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Entry tags:
language, gender, and worldview
Heard this on NPR this morning:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565
The gist: as most of you reading this know, a number of languages have gendered nouns. (In Spanish, for example, problems are male and surprises are female. :) ) So a scientist decided to check to see whether the gender of a noun in one's first language affects the kinds of adjectives associated with it. The answer: yes.
What's more surprising (to me, anyway) is that this appears to be true even if you've just been learning a new synthetic language, and have no previous experience of languages with gendered nouns.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565
The gist: as most of you reading this know, a number of languages have gendered nouns. (In Spanish, for example, problems are male and surprises are female. :) ) So a scientist decided to check to see whether the gender of a noun in one's first language affects the kinds of adjectives associated with it. The answer: yes.
What's more surprising (to me, anyway) is that this appears to be true even if you've just been learning a new synthetic language, and have no previous experience of languages with gendered nouns.