How language shapes the way we think by Lera Boroditsky

Lera Boroditsky is a cognitive scientist. This is a talk delivered by her at TEDWomen 2017 (November 2017).

There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world -- and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language -- from an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian -- that suggest the answer is a resounding yes. "The beauty of linguistic diversity is that it reveals to us just how ingenious and how flexible the human mind is," Boroditsky says. "Human minds have invented not one cognitive universe, but 7,000."

The story of colour names around the world

The naming of things and animals around us is heavily influenced by our environment and culture.

"In 1969, two Berkeley researchers, Paul Kay and Brent Berlin, published a book on a pretty groundbreaking idea: that every culture in history, when they developed their languages, invented words for colors in the exact same order."

The video is published by Vox. 

What your speaking style, like, says about you

This is an interesting talk on sociolinguistics and, unfortunately, a brief analysis of the words "like" and "ne" (negation in French) by Dr. Vera Regan at TEDxDublin.

“Weird Al” Yankovic: “Word Crimes”

This is a fun song by “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Word Crimes.” It pokes fun at the popular trend these days of abbreviating words, misspelling and erroneous grammar in general. I should think English teachers particularly would perhaps find this a useful teaching aid.

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