First full draft of contributing essay
Ioisan Chen
ENGL-1003-for Non-Native Speakers-SEC009-1213
April 9, 2021
The thinking of mine after I read ‘How Language Shapes Thought’
There is an old saying in China, ‘Chinese culture is extensive and profound.’ And
Chinese, like any other language, is very clever. Also, I found something I didn’t notice
before after this study, like Boroditsky says, People living in two nations, or in different
cultures, will think very differently. For example, the thinking of the people lives in
America and the people live in China may have some different on thinking between them.
Because the difference of the culture, language and so on. These factors would change
people’s mind.
I don’t know about English as well as I know about Chinese. But I know that some
people who don’t know much about my home language think Chinese is a very difficult
language to learn, just like my impression of English. However, they don’t know that
Chinese can be used so skillfully. Since the few last weeks, we began to read and learn
about the article wrote by Boroditsky. This article has a lot of amazing points about
language. And after we read this article. We began to share our own viewpoints to our
classmates and our professor. And in my opinion, as I said at the beginning, Chinese, like
any other language, is very clever. For example, In Chinese, a word can be understood as
more than one meaning. And the more specific example is a Chinese word called “方便”,
it can be translated into literal English for at least two meanings. The first meaning is
‘Convenient’, In Chinese, when the guest is ready for going to leave. The master of the
house will say ‘It’s convenient（方便）for if you want to stay and have a dinner with us.’
In Chinese culture, this conversation is one of the polite conversations means we are not
mind if you want to have a dinner in our house, because the guest always will think It’s
already evening, maybe I may interfere the host’s dinner time if I don’t leave. So, the
host always say ‘It’s convenient （方便）for if you want to stay and have a dinner with
us.’ for politeness. And the second meaning of “方便”is ‘Go to the bathroom’, This
meaning always happens when a kid wants to go to the bathroom, he will say to his
parents, ‘Mom, I want to go to the bath room（方便）. But actually, this meaning of “方
便” Is not common now because the kid will say something more idiomatic Chinese to
represent their meaning. But it still shows people Chinese can be used very skillfully
though some meaning of the word is not common to see.
And the second example is another Chinese word called “静静”, it can be translated into
literal English for at least two meanings too. The first meaning of this Chinese word is
‘Be calm or stay alone’. In Chinese, if something bad like a man broke up with his lover,
this man will say ‘I want to stay alone （静静）. In these circumstances, “静静” Can be
understood as this man want to chill out because something bad happened on him and he
want to stay alone for think about how to figure it out. However, “静静” Have the second
meaning. The second meaning of it is A Chinese girl name. In this time, when “静静” Is
a girl name, the sentence ‘I want to stay alone’ will become ‘I miss 静静.’ And some of
foreigner don’t know “静静” Can be a girl name or he only know the first meaning of
“静静” then the meaning of the sentence they think, will be different.
Finally, the third example is another Chinese word called “梦”, it also can be translated
into English for two meanings, and the first meaning that I going to talk about is dream
which happened during a person is sleeping. In Chinese, when a person asks, ‘Did you
dream（做梦）last night?’ It means a person ask the other person did he have a dream
yesterday night when he is sleeping. This meaning sound very normal and simple. The
second meaning of “梦” Is dream too, but this dream isn’t the dream happened during a
person is sleeping, this dream is a person’s ideal, or we can understand as a target of a
person want to be or a target that a person want to get. When an inferior’s parent or
teacher ask ‘Do you have a dream（梦想）for your career?’ It means this inferior’s parent
want to know what job do his kid want to do in the future.
Finally, at the beginning of this essay, I state like Boroditsky says, People living in two
nations, or in different cultures, will think very differently. For example, the thinking of
the people lives in America and the people live in China may have some different
between them. Because the difference of the culture, language and so on. These factors
would change people’s mind. Combined with Boroditsky’s article, she uses a published
test as an example for prove her viewpoint. ‘Memory. In our studies, published in 2010,
speakers of English, Spanish and Japanese watched videos of two guys popping balloons,
breaking eggs and spilling drinks either intentionally or accidentally. Later we gave them
a surprise memory test.’ And at the end, Boroditsky contrast their memory data, she
found ‘Spanish and Japanese speakers were less likely to describe the accidents
agentively than were English speakers, and they correspondingly remembered who did it
less well than English speakers did. This was not because they had poorer memory
overall—they remembered the agents of intentional events (for which their languages
would naturally mention the agent) just as well as English speakers did. Not only do
languages influence what we remember, but the structures of languages can make it
easier or harder for us to learn new things.’
So, at the end of the essay, I just want to exclaim language is an amazing thing. It’s very
hard to fully understand any one of them and the effect of the language on human
beings.
REFERENCE:
How Language Shapes Thought
Author(s): Lera Boroditsky
Source: Scientific American, Vol. 304, No. 2 (February 2011), pp. 65
Published by: Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc.