I don’t speak Arabic. I don’t speak Xhosa, Zulu or Afrikaans. I don’t speak Albanian. I barely speak French, and my Italian is limited to greetings and ordering in a restaurant. Yet, when I played football with strangers on a cliff-front public pitch in Morocco, I could call for passes. When I played a little bit of cricket for fun in a corner of Pretoria during my day off during the U-19 World Cup, I could change my field position while bowling some average off-spin. When me and my friends joined in on a local 3v3 basketball game in Tirana last year, I could understand when they were calling screens. Amazing, isn’t it? Play a sport and you become multilingual!
More than words: Language shapes our brains
In psychology, we often work with linguistic relativity. This means that the way we perceive and think about the world is directly influenced by the language people use to talk about it. Why? Because we can only label and describe the world with language. So we sometimes do not think or understand those elements of the world that our language system does not incorporate. Confused? So was I when I first studied it. Let me give an example. The terms we have for colours vary between languages. English has different words for different shades of blue, such as turquoise, indigo, sky blue, royal blue, midnight blue, sapphire and so on. But Russian only has two categories. Light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). Spanish has more blues and they are similar to the English ones but fewer. Azul real (royal blue), azul marino (navy blue), azul bebe (baby blue) and so on. Bengali has an evocative shade of blue called ‘ময়ূরকণ্ঠী নীল’ or ‘the blue of the peacock throat’. This shows how different languages link to what we know and help us view the world.
How we focus our attention and thought on time — and all other aspects of the world — is shaped by language Shutterstock
Another example is how we perceive time. English organises time right to left but Arabic organises it left to right. Counting is also different. In English ‘92’ is ninety-two but in French it is quatre-vingt douze, i.e. ‘four twenties and twelve’. Does that mean time changes? No, how we focus our attention and thought on time — and all other aspects of the world — is shaped by language.
This is a fascinating insight into how our psychological processes determine how we think in response to events. English speakers, for example, consider the future to be ‘ahead’ and the past to be ‘behind’. So when we consider the future, and we are nervous about it, we are worried about what is ahead of us. And hypervigilance on uncertain outcomes is considered the first trigger of anxiety. In contrast is a language in the Andes called Aymara that puts the past in front and the future behind. Does anxiety not exist? It does, but because they acknowledge that they cannot see the future because it is behind them, they experience it differently. To them, the past stretches in front of them so that they can see their past, the past of others and learn from it.
Change the language, change the world?
As much as I would enjoy that, it’s not quite that easy. How we experience emotion is the best example. Language is the context through which we label emotions. Access to words is critical to how we describe what we are feeling. Our vocabulary often defines our emotional breadth. ‘Shame’ is a great case study. It can only arise in situations where certain societal worldviews cause someone to be ashamed. Now imagine that you live in a place where jaywalking is illegal. If you get caught jaywalking, you would feel ashamed. But now, if you are in Asia, the only way to get anywhere is to jaywalk. Will you still feel shame?
People from different places experience emotions differently. A man from Mumbai will have a different connection to the emotional need of owning a home compared with someone from a place with abundant free land. This is why people in different parts of the world find it easier to make friends with people who come from their hometown
I am privileged to work with people across countries and cultures, and that has made me more conscious of this complex interlinking of language with reality. People from different places experience emotions differently. Very simply, a man from Mumbai will have a different connection to the emotional need of owning a home compared with someone from a place with abundant free land. This is why people in different parts of the world find it easier to make friends with people who come from their hometown.
In sport, this is why it is so important for a team to find its common language reference points. This can be certain phrases or even hand gestures (like a peace sign or a yo-yo sign). In teams where players and staff inevitably come from different realities, they might not always have the same language and cultural background. That is why it is important to create one that the particular group can share.
After all, as Wittgenstein says, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Dr Sahen Gupta is a Kolkata-born, India- and UK-based psychologist who divides his time between mental health support and high-performance coaching. As the founder of Discovery Sport & Performance Lab, he works not only with Olympians and other top-level sportspersons, but also with CEOs and other professionals striving for excellence. Dr Gupta’s mission is to simplify complexities of the mind into actionable and simple ‘doables’ that allow individuals to be mentally fit.
