EduCareer StaffBlog"Rinjin Blog" | "EduCareer"Supporting your career in English teaching in the Japanese school system

Language Acquisition and Thought

2010/09/13

This article from the New York Times talks about language acquisition and how while your native language might not control what you can think about, it does control what you must think about- for example, native speakers of gendered languages who reveal the sex of their companion simply by saying "I met my friend", or speakers of geographic languages who always use cardinal directions as opposed to "behind" or "left".

We also see this in learning Japanese, where we are obliged to think about the age and station of who we are conversing with, or in teaching English, where students must learn that just because the subject seems obvious to them they must still write it. Each language reflects and controls a portion of every societies' culture- that is why the teaching and learning of it is so important.

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