Original photo by Nicoleta Ionescu/ Shutterstock
The languages we speak don’t just shape the way we communicate; they also influence how we perceive and understand the world — including something as fundamental as time. The direction in which a language is written, for example, can affect how we think about and refer to the passage of time. Because English speakers write from left to right, we tend to visualize the timeline of life to death from left to right, and describe the past and future as being “behind” us and “in front” of us, respectively — we say “looking forward” to the future and “looking back” at the past.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factEnglish was the most spoken language in the world as of 2023, based on the total number of speakers. The language with the highest number of native speakers, however, is Mandarin, the most widely spoken form of Chinese.
However, speakers of Aymara, an Indigenous language of the Andes with no traditional writing system, perceive the past as lying ahead of them because it’s known and visible, while the unseen, unpredictable future remains behind them. This element of their communication was discovered through gestures. Meanwhile, Mandarin has adopted a vertical view of time. Speakers of this language often refer to past events as "up" and future events as "down" — next week, then, becomes “down week."
Researchers have long been interested in metaphorical expressions — "spending time" or "feeling down,” for example — and whether the way we talk about abstract concepts does indeed shape how we think about them. These figures of speech fall under the umbrella of linguistic relativity: the thought that the language we speak influences our reality. But some critics argue that this theory — also known as the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis — overstates the influence of language on thought. They argue that while language can indeed shape our perceptions, it does not rigidly determine how we think, or how we understand the world.
Numbers Don't Lie
More Interesting Reads
Someone who can speak several languages fluently is known as a ______.
Ready to reveal?
Confirm your email to play the next question?
Someone who can speak several languages fluently is known as a polyglot.
A watch made for Marie Antoinette took 44 years to make — and she never saw it.
In 1783, a spectacular watch was commissioned for Queen Marie Antoinette of France. It was to be made by pioneering Swiss watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet, with no expense spared or time limit put on its creation. The finished product was indeed something to behold: a gratuitous luxury befitting of the famously lavish monarch. “The Queen,” as the watch was dubbed, used gold instead of brass, and included a perpetual calendar, metallic thermometer, and sapphire mechanisms.
It took 44 years to complete — a time frame that exceeded the life not only of Antoinette, who was executed in 1793, but also of Breguet himself, who died in 1823. Breguet’s son finished the masterpiece in 1827. The watch later ended up in Jerusalem’s L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art, but it was stolen in 1983 and vanished for decades. It was finally recovered in 2006, returned by the thief’s widow.
Nicole is a writer, thrift store lover, and group-chat meme spammer based in Ontario, Canada.
top picks from the optimism network
Interesting Facts is part of Optimism, which publishes content that uplifts, informs, and inspires.
