Lin­guis­tic rel­a­tiv­ity is the idea that lan­guage dif­fer­ences alone can affect how we per­ceive world expe­ri­ences and thus can cause us to behave differently.

In an Edge essay, Lera Borodit­sky dis­cusses some of her research into lin­guis­tic rel­a­tiv­ity and how lan­guage use (gram­mar, word choice and lan­guage itself) vastly alters our per­cep­tions and thought processes, offer­ing some inter­est­ing examples.

Even basic aspects of time per­cep­tion can be affected by lan­guage. For exam­ple, Eng­lish speak­ers pre­fer to talk about dura­tion in terms of length (e.g., “That was a short talk,” “The meet­ing didn’t take long”), while Span­ish and Greek speak­ers pre­fer to talk about time in terms of amount, rely­ing more on words like “much” “big”, and “lit­tle” rather than “short” and “long” Our research into such basic cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties as esti­mat­ing dura­tion shows that speak­ers of dif­fer­ent lan­guages dif­fer in ways pre­dicted by the pat­terns of metaphors in their lan­guage. (For exam­ple, when asked to esti­mate dura­tion, Eng­lish speak­ers are more likely to be con­fused by dis­tance infor­ma­tion, esti­mat­ing that a line of greater length remains on the test screen for a longer period of time, whereas Greek speak­ers are more likely to be con­fused by amount, esti­mat­ing that a con­tainer that is fuller remains longer on the screen.)

via Mind Hacks