Can language change the way you think? [The Science of Arrival]

[@JKTCGMV13]

Putting a spoiler warning for an 8 year old movie is admirable

[@LanguageofMind]

Can't be too careful

[@Wingedmagician]

Don’t you mean movie?

[@JKTCGMV13]

@@Wingedmagician corrected

[@_apsis]

8 years? damn…

[@josephnarvaez9507]

​@@_apsisikr? God I'm getting old

[@jocosesonata]

Commenting for the algorithm Gods to notice. Linguistics is an underrated study, at least in terms of media popularity.

[@tetraquark2402]

They can track where populations came from with it even when the language is different since it will still have commonish word

[@Dave_of_Mordor]

That's because people think anything outside of STEM is useless

[@incogniftoar3943]

Because the media strive to monopolize it

[@KalishKovacs]

I'm learning it now.

[@rmschindler144]

agreed

[@rowandoggo]

ASL signer here, thank you for acknowledging that English and ASL are cometely separate languages. I will often be standing as a proxy interpreter between my Deaf and Hearing friends, and my hearing friends cant seem to get that fact.

[@GeoGonzalez-xg5df]

Well, do your hearing friends “speak” ASL?? Nope! Completely different language!

[@rowandoggo]

I just said that

[@sirvantanite1307]

Because it makes no sense that ASL isn't based off English. It unnecessarily makes ASL more difficult then it should be.

[@Mexch-ob7df]

@@GeoGonzalez-xg5dfretard

[@kimpeater1]

​@@sirvantanite1307can you imagine how long it would take to say anything if you had to sign every single letter of every word in a sentence

[@LEDewey_MD]

The movie, "Arrival", blew me away with its intelligence and sophistication, (felt that it even went way beyond the original written short story, "Story of Your Life".) Enjoyed this video very much. Subscribed.

[@LanguageofMind]

Agree! I think the movie is a case study of a successful adaptation.

[@TheRezro]

@@LanguageofMind I just say on thing. Idea that humanity would initialize linguistic debate, was always quite hilarious. I'm sure aliens would not even approach Earth, without fully hacking humanity. In my opinion only movies what show alien invasion in decent way (without blowing up Earth) was Russian movie Attraction 2 and Earth Final Conflict. But in this specific case. They actually have good reason why they want humanity to decipher they language.

[@markb1170]

If there was one thing I didn‘t appreciate in the movie was the sequence near the end about some soldier getting paranoid and blowing up something. But since it is Hollywood, they needed some sort of conflict - even if it wasn‘t on the original short story. Otherwise, I thought the film was amazing as well.

[@LanguageofMind]

@@markb1170 True, and this is an old Hollywood trope. I included a clip from The Day the Earth Stood Still in the video, where an alien comes to earth in peace. I cut the clip right before he's immediately shot by a soldier. Lol

[@kateapple1]

Meh, it was slow boring and didn’t make sense at the end

[@mxvega1097]

Cool take. I studied history/linguistics, then more history, then mandarin... and there's an even weirder spatiotemporal thing: the word for "the day after tomorrow" - which many English speakers would think of as in a future "in front" of them, perhaps over two hurdles of night - is "houtian", which in characters is literally "behind day". That is "the day that is behind me" and the other side of "mingtian", tomorrow. So the orientation of perceiving self along a time "line" is to face the past, with the future behind. There are curiosities re on / under - to describe time, but it's this one that always stuck with me. It is like the poetic description of history being an angel blown backwards into the future. And I dreamed in mandarin for years. And my English handwriting got really weird - still find myself filling in the middle of words having written the first and end letters.

[@theexchipmunk]

It´s quite interesting that in German, it´s very much the other way around with some more context. The word for the day after tomorrow in German is "Übermorgen". Which literally translates to "over tomorrow", with another connotation that the word for tomorrow is the same word as morning. So it also can be translated as "over morning". It´s the second morning after passing over the morning of tomorrow. A clear direction forwards and overcoming the next day. There is also another way to look at it, a vertical hirachy. The days are not on a line, but stacked on each other. And the day after tomorrow is above the last, with a acending direction going up. And in many ways our way to look at time is somewhat differnt and abstrackt than most. It definitely has a spacial slant, but it is more in the lines of a hirachy and movement. Events are a row or stream, with things coming before are often "over/superior" things that happen or happened in the past. There always seems to be and upwards movement in regards to the future, and a downwards one for the past.

[@mxvega1097]

@pyropulseIXXI literalism is the sign of a cognitive trap.

[@xyes]

Never had I thought of the Chinese languages postposition is described in opposite direction of the preposition... just like grammatic gender & pronounce are rare...

[@ririban6212]

im chinese and i never thought abt this😂now thinking of it 后 means both "behind" in a sense that its lagged behind or slow, and also "later on" in a sense that its far in the future. Interesting😮

[@shqueeblesmckloofin7351]

If DMT isn't involved then your research is pointless.

[@mrglassscience]

I moved to a foreign country when I was 28 with basically no prior knowledge of the language. I was immersed in the language for two years with little to no outlet for me to use my native English. My experience was that it not only changed the way I thought about abstract ideas, but it did also affect my behavior. I went from thinking of the present as a narrow slice of only a few seconds or minutes at most, to the present being smeared out over several minutes or even hours. This affected the way I slept, interacted with other people, prepared for activities I had planned, and so on (all things to do with understanding the flow of time) Unfortunately, these kind of changes are difficult to pin down with the scientific method because of the many confounding variables at play and us human beings doing things for so many different reasons. But my experience was that there is absolutely some truth to the idea of language rewiring our brain. It's just never going to be clear how much of an influence there is and how much it depends on the individual having the experience. Also, yes: It won't ever give us magical powers to change the laws of physics.

[@LanguageofMind]

Exactly, the inherent difficulty with these kinds of experiences is trying to disentangle language, culture, and other factors that are bundled together. It can be very hard to find a causal story, which is why I think it's important to do experiments!

[@latp9567]

Good for you. I used to be decently fluent in 3 languages. Now I hardly can articulate a right sentence in a single one Total disaster for the not that smart 😔

[@incogniftoar3943]

Won't gave us power to change physics? Sir you're bounded by the knowledge of the past.

[@Oswald-hb2mj]

What was the foreign language you acquired?

[@LucidiaRising]

What if the laws of physics have some kind of mutabilty built in? "Any sufficiently advanced technology....." etc etc

[@UkumaOokami]

My linguistics department also went together to see arrival, but we were really lucky and got to see a pre-screening about a week before it hit theatres, and before and after the film we were given talks in the theatre by the linguist who worked on the film and were given time after the film to ask them questions 1 on 1

[@jonnestyronicha497]

I find it interesting that in my language (a northeast indo-aryan language called assamese) and I think in several other indo-aryan languages, the words for "tomorrow/yesterday" and "day after tomorrow/before yesterday" fully lack temporal direction; they can refer to the past or future, and only encode the absolute distance of a specific point in time from the present, not the direction that point in time goes in. The word for "tomorrow/yesterday" is "kali" (which is incidentally very similar to the name of the warrior goddess of time, destruction, and death, but I haven't looked into whether the word and the name are related) and the word for "the day before yesterday/after tomorrow" is "poroxi." Instead of distinguishing "tomorrow" and "yesterday," you just use the word "kali" and either future tense or one of the past tenses, i.e. "I will do it _kali_" would be "I will do it _tomorrow_," and "I did it _kali_" is "I did it _yesterday_". You can distinguish "tomorrow" and "yesterday" if you want by saying "the _kali_ that comes" and "the _kali_ that goes" but for the most part they're just determined based on sentence tense or context.

[@xenoverthinks_]

I noticed this randomly one day and it has been an itch i am too lazy to scratch lol (for reference i speak urdu and the words we use for tomorrow/yesterday and the day after tomorrow/yesterday are kal and pursum)

[@jeremy5602]

This isn’t quite what he talks about in the video, but I think it supports his points. I’m American and I was raised in a Christian home where my dad was the pastor of our church. Around 10ish years old, I started having “gay” thoughts. I thought my whole childhood that I was supposed to be straight and like girls, and I didn’t really even have a concept of being gay. Not once did I ever hear anyone in my church say anything bad about gays, but I also never heard anything good. I just didn’t really know that being gay was an option. So then as I became a teenager, you know how teens are, I started hearing other kids say bad things about gays and say that Christians hate gays. Over time, I realized I had absolutely no interest in girls and was very interested in guys, so I felt very uncomfortable with myself and very ashamed, like something was wrong with me. Eventually I worked it out with myself and my God and started to feel comfortable with the inconsistencies. When I started to learn and really understand Spanish in my mid teens, I started to realize how impossible it is to directly translate a sentence from one language to another. It made me think about the millennia in which the Bible had to be copied by hand, translated by hand, written and written and rewritten _countless_ times, translated from ancient language to ancient language to modern language to modern language and back again. It made me realize that the Bible is not infallible and I can’t take everything in it literally, which eventually led to me realizing I can’t take organized religion so seriously. Long story short, learning Spanish changed me from a sheltered depressed closeted gay Christian to a bilingual still depressed but openly gay agnostic.

[@Randomness-vl8hf]

Taking into consideration that the Bible is one of the most important books in history, I’m sure that linguists have spent a huge time trying to translate it as close as possible. Like the video mentioned, to an alien we would all sound the same, in the sense that we all share the ability to express the same thoughts in an almost “universal” way, only with different organised languages. That said, trying to translate them, though difficult, is not impossible. Nevertheless, as a Spanish (teen) Catholic, I would focus more on the historical authenticity of the Gospels and the history of the early martyrs of the Church. The evidences are there. Scholars who rewrote the accounts or translated them were professionals at their job, so it is not that likely that they made huge changes to the original writings. Anyways, I hope you can find Jesus and I pray for you!!!

[@pillepolle3122]

This channel is gonna blow up in no time. Why do I know that? Because have learned the alien language from arrival.

[@LanguageofMind]

Haha, thanks for the support!

[@Nosceres]

This video is incredibly well done. The creator should be proud of the quality of this.

[@LanguageofMind]

Thank you! That means a lot! Especially since I'm a one-man operation, filming in my living room...

[@coenvo]

13:53 In mandarin, the two characters that indicate the temporal direction of time that you can put in front of the word for 'week' for example, are "上“ and ”下“, because written chinese is traditionally written top to bottom, these characters are actually literally pointing towards the temporal direction they indicate, 上 goes up and indicates a past (what is up, you have already written down), and 下 points to the future, to the direction you are writing in.

[@cold_brew_kai8665]

Same with ue and shita in japanese that use the same symbols , meaning up (上 ue) and down shita (下)

[@zeideerskine3462]

Every bilingual or polyglot knows that language changes the way you think.

[@raymiller1383]

A really interesting topic to me. I am a person who is mildly dyslexic with ADHD both diagnosed as an adult. Since those to revelations I have looked back at my life and I realize that many of my struggles have been related to time and rhythm… challenge perceiving either. The ADHD part of my brain seems to have no grasp of the passage of time and rhythm. Which generally makes me (among other things) a terrible dancer. I sometimes wonder how my challenges with words, and speaking patterns might fall into a similar space. OT… I really loved Arrival, it was and remains a fascinating story for me.

[@jayabee]

I am also mildly dyslexic with ADHD diagnosed as an adult. I thought about that during the discussion of mirror reading. I don't have any difficulty reading or writing from right to left or left to right. But I struggle with remembering how to get somewhere. Have to travel a route many times before I know it. Can't catch a ball (dypraxia) I've got rhythm, though. I love to dance. Rhythm changes my physical movements from clumsy to graceful.

[@apex9841]

Language changes how you think because it's a culture, it's a whole world

[@bluesdudebassist]

Thank you, what a superb and eloquent video essay. Not only a fascinating examination of the language in the movie but also a cogent and well-argued piece in general. I learned a lot!

[@LanguageofMind]

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!

[@riccello]

Subscribed. Arrival was great. How the language affects the way we think has been on my mind for the last 20 years. I speak and understand 5 languages, 4 of which I learned by studying. What got me thinking about it is the fact that certain cultures have predespositions towards certain qualities, whether they are objective or subjective. Like, why the Japanese are so neat and precise, or why italians make the world's most beautiful cars, why german mechanical engineering is top notch etc. One particular question I had was whether the suffering of russian people and the stagnation of russian economic development is rooted in the russian language. I grew up in russia and russian is my mother tongue, but having lived in the US for the last 30 years, I can definitely feel that the mentality of those who live in russia and use russian on a daily basis is definitely different. Russian is a complex language. Sentences can be constructed using words in any order. Words can be transformed to convey additional meaning. There are always too many choices, if you think about it. English is much more direct and precise in that regard. You just dont have to think about all those minute details and focus on the meaning. So my theory is that we russians overthink stuff, and sometimes confuse the aims and the means. There are probably even deeper implications that I have not realized yet, or perhaps I am unable to see because "the fish does not know its in the water".

[@bengels4015]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

[@Lemonz1989]

This is my favorite movie! I’m fluent in 3 languages, but my native language is tiny - it only has 70k speakers, so it’s pretty “useless”. I live in another country now, with another language (my 2nd language), so now I almost only use my native language in my internal monologue, with my family and sometimes when I listen to music from my home country. Even the internal monologue has become more and more in the other two languages that aren’t my native one, after so many years of not using it in any significant way. All three of my languages are relatively closely related to each other (all are Germanic languages), so there are no significant “surprises” to my brain like how time is perceived, but it does affect the way I think in other ways. My dreams are less verbal now in any language, and are more “I just know what is said” without any actual talking.

[@Imperator_Prime]

Maybe Louise misunderstands what happens to her; maybe it isn't that "she learns Heptapod-B so she acquires the language-based ability to perceive time in a non-linear way," so much as "she learns Heptapod-B and consequently has her future spoiled for her by subconsciously translating some text presented to her earlier, while she was still 'illiterate,' by the Heptapods, who perceive time in a non-linear way as a function of their biology." Just an alternative bit of speculation off the top of my head for fun 😛 I loved this movie, incidentally.

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

That's honestly a very interesting way to look at it, and seems to me, to ring with the essence of a truth. Speculation, regardless, but good speculation.

[@mollydooker9636]

I love Ted Chiang and couldnt believe the sheer hubris of attempting to turn the story into a screenplay. But what a truly great result. One of my favourite sci fi films. Great content, loved it. Just subbed.

[@platoniczombie]

Saw the title and just came to say... that's literally one of the points of poetry; to use language in a way to get people to think differently.

[@kurt7937]

In what way does it accomplish this? Never heard that

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

In as much as you can say that poetry has an objective, sure.

[@cacoethes1366]

Excellent video. When I first saw Arrival I instantly thought of the "bicameral mind" theory. People who’ve watched S1 of Westworld will recognise it. That theory blew my mind. The idea that we used to view our internal monologue, our wants, desires etc as the voice and will of God or gods and as our language progressed , that voice became our own. It’s fascinated me for years. We feel that our sense of "selves" is so certain yet it might just be our language allowing us to have that sense. I feel my brain spiral in an existential crisis if I think about it too much.

[@LanguageofMind]

I am very skeptical of the bicameral mind theory. It strikes me as very unlikely that ancient people lacked the kind of introspective awareness we have

[@jclive2860]

@@LanguageofMindyeah true. How would we discover fire and agriculture and etc

[@whitemagus2000]

After reading Slaughterhouse #5 I stopped needing to hear a narrative in chronological order. Now I frequently consume a story out of order, if I think that's the best way to understand it. I still don't have time magic.

[@727Phoenix]

1) I had no idea the direction of movement in films, left to right, right to left are biased by the language of the filmmakers. Thank you for that fascinating insight! 2) Growing up with American Sign Language I always felt "Signed English," which is expressing signs in order of English grammar, to be awkward and unnatural. That's because it's true what you said, they are two completely different languages. 3) I read the story by Ted Chang. I couldn't get past the most obvious hole in the story's logic. *_If_* Louise knows her future daughter will die in an accident, with knowledge of when, where & how it happens, *_then_* why not make plans to prevent that accident from happening in the first place???

[@LanguageofMind]

I think the main point of Ted Chang's story is the question of whether you would or should prevent such a thing, knowing it will happen. I do think the movie's introduction of a genetic disorder is a good change for this reason though, because it shifts the choice to her daughter's birth/existence, rather than the context of the accident

[@727Phoenix]

@@LanguageofMind I got that's what Chang was expressing. But still, it's an awful bug in my brain that won't go away, one that was wisely prevented in the film by changing the future cause of death.

[@Emanon...]

Maybe it's "pre-determined" for the loop to be able to play itself out. The point she chooses to have a daughter, she will already try to prevent her death and fail. It has in effect already happened the moment she took the decision.

[@geordiejones5618]

You aren't the first person to confuse determinism with predeterminism. Ted Chiang has a pretty good talk in a podcast from a few years ago about that very distinction.

[@727Phoenix]

@@geordiejones5618 I just realized I'm not clear on the distinction, so I better look that one up. Thanks for the comment.

[@Trepanation21]

This was a fascinating video! I came for Arrival, I stayed for The Science of Arrival 😏

[@thakyou5005]

YES!!! Finally, I've been waiting for this kind of video! Language definitely does change the way you think. I, as a multilingual, know this very well!

[@6AxisSage]

I like how hollywood aliens have the ability to travel vast distances, pick a planet with intelligent beings but when they get here to talk, they leave figuring language to us...

[@purpl3p3anuts58]

Well in this movie the whole point is for humans to understand the alien language the way that the aliens themselves understand it. This requires the humans to not only translate the alien language but to begin to think in it.

[@TheGonzogibby]

The movie, and this video, posits language as a means to change perceptions and perspectives - their entire purpose is to trigger thought through problem solving. A literary device to discuss human conflict through the “othering” of cultures and languages we don’t think we understand. By finding core, shared principles we find unity. I think 🤔

[@gktte2574]

That’s the point tho. Like how can u teach Calculus without learning the language of the teacher?

[@GizzyDillespee]

Do humans try to learn cow or chicken language? Only enough to control their behavior for our purposes. Same with the ETs... they learn enough local language so that they can lure people into the tractor beams, but that's it. So, yeah... if you ever see a flying saucer, with a spotlight into a grove of trees, from which people are screaming, "There's money just falling from the sky!"... you run in the OPPOSITE direction... unless you want to become space jerky for the 7 legged land squid!

[@asmrtpop2676]

@@GizzyDillespeeWeird how this movie had nothing to do with any of that

[@jamesm.9285]

What a brilliant video! I feel lucky to how found your channel in its early days.

[@davidwright8432]

Thanks for a thought provoking and fun video! Lively presentation, too. You make 'em, I'll watch 'em!

[@racoimbra]

Ted Chiang's original short story was not explicit about an ability to predict the future. This was hugely forced in the film. In the story, the aliens do not put themselves at risk, nor do they come down to Earth "in person". There are differences between spoken and written language, and the understanding of time is different. We have the protagonist's reflection on her daughter's tragic life and the story ends with her saying "yes" to the marriage that will lead to all that development. But it is not clear whether it is a prediction and acceptance... or whether it is a reflection (after the facts) and acceptance. Personally I interpreted it as an afterthought, partly reinforced by the glimpse of the aliens' language and culture, partly a reverberation of Nietzshe's amor fati.

[@user-zb6gt7og9q]

The CETI project and similar movements are very fascinating. There are many initiatives to decode various cetacean languages, but one fundamental difference between humans and cetaceans is cetaceans are often apex predators while humans; no matter how much they want to believe, don't evolve form apex predators and wasn't even apex predators for the first 25,000 years of their existence in which point in time language evolved. This affects how humans greatly value spatial and temporal concept in their language as those concepts directly impact their survival. Such things don't affect cetaceans and thus they might not value time and space as much as we do. Not to mention gravity and our concept of land movement which is restricted within 2 dimension (left right forward backward) doesn't apply underwater, nor seasons and weather. As some cetaceans hunt in great depth, the concept of "day" might be radically different because "day" in human languages refer to how dark or bright their space is and just traversing different depth underwater changes how bright it is to cetaceans. Possession, a fundamental concept for humans might also not exist for cetaceans as "possession" is a way for humans to secure their survival among predators, and that in turn might also affect cetaceans' concept of individuality. As is often found among apex predators, the most dangerous threat to their survival is their kin. This brings us to the possibility that cetaceans are raging racists.

[@colcat1]

This video was brilliant, the ammount of research, the explanations, everything, we need more content like this out there. I'm leaving a comment so the algorithm blesses you and i'm subbing because this is the kind of content that i'll never get tired of consuming, i hope you grow. 🔥

[@ALee-ArmedVeteran]

Bro, this is an absolutely banger ... I was tethered the entire video. . . Great work!!

[@LanguageofMind]

Thank you!

[@prestige_materials]

Well, of course it does! When I learned German fluently enough to understand it deeper; as I am a native English-raised man from South Dakota; it unlocked a much higher-form format of thinking; in terms of-- being transformed from an English-oriented Empiricist Atheism devoted to Scientism into a whole new mode of abstractions and into the realms of Magickal Realism, Idealism, and layed bear everything that was related to Jewish-Psychological practice such as Einstein's physics and Sigmund Frued's perverted evolutionism as complete farces of Anti-Spiritualism. Yes, it indeed does open up many avenues and tears down many misconceptions about reality and the control-complex.

[@rodrigos7070]

"Sueño en otro idioma" is another beatiful movie about linguistics, if you're looking for recommendations. Awesome video! New sub

[@LanguageofMind]

Awesome! I'll check it out

[@tatthagatha2657]

I'm a linguistics student and I have been looking for a good essay about this film . Thank you for this.

[@faberofwillandmight]

I'd like to learn about the connection between various emergent properties in LLMs and language in general. Why are these LLMs capable of using tools and completing tasks? Why can they "simulate" reason and logic from statistical models? I admittedly know very little about language or AI, but the universality of human language to almost embody action and logic in an abstract way has to be something all languages share, alien or not. Anyway, this was a cool video; I am going to read the book and subscribe.

[@LanguageofMind]

This is the million dollar question! I'm actually working on an LLM video right now, collaborating with a bunch of other linguists.

[@Matt_The_Hugenot]

I first watched Arrival because I'm a huge fan of Johan Jóhannson's music and the movie opened up a huge series of rabbit holes for me.

[@CaseyW491]

I'm subscribed. A linguist who explored hypothetical interspecies communication? A unicorn.

[@tanania]

It is amazing to find new video, specifically on language, for arrival! This was a treat, subbed. Loved learning about language.

[@matthieujoly]

This is true, the way we interact with words, languages, is modifying our way of thinking, showing that there are so many ways "how to" express our mind. And, in that peculiar way, changing our perception of others and ourselves. I do enjoy a lot "learning" languages !

[@angelzeratul]

Outstanding video, as someone who is passionate about languages the information shared here really brought some new ideas to think about. Keep them coming, good job!

[@yuanemoia]

Thank you so much for this wonderful video! I'm studying East Asian studies and some linguistics. The question of if/how writing systems can affect our perception of the world has been fascinating me in the context of analysing Arrival and my personal language learning of Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin. This video gave me some new insights, I'll happily forward it to non-linguist friends, too! 😊

[@LanguageofMind]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it

[@tobiramatime]

Great video, this really inspires me to research these topics as a psychology student (also Arrival is one of my favorite movies). Btw I love the shirt! I want one now lol

[@RocketSurgn_]

Adore the movie for a lot of reasons, but as an engineering/science mind among the top is the care it shows for telling an interesting, broadly understandable story with scientists doing science at the center. It takes both them as people and their skills and abilities seriously.

[@LanguageofMind]

Agree 100%. The Martian is great about this, too

[@RocketSurgn_]

@@LanguageofMind Agreed, Arrival has a special place for how incredibly smart and emotional the story manages to be, but the Martian is right beside it for its treatment of science/scientists. It does balance it more toward fun (and it is so much!) and showing the science as more.. heroic.. vs the thoughtful weight of Arrival. Much as Ridley Scott is great, Villeneuve has solidified himself as my favorite working director. Plus language is fascinating!

[@dorkbaitart]

Thank you so much for this excellent essay. I got into a big argument on Reddit (I know, I know) with someone claiming to be a linguistics student, about whether or not language influences cognition - I was arguing in favor, and this person made some really absurd counter-arguments (ie, if language influences cognition then languages without gender should be equitable utopias, uh, what?). Learning the actual scientific proof about HOW language can influence certain aspects of cognition and how our brains seem to organize, or not organize, information without language to influence it, was very interesting for me.

[@LanguageofMind]

I would say that languages can affect cognition in subtle and maybe limited ways (so no, I would not expect languages without grammatical gender to be utopias).

[@Matthewmest]

Didn't watched the video yet but my answer is definitely yes. English is my second language and when I speak it I completely unlock my new personality, different humour etc. I feel my way of thinking is completely different in my brain. I always thought about this.

[@1BlueLotusBlossom]

Wow, this movie blew me away too. I’m learning Japanese and we use writing top to bottom, right to left. I can state that my spatial brain reorganized. The old Japanese is how we study these teachings from 802 years ago. I would love for you to speak more of this. I will read the works you suggest. It feels like living in eternity.

[@eddyawesomes]

This movie is beautiful and it reminded me to love being bilingual. It’s hard to keep two languages, but it’s hard to explain, in Spanish there are certain things that make more sense while English is better used for other situations. Some movies are even better dubbed in Spanish. I can’t put it into words but it’s something you experience.

[@notsojharedtroll23]

The short answer coming from a guy that speaks Spanish as my mother toungue and (of course) English: yes. It gives you access to a broad amount of inherent info that just has some "kick" when you learn something in one language than another.

[@chengong388]

As a native speaker of mandarin, I’ve never heard of the idea that the past is down or the future is up. Maybe only in the context of long term history, like when talking about ancient dynasties and stuff. But tomorrow is not up and yesterday is not down.

[@Dark_Souls_3]

I’ve heard before that Chinese students are better at math than American students because their language lends themselves to understanding number relationships. I would like if you made a video on this

[@MarkArandjus]

Louise Banks with the Heptopods! Circles, when written! Denis in 2016! Shaka, when the walls fell!

[@LanguageofMind]

I've really been toying with making a video about this too. One of my favorite Trek episodes!

[@MarkArandjus]

@@LanguageofMind Memes as a language, what's not to like!

[@shyanneishot]

I watched this movie while I was doing my linguistics degree and it made me fall in love with science friction

[@tankerbruja]

this movie and subsequent rabbit hole including all the great information in this video has just reignited my hyper-fixation on language.

[@LanguageofMind]

@@tankerbruja not a bad fixation to have!

[@UncleDavid]

in shi bantu proverbs, letters are the movement of light and sound is the shape of that movement. when you speak it’s almost like you are revealing or unraveling something using language as the medium of revelation

[@robbieblack4153]

I'm Scottish and always assumed my visualisation of time was regular. When I think about time the months go: Dec, Nov, Oct, Sept, Aug, Jul, Jun, May, Apr, Mar, Feb, Jan Days of the week go: Sun, Sat, Fri, Thu, Wed, Tue, Mon And the years go: 2020 2010 2000 Etc. I speak three languages but they're all European, the only variation in one of them is VSO. I'm left-handed so I don't know if that's got anything to do with it but watching this video and having previously thought my brain was wired "incorrectly" was very refreshing.

[@LanguageofMind]

What's the VSO language you speak? Irish?

[@jayloganyt]

Ted Chiang is a brilliant author, 'Stories of your life' a spellbinding collection. He is like a Jorge Luis Borges of scifi. And Villeneuve made a beautiful movie picture. I would encourage everyone to definitely read the original story as well though. And Chiang's other amazing stories.

[@cariyaputta]

Name and form, and consciousness revolve around each other.

[@intothevoid3227]

Absolutely fantastic video essay. Had me hooked from start to finish!

[@LanguageofMind]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it

[@XxFunkMachinexX]

What an awesome analysis. I was enamored with this movie's complexity and recognized immediately that it was well researched. I struggled to even discuss it with my partner at the time, but this video did wonders for me just now. Keep up the good work and continue to share your passion. You've got a subscriber!

[@Lucaminio]

Crazy quality for a “small” channel I bet you get big real quick. If you stick to this type of content and style

[@lucidiumvox5166]

Beautiful analysis, I’d love to study languages at this level of intricacy 😮‍💨

[@LanguageofMind]

Go for it! Linguistics is awesome

[@JMartin2006]

A language doesn't just change the way we arrange the time. It also changes others mental abilities, like: better memory, musical ability, chromatic vision, etc. Some languages require more from memory than others. And when you learn a new language you're also learning a new culture. I think we can say that the set language/culture can be seen as a type of glasses. It changes the way you see and describe the world.

[@vongimbelgroup]

Robert Dilts, an early adopter of Neuro-Linquistics Programming, suggested that language is not merely a way to represent a philosophy, but rather languages are the philosophy itself.

[@caitlunsford2440]

was literally in the middle of commenting “could you do a more in depth video on the sapir-whorf hypothesis” when you mentioned you were working on some in your outro!! so interested in this - the sapir-whorf hyp seems intuitively correct to me so im intrigued to hear the evidence/reasoning behind why folks disprove of it!!

[@DawnDavidson]

I loved this movie, although it guts me every time. I have always been fascinated by linguistics and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. But wow, the story about the mom and her as yet not conceived daughter dying of cancer is a gut punch. The language aspects are fascinating, but I hesitate to watch it again, because each time I’ve watched it I’ve ended up sobbing. I hope you’ll look at Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue cycle. Never made into a movie, as far as I know, though it would be an excellent one, if it could be adapted well.

[@JKTCGMV13]

I feel like anyone who _doesnt_ think language changes the way you think only knows 1 language. Or perhaps two very similar languages. I’ve taken just a couple Japanese classes and definitely feel like I think slightly different when attempting Japanese. I also recall something about people being more cold and calculated in their second language, which also matches my own experience. I feel very detached from phrases in Japanese that would be very emotional in English.

[@LanguageofMind]

Yes, this is a very common experience for multilingual people. Part of why Sapir-Whorf continues to be such a popular idea is that it feels intuitively true to almost everyone who speaks more than one language. Still worth investigating, because sometimes our intuitions are wrong!

[@CryoCare]

One of my favourite vids on KZbin.

[@PanDeMoanEyum]

My mind has been blown more than Louis Armstrong’s trumpet and I’m only halfway through the video. Amazing content I’ve been missing in my life.

[@LanguageofMind]

Haha, I'm glad you're enjoying it!

[@nithinraj360]

Incredible movie, the overall atmosphere of this film is somewhat calming. Instant classic!!

[@FoxRiverBridge]

Commenting to boost, this video has the quality of someone with a lot more than 2k subs. Let's close that gap!

[@LanguageofMind]

I appreciate that!

[@Whimsly]

Have you read China Mieville's Embassytown? It is also a sci-fi story about a linguist, and how the structure of language influences technology and diplomacy and our understanding of relationships. Just thought you might wanna know

[@LanguageofMind]

I started it but didn't finish... :( I'll pick it up again soon! Currently reading Clarke's Childhoods End

[@thamirivonjaahri6378]

Ever since I became bilingual, I started using English over my mother language. Now everybody who doesn't speak English around me thinks that my ideas make no sense and that I'm crazy while English speakers are literally on the same band.

[@AudraK]

Thank you KZbin Algorithm Lords for suddenly recommending your channel! I love educational channels but I never thought about looking into language! Welp it seems like it’s time to add another fascinating channel to my subscription list

[@TheMikeyD31813]

Great video as always Ryan. I have a question though; if Japanese is written left to right, and Japanese speakers order events from left to right, then why is manga written right to left? I have read very few mangas in my life, but the ones I have started in the "back" of the book and end in the "front" of the book.

[@LanguageofMind]

Great question, I was wondering this myself. Japanese has multiple writing systems, and different historical ways of ordering their writing. Nowadays left-to-right is common in Japan, but historically books were written with characters in vertical columns going top-down, right-to-left. Manga is a hold out of this older style. I think this top-down ordering might also explain why Mandarin has vertical time metaphors, but I'm just speculating.

[@doesthisusername]

@@LanguageofMind Yeah, that's also something I'm curious about. Originally Japanese was only written top-down, right-to-left, resulting in it appearing right-to-left when written in 1-row spaces (like when English is constrained to a single column on signs). From what I can gather, this was the status quo until the mid 1930s (roughly) and beyond, when left-to-right started to be preferred in contexts lacking vertical space (like a horizontal sign). Just looking at some online archives quickly, right-to-left was preferred over left-to-right in 1-row-spaces on maps until the mid 1940s, when a shift seemed to quite rapidly occur, possibly due to a war... I think it would've been interesting if the study you mentioned had taken that into account (I haven't read it but I'm assuming it didn't, sorry if it did). Nowadays I think the majority of text, especially digitally, is done left-to-right. It's still much less ubiquitous than in English, and top-down, right-to-left is still often used in combination with left-to-right on, say, product packaging. Books are also overwhelmingly (might be a strong word, but at least a large majority) top-down, right-to-left, especially if it's not a translation of something originally left-to-right, I think. Top-down, right-to-left is seen as more traditional, less modern. This is just my personal experience, though. I do think that lumping it in the same group as English loses a lot of possible nuance when studying these sorts of things. I hope this comment is interesting enough lol, great video by the way!

[@valiantabello]

I am a different person in Spanish than in English. Loved this video. Thanks

[@JelliinaCup]

17:20 Kinda reminds me of Wave Functions in Quantum Mechanics where once a path is seen/set, everything else collapses into that form.

[@WhizPill]

I hope you soar more video essays like this are needed

[@kurt7937]

We are certainly limited by language. Wittgenstein called all of philosophy nothing more than semantics, if I’m not mistaken. You can readily recognize the shift in your mind upon learning a word for a feeling you could not decipher before having learned it. You can instantly understand an entire foreign concept from reading certain words once. Not only can you change how you think with language but it impacts the very way you perceive reality.

[@Mrv_xx]

so interesting! from a psychologist who is deeply interested in neuro and psychoanalysis - and the studies relating the role of social and language on someone's brain and psychic development, please make a vid about Lacan his linguistics and psychoanalysis!

[@johnathanfindlay9112]

Don't forget inflection and how far that can be taken. Fun fact the term Hooah in the Army can have multiple meanings based on inflection and context.

[@abdrahim2076]

Dude you're amazing and a lovely guy, great content and great video editing + music as well I felt so relaxed watching this. Good job and keep going ❤ Can I know what's the name of that music in the background please?

[@LanguageofMind]

Thank you! I used several different songs in the video. Most of them are stock music, but the music at the very end is Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight, which was also used in the movie. I can assemble a track listing of the other songs if you're interested.

[@Emanon...]

Doesn't even have to be an alien language. Mandarin and European languages are vastly different to the point that we don't activate the same areas of our brains when we communicate. An interesting thought: How did Helen Keller form her thoughts?

[@d0dgecity]

This is a really good video, man. Fully expect to see you at 100k subscribers in no time

[@kittyvlekkie]

wow this was very insightful, thank you

[@BigfootFungi]

This needs a million views

[@crissyhutto8409]

Have you seen Alien Nation it’s got a lot of language exchange but nothing like that super power thing.

[@LanguageofMind]

I've seen the movie but not the TV show. Worth watching?

[@crissyhutto8409]

@@LanguageofMindyes i actually liked the show more after I settled into the few changes. There is actually more movies that follow after the end of the series. The series itself ended on a weird note but I think it was the material and time it was produced in that led to its early end. They do a great job of tackling all sorts of issues that we are still fighting about today, and Matt even becomes woke without ever sacrificing his masculinity! SHOCKING! seriously want to see this show rebooted! Daniel Radcliffe as buck or Albert would be amazing and Bucesmi as uncle Moodri would be peak!

[@danielhopkins296]

" language is like a finger pointing to an object, the ignorant look at the finger and not the object" Buddha

[@phrygianphreak4428]

Learning German changed how I think to some degree. It didn't affect my organization of time, but it did change my theory of action. German has SOV ordering sometimes, and that change of ordering from SVO in English kinda made me think about the philosophy of action differently. The subject and object are predicated before the action, so instead of "I ran to the store," it would be something like "I the store ran to." The reordering made me think about the subject and object as a complete unit that the verb transforms, instead of in SVO where it feels like the subject is using the verb to transform the object. I wonder if there are any studies on perception of agency between different languages that have shown a connection to sentence ordering.

[@danielhall271]

Computer languages use VSO ordering for most things.

[@LanguageofMind]

Yes! And I love this fact. I always wonder if there's some computational benefit to that organization that VSO languages like Irish or the Mayan languages are tapping into. I actually have another video on word order, if you're interested!

[@LanguageofMind]

German is default SOV, but it has this odd property of V2 where the verb has to be the second constituent in the clause, so generally you only see SOV in embedded clauses

[@MatsubaAgeha]

@@danielhall271 Speaks, YODA, in this way.

[@danielhall271]

@@LanguageofMind The really interesting thing is that it switches to the more conventional SVO for object-oriented programming: subject.verb(object1, object2, ...);

[@mr.sessle8444]

your time here is also shared with others time here and collectively we create society = so yes we can see how things can be done while watching your time move for your ideas to solidify your notion of self preservation

[@TheMistri]

This was very well thought out and executed! ❤ thank you for this. Just intellectual enough without being inaccessible.

[@LanguageofMind]

Thanks! I will be making more videos like this, so consider subscribing if you like it!

[@amyhogarten5038]

There is already an extremely precise means and method of communicating all types of information about parts of our world, yet it is hardly discussed: The architectural plan. In its most elemental presentation, the architectural plan is not "read" from right to left or from top to bottom. There is no "starting point" when one begins to "read" it. The whole is comprised of the parts and the parts inform the whole. The plan conveys information such as basic geometrical properties, the quality and quantity of light in a proposed space, the relationships to above and below the plans elevation datum, its material aspects and so on. The is no arrow of time in its construct, unlike spoken language where one is about to speak, speaking, and have spoken. There is no linearity to its construct.

[@karikaru]

Also watched arrival while studying linguistics and living abroad doing language study. Maybe someday I'll go back and get an advanced degree in linguistics as it is something that really fascinates me. I've been abroad now for 6 years in some drastically different places and I'm always just intrigued by those underlying thought patterns that lead people to organize their societies the way they do.

[@apuntes8883]

Language verbal or non verbal as in the very beginning of the video transmits expression, something personal you actually exert on a receiver. Different languages allows more or less different aspects of the self to expression , some are more emotional and others are more rational and yet others are more plain. More free or more restrictive.

[@ActualMichael]

I have recently been looking at phonetics and language as an organization of sounds and rhythms and how they intereact with one another to express information such as mood and feeling. I am not a linguist and have no formal training, but find it interesting to think about. This video makes me wonder about how the sounds and rhythms of our language may have an effect on our thinking patterns.

[@Speed001]

This isn't new information to me, other than the experiments, but you did a good job laying it all out.

[@Dragoncro0wn]

Wasn't there a tribal language in Australia that has no words for left right forward back, but instead they use north south east west meaning they perceive direction on absolutes rather than on locality. People from that tribe knew all the time everywhere which direction north is. Which begs the question, do they subconsciously keep track of it just like we eventually learn how to ride a bike without thinking. EDIT: Found a video on it, apparently they also order time based events East to West. Meaning depending if they are sitting facing north or south, they would change how they order these events (such as pictures of man aging), not only that but they if they are sitting facing East, they would also order events from down to up. Really interesting

[@macsnafu]

An interesting video. Yes, it's intellectually attractive to think that our language controls how we think, but as you noted, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for the idea. One other aspect of using spatial relationships for time would be English speaking readers of manga comics, since manga pages are laid out in a way that seems backwards to American or European comics. It takes some getting used to, although if you're reading an English version or translation of a manga, you still read the words in the same left-to-right structure. LInguistics tends not to get much attention in popular culture, but I recall reading Samuel Delaney's Babylon-18, which was a very interesting read. However, the book seems to relate language to programming, and another form of control over behavior. And speaking of computer programming, programming languages are of course languages we use to tell computers what we want them to do. Exploring that would be another interesting avenue, communicating with machines instead of aliens.

[@graxxor]

Of course it is to know extreme extent like in this movie, but becoming fluent in Japanese has absolutely changed the way I think and consider many concepts. There are words in Japanese which just don’t exist in English and I had no concept or even recognition off before I learned how to speak Japanese.