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Cause And Effect Essay About Language

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Did you know that the English word ‘face’ is shockingly similar to the French word ‘fesse’, meaning rear end? This is just one example of the numerous ways that language affects our lives. Recent studies have shown that language affects almost every part of your life, and has a much greater influence on you than you think it does. Whether we realize it or not, language affects even the smallest things in our lives that we seldom notice. Language stimulates all parts of the brain, especially altering your perception of color, emotion, and even time!
First of all, language affects our perception of color. For example, many languages don’t have words for certain colors, or consider some colors more basic than others. According to the Business …show more content…

The effect of language on time has been observable in bilinguals and polyglots, in a phenomenon that scientists refer to as code-switching, the unique action of switching between two or more languages unconsciously. [9] This anomaly has opened up another avenue for linguists and neurologists. For example, in English, when using the word down to refer to time, we usually think of something that has passed. But in Mandarin, down is used to describe a coming event. [8] The slight variation in the perception of time in different languages could make a big difference, in this case, it could affect perception of the aging process. A study performed by Professor Athanasopoulos of Lancaster University once again proves the phenomenon of code-switching and its effect on our perception of time. In this experiment, he prompted bilinguals with a word in a certain language and asked them to estimate time as it passed, and the results were crystal clear. When prompted with the English word, bilinguals automatically responded, perceiving time as distance. When prompted with the Spanish, they responded perceiving time as volume. [7] The experiment confirms the fact that speakers of different languages do in fact perceive time differently. The passage of time is perceived in 2 main ways- through distance and volume, and through various experiments, it has been confirmed that this hypothesis is true, along with the discovery that speakers of different languages also perceive the future and past

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