basis of the study.
"I've been involved with this group studying the geography of languages, because one of my specialties is biogeography, or the geography of life. I got involved in geography of languages as a geographical modeler of biodiversity, which is not the same by any means," says Colwell. "However, it's strangely coincidental that the most biodiverse places on earth, like Papua New Guinea, are also the most linguistically diverse places."
Tok Pisin, an English-based language serving as PNG's lingua franca, and English, the language of formal education, are replacing Indigenous languages. Kik and his collaborators tested more than 6,000 secondary school students from PNG speaking 392 languages. He found an unexpectedly rapid decline in their language skills. Only 58% of the students, compared to 91% of their parents, were fluent in Indigenous languages. This process is driven by an increasing share of mixed-language families, where each parent speaks a different Indigenous language, as well as life-style changes, particularly urbanization.
Declining language fluency is accompanied by loss of traditional skills including hunting, fishing, growing staple crops, house building from forest materials, and medicinal use of plants. The gradual loss of languages also leads to declining traditional knowledge of rainforest plants and animals.The surveys in 30 secondary schools revealed these schools are a focus of extraordinary language diversity. As an extreme example, 381 students at the Lae Secondary School spoke 126 different PNG languages. Only one third of students speak the same Indigenous language as their best friend at school, suggesting that friendships are formed with low regard to the students' language identity. This trend may also lead to further increase in mixed-language families in the future, accelerating the loss of languages.
Colwell adds,
"A very large proportion of New Guinea people live on their own traditional land in their own language area. They grow crops, they use native plants from the extremely rich rain forests, many of medicinal or other cultural values. To know which plant to use in which situation is crucial knowledge. Knowing the names of useful plants and local birds in the language of their parents shows us whether these high school kids are maintaining not just language, but also traditional knowledge."This knowledge lives on through the Indigenous languages. Fortunately, a large majority (88%) of students want to teach Indigenous languages to their children, appreciating their cultural significance rather than practicality. While crucial for keeping languages alive, this intention faces powerful external pressures as key factors (education, cash economy, road networks, urbanization) associated with language decline are valued in contemporary society, in PNG and elsewhere.
Alfred Kik et al,
Language and ethnobiological skills decline precipitously in Papua New Guinea, the world's most linguistically diverse nation,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021)
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/22/e2100096118------------------------------------------
The Language You Speak Changes the Colors You Seehttps://qz.com/1454466/your-language-influences-your-color-perception-says-a-new-study/amp/There wasn’t an English word for the color “orange” until 200 years after the citrus fruit of the same name arrived in Europe. Before then, the color was called by the two other colors that, when mixed, make orange: “yellow-red.”
This is just one striking example of the ways in which color categories are shaped by culture. Ancient languages, including Greek, Chinese, Hebrew, and Japanese, didn’t have a word for blue. And Russian speakers have two distinct category words for light blue vs dark blue: Something is never “blue,” in Russian, it’s either “siniy” (dark blue) or “goluboy” (light blue.) ...
https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/your-native-language-affects-what-you-can-and-can%E2%80%99t-see--------------------------------------------
The Role of Language In Shaping Our Thoughtshttps://universityobserver.ie/the-role-of-language-in-shaping-our-thoughts/I did, I do, and I will do. English is a language with tenses – the past, the present and the future. However, there are also “tenseless” languages, such as Mandarin. In a recent TED talk by Keith Chen, a Chinese American Behavioural Economist, he posits that speakers of these languages are much better at making decisions, whether this be decisions with regards to saving money, or decisions about health, such as smoking habits. The researchers conclude that tenseless speakers often perceive their life as a continuum – as one unit, and as such, there is a great focus on the impact of their decisions now on themselves in the future. Thus, they are more mindful in making decisions being reminded of the impact this decision may have on their future selves.
In numbers, researchers have found that Chinese-speaking children are much better at math at an earlier stage in life than English-speaking children. The reason for this can be found in the numbering system of the two languages. In Chinese, the system is quite clear and transparent – the number 11 is simply “ten one”. Meanwhile, in English, 11 is “eleven” – a whole new word to add to the child’s vocabulary. This proves more difficult as the child has to learn a whole new word which is not a natural extension of the words it has previously learned.
... In a study conducted on Spanish-Swedish bilinguals, the researchers found that bilingualism can alter your perception of time. They noted that people who speak two languages perceive time “more fluidly” than those who speak one language. In English, time is described spatially, as if one is walking along a path – something happened a “while” ago. Meanwhile, in languages like Spanish, time is described volumetrically – a “big” moment. In their study, the researchers concluded that bilinguals tended to be more readily able to switch between the two concepts of time and as such, they had a more flexible approach to thinking about time. They thus concluded that time is not one universally understood concept in one manner, but instead, interpretations are shaped by language.
