Language is a wonderful and complex phenomenon and is considered one of the most outstanding abilities of us humans. All animals have systems for communicating with each other, but humans have the most advanced of these systems, which is "speech". Language is a precious tool for retelling thoughts, the language that everyone learns, due to its structural frameworks, organizes his thoughts and perceptions of the world around him. In short, "language" is a tool for revealing the essence of the thoughts that are used in our daily lives. Is it possible to think without language? The answer is that without "language" thought does not arise.
Guy Deutscher, in an article titled “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” in the Herald Tribune, writes: “Research over the past few years has shown that when we learn our native language, we also learn specific mental behaviors, and these behaviors have a significant impact on the way we experience the world around us. Research shows that each language, due to its specific structure, forces its users to unconsciously follow specific behaviors and frameworks in their thoughts. For example, when someone says in English: “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor,” they are allowed to not clarify whether their neighbor was a woman or a man. But if someone were to say the same sentence in German or French, it would inevitably become clear what gender their neighbor was, because in German, the word for male neighbor (Nachbar) is not the same as the word for female neighbor (Nachbarin) and there is no neutral word for neighbor. On the other hand, a language like English forces a person to include the time of occurrence in the sentence when recounting a story like “having dinner with the neighbor.” In English verbs (like Persian), we have to clarify the time of occurrence “past, present, future.” But in Chinese, for example, this is not the case, and in this language, only one form of the verb is used for all tenses.
When your language and dialect force you to incorporate known data into your speech, it is drawing your attention to a number of specific features of the world around you. The frameworks that language creates for thought are shaped by the feelings, memories, and experiences of individuals from an early age. For example, if we look again at the issue of gender in language, we see that when a specific gender is grammatically assigned to an object in a language, the way speakers of that language feel and view that object differs. The German word “bridge” (die brucke) is grammatically feminine and takes a feminine adjective, but the Spanish word for bridge (el puente) is masculine and takes a masculine adjective. When German speakers were asked in a questionnaire about their feelings about bridges, they described them as “slender and graceful,” while Spanish speakers described them as “strong.”
The area where the penetration of language into thought is most evident is the area of ​​directionality. While in the known languages ​​around us we are accustomed to speaking of “left and right and back and forth” when indicating, this is not the case in another group of languages ​​in the world. In the Australian Aboriginal language Gogo Yimithir, they do not indicate in the form of “left and right”; instead, they use “north and south and east and west” for directions. In most languages ​​in the world, the individual is considered the focus of the surrounding directions, but this is not the case in Gogo Yimithir. A Gogo Yimithir speaker does not say “go aside”, but rather: “go a little to the east”. To speak such languages, a person must know where their four directions are at all times, and studies show that users of these languages ​​are remarkably well aware of the geographical directions around them. Speakers of “geographical languages” learn from childhood to recognize the four geographical directions by paying attention to the position of the sun, the direction of the wind, etc..”
Studies by linguists and psychologists show that the functions of language on our thought are more than we previously thought. The backgrounds that our culture and language have established in our bodies since childhood indicate our current internal characteristics and our perceptions of the world around us, and these characteristics will also be instrumental in the emergence of our beliefs and values. The linguistic structure of any culture is based on internal and indigenous data and assets, as well as on occasional exchanges with other cultures. Therefore, looking at the research conducted in this field, any laxity in protecting the language will have no consequence other than collapse and a tendency towards identitylessness in that culture.
The fabric of every culture is intertwined with the language of its people; therefore, any external change in the language will deal a heavy blow to the body of that culture, and will cause unwanted transformations in its foundations that will not be in harmony with the themes embedded in the nature of its people. Therefore, we must strive for its dynamism and sustainability by avoiding contamination of the unique language that has now reached us after the days of our ancestors and their sacrifices and sacrifices.
* These articles were published in Amordad, 1390 solar month, in the eighth issue of Amrdad, number 259.
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