language, gender, and worldview

[jrtom]

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.

Comments

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's fascinating! I've told people that the reason for taking a foreign language is to learn a different way of thinking, and this really supports that idea.

[mudita88.livejournal.com]

Fascinating! Thank you! I have several ideas/questions about language and gender; this is one of them, and it's very nice to see serious research and results!