Analysis: To Have Another Language Is To Have A Second Soul

Great Essays
Charlemagne once said, “To have another language is to have a second soul” (BrainyQuote). As a native Spanish speaker, I find this statement to be true since I think about objects different than an English native speaker would. For example, when thinking about objects Spanish speakers tend to associate objects with genders while English speakers do not. The topic of language and how people think has been studied by a few Linguists, Psychologists, and Neuroscientists. Research and studies have shown that our native language modifies the way people retrieve memories, think about time , and think about space. We all have memories, and each one differs from the next person with slight details that are altered. At times the way we remember certain …show more content…
The Conversation is a website that had one really interesting article “How the Language you speak Changes your view of the world.” Within the Article, there was a subheading that said: “ Germans know where they’re going.” This part of the article talked about how Germans focus more on the outcomes of the actions while English speakers focus more on the action itself. The English language grammatically obliges speakers to mark the tense of an action. For example, looking at a picture of a woman walking in a parking lot an English speaker would say “ The woman is walking” and a German speaker would say “ The woman walks towards her car.” Although they look at the same picture the language they speak affects how they view the picture and talk about it. An article on BGR also states that German speakers tend to construct goal-oriented sentences from ambiguous pictures that focus on the beginning, middle, and end of an event compared to English speakers who focus on the action itself (BGR). It was interesting to see how the language one speaks can affect the way they view an event. New York Times also published an Article “ Does Your Language Shape the Way You Think?” Compared to English, the Chinese language does not have verb tenses. Chinese speakers are not obliged to specify the exact time of an event and therefore are not forced to think about time when describing an event. Chinese speakers, mainly Mandarin, tend to use a more active voice than English speakers. For example, a Mandarin speaker would say: “ It rain tomorrow” compared to an English speaker who would say “ It will rain tomorrow.” This was in a Ted Talk I heard about how Language can affect an individual 's ability to save money. I thought it was interesting how the way people talk about time can also affect how they think and act about time. Chinese speakers are less likely to think about the future and therefore save

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Lost in translation, an article written by Lera Borodistky compares the way humans speak and think based on which language they speak.…

    • 294 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    All students of the American education system should be fluent English speakers. Martin Espada and Richard Rodriguez, two revered essay writers both possess conflicting opinions about how bilingualism should be handled. Espada believes that language has ties to culture, and they should all be preserved; however, Rodriguez’s view of bilingualism is more methodical, he thinks learning the language used for public communication is the most beneficial method, regardless of any cultural ties that may be abandoned. Martin Espada’s view of bilingualism can be explained through his usage of a metaphorical analogy, wherein his essay he wrote, “English and Spanish are like two dogs I love. English is an obedient dog.…

    • 755 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    D. Even though my flashbulb memory is a little different than my mom’s flashbulb memory I do believe that my memory is accurate. If you look at both of the flashbulb memories you only see minor differences between the stories, which means for the most part both of use remember the event with the same details. I believe that if there had been bigger differences in the stories then my flashbulb memory might not have been as accurate. Certain parts of the story has changed over time because some of the details of the event have been lost due to the event taking place a couple of years ago. Also over time the details that I have lost might be filled with details that my brain believes fits the situation and makes the most since.…

    • 135 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In comparison, recalling memory can be an extremely complicated process; not only the memory of the fact itself, but also ways of interpreting the memory are required to recall memories. Especially when interpreting…

    • 504 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Autobiographical Memory

    • 1685 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Our expectations, experiences, and current knowledge all affect how memories are created. Many people do not realize how flawed our memory can be. The largest component of our memory is called autobiographical memory, it is a collection of memories that can describe our past. Autobiographical memory includes both episodic and semantic memory. For example, we can remember hiking in the Smokey mountains, seeing all the trees and remembering some of the conversations we had with friends (episodic memory) ; It might also include how you traveled to the Smokey mountains (by plane or car) or a list of your hiking gear and the time of day you hiked (semantic memory).…

    • 1685 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This is mirrored back to us through subjects in school that we study or even the programs we watch on TV. Cultures also include different languages. It is not so much the language that differs, but rather the meaning of phrases within different languages. “A whale of a time,” means to have a great time in Ireland, but in the US we would just say “We had a great time.” If someone were to come to the US and us an Irish phrase, we would not understand what the person meant, just simply because of our differing geographies and different cultures that go along with those geographies.…

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Code-Switching In Spanish

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Spanglish is a term that describes the linguistic blend of English words with Spanish. Similar to an actual language, Spanglish has its cultural importance since it strongly influences the way in which bilingual individuals communicate and express ideas and opinions. In order to understand when and why bilingual individuals insert or switch words from English to Spanish or vice versa, I interviewed and recorded a conversation between my 18 year old cousin, Chave, and I. However, most of the interesting aspects of her use of Spanglish was evident through her conversations with her family members. Through close observation it was evident that code switchers or “Spanglish” speakers have a complex way of deciding when and with who it is acceptable and even necessary to code switch.…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Maxine Clair Cherry Bomb

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Memories are an individual’s stored experiences from certain moments in his or her past. Memories carry feelings based on the experience such as nostalgia when thinking about a past lover or anger when thinking about a moment of betrayal, but these remembered feelings and saved perceptions of the situation do not always match the physical impact of the event. Children are especially susceptible to this as innocence softens the severity of situations. In the excerpt from her story “Cherry Bomb,” Maxine Clair explores a myriad of literary techniques in order to characterize the narrator’s childhood memories as positive even though in reality are depressive.…

    • 528 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    For example, “Tengo el papel” (I have the paper) versus “Tengo hambre” (I am hungry). Just as Russell G. Schuh said in his essay, there is no evidence that can claim that Spanish and English speakers view the world in…

    • 231 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Black Muddy River

    • 771 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “When it seems like the night will last forever, and there’s nothing left to do but count the years…” (Garcia). The Grateful Dead, in their song “Black Muddy River,” unwittingly describe the life of the person afflicted with amnesia. The difference between the amnesia laden life and “Black Muddy River” is that amnesiacs do not know they have missed years to count. Amnesia, a memory disorder that prevents the encoding or retrieval of new (anterograde amnesia) or old memories (retrograde amnesia) effects only a very small percentage of the world population, but severely decreases the quality of life (“Amnesia”, “Mayo Clinic”).…

    • 771 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Essay On Eyewitness

    • 989 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Few pieces of evidence are more powerful than an eyewitness to a crime pointing to a suspect in a police lineup and exclaiming “That’s him! He’s the one!” There are also few pieces of evidence more flawed, imperfect, and subject to manipulation by police and prosecutors. Study after study has shown eyewitness identification to be notoriously unreliable. In fact, as the Innocence Project notes: “Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, playing a role in more than 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide.”…

    • 989 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Introduction Mental illness is prevalent in today’s society. 18.1 percent of all American adults are currently living with a mental illness, with 4.1 percent having a condition severe enough to considerably interfere with day to day activities.18 In total, this is 43.6 MILLION people who struggle with anxiety, depression, ADHD, autism, bipolar, borderline personality, dissociative disorders, eating disorders, OCD, PTSD, schizoaffective disorder, or schizophrenia. Overall Female…

    • 1296 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ptd Outline

    • 590 Words
    • 3 Pages

    What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? “According to the American Psychiatric Association, Post-traumatic stress disorder is known to be an anxiety disorder that resulted from a particular tragic or terrifying incident stimulating major stress. Individual with PTSD normally have constant frightening thoughts & memories of their past encounters, this makes them emotionally numb to their close relatives or friends. PTSD knows no age limit or barrier, it can happen at any age.…

    • 590 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Distortion Of Memory

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Memory is the encoding, storage and retrieval of past events and experiences, it is present in the short term memory store and then transferred to the long term memory store. The retrieval of memory isn’t always accurate as memories become distorted over time. The distortion of these memories are due to some influencing factors such as language, age, reconstructive errors and emotion. Taking all these factors into consideration leads to the point that memory is only to some extent reliable. Language plays a big role in how we remember, language is used to convey how we remembered the event but it is also a influence on how we remembered the event.…

    • 1206 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Short Term Memory Essay

    • 1556 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Do you ever remember doing or seeing something, and wonder to yourself how on earth did I remember that? Well, in this paper I will try to help you get a better understanding. I will explain how things you do, see, or hear become a memory. I will also discuss long term and short term memory along with why and what makes you forget. There will also be a page about amnesia , and the different systems and types of memories.…

    • 1556 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays