Sociolinguistic Artifacts

A recent study has proposed that humans have different ways of perceiving the world around them depending on the language they speak. For example, when native English speakers were asked to describe the taste of bitter-flavored water, responses varied from "bitter, to salty, sour, not bad, plain, mint, like ear wax, medicinal, and so forth." Meanwhile, when Farsi speakers were asked to describe the same drink, it was nearly unanimously "talkh," the Farsi word for bitter. Some languages are more equipped in describing smells, for instance, than other languages -- and that affects how we, as users of language, perceive the world around us. [Published on 02-27-2019]