How Bilingual Brains Perceive Time Differently

A new study has found that what language you speak might alter your perception of time.



Read More:

Being Bilingual Can Transform the Human Brain
"More and more research indicates that learning a new language is very good for you. Yes, being able to speak the language in a foreign country is great, but the benefits go beyond that. New research from Judith F. Kroll, a cognitive scientist at Pennsylvania State University, indicates that bilingual people's brains work and process differently in fascinating ways."

The Neurons That Control Time Perception Have Been Found (in Mice)
"Neuroscientists from Portugal's Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown report in a new study in the journal Science that they have discovered neurons in the mouse brain that can be manipulated to tinker with the rodent's judgment of elapsed time."

Language shapes how the brain perceives time
"Professor Panos Athanasopoulos, a linguist from Lancaster University and Professor Emanuel Bylund, a linguist from Stellenbosch University and Stockholm University, have discovered that people who speak two languages fluently think about time differently depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events."

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Special thanks to Amy Shira Teitel for hosting and writing this episode of Seeker!

[uvbe]

I'm spanish, we never think as time as "small" or "big", but as "little" or "much" and as "short" and "long"

[PanchoOrdaz]

How can you live all your life and not want to learn a new language?

[rei]

"Learn a new language, earn a new soul."

[RookieN]

It is extremely hilarious how Americans love to think that bilingual is an amazing achievement when it's common in most parts of the

[SpottedTiger]

Might this explain why I'm always chronically late!? I'll tell my boss I'm late because I'm bilingual 😂😂

[skylewylde]

I'm a trilingual and I don't feel special at all because it's a common thing here

[adrianameyer]

I always find it funny how even my personality changes when I speak in a different language, depending on the culture that comes with the language. I actually change my entire mindset, not only the language. It's so interesting to find different versions of myself, just by engulfing myself in other cultures and languages

[eaiza]

I've noticed I'm lazier in Portuguese and more active in Japanese.

[anamartinez]

There is a huge mistake in this video. With the wedding example in particular. In Spanish we say a big wedding referring to how big the wedding was not weather it was long or short. A wedding can be long and be small. In Spanish we do not use big and small as a measure of time

[jeancourlion]

In Spanish, time is not perceived as volume, but as duration (the video says that) and quantity (the video don't says that). No one says "un tiempo grande" ("a big time"), but "poco tiempo" ("a little of time", but in Spanish "poco" -"little" in English, is not a synonymous of "pequeño" -"little" in English). Nobody says "una noche grande" ("a big night"), sino "una noche larga" ("a long night"; because "larga" is "long", and not "large"). Either the concept of the video is wrong, or the examples in it are.

[nonamegirl]

I'm a native Dutch and Russian speaker, learned French and German at a very young age (2) and started to learn English almost 6 years ago and got fluent after only 3, I'm 15 now and It's true that language changes your perception of things, I find myself quite privileged understanding and speaking 5 languages fluently yet it it's also a curse because you know a way to express yourself in a very accurate way in a certain language but don't know how to translate it to others making you seem stupid because they don't get what you try to say to them, ugh this is so frustrating!
I mean not every language has the vocabulary needed to properly communicate what you think or feel.

Like if you feel my pain!

[papulrocks]

I'm fluent in the language of *Hand Farts* and i perceive time in terms of frequency of farts, just like it should be. Worship me you primordial glottis users.

[TheRishabhkumar]

Most People in non natively English Speaking nations are atleast Bilingual. I myself know 4 languages.

[MoniQuesco]

I don't wanna seem like a brag but I speak 9554320 languages

[altiverse]

While this video may have some mistakes, it's true that the languages you know influence how you perceive the world.

For example, in some languages the color "light blue" has no connection in name to "blue". In a research between native speakers of a language where "light blue" has to do with "blue" and native speakers of a language that do not have this connection, the group of "no-connection-to-blue" native speakers placed the "light blue" color much further from "blue" on a scale color than the other group.

In a different experiment, researchers took people that natively speak an ancient language (one of few) where "left" and "right" do not exist, but only "east, west, north, south" do. They showed them a hotel room that was organized in that way or another (the bed on the right, the window on the left etc.) and then an identical room on the opposite side of the corridor (again, with the bed on the right, window on the left or whatever). Obviously normal people said they're identical, but the people that natively spoke that ancient language said the rooms were organized in a reversed way instead; since their "east" and "west" changed.

[nos]

This video told me nothing, nomas perdí mi tiempo.

[ferfernando]

I'm bilingual and I have to say that in Spanish we measure time both as a distance "un rato largo" and as a volume " mucho tiempo".
And as a native Spanish speaker I have never heard anyone talking about a boda grande (Big wedding) referring to it's duration...
Maybe in South American Spanish they do... but not in European Spanish.

[danielaguirre]

This is interesting because I speak three languages fluently and I sometimes experience a slight personality shift when I use only one language for a considerable amount of time. I guess that since time is not our only perception of the world, it makes sense that the code switching would change the way we perceive the world and thus our personalities.

[romanhuczok]

The thing about Spanish was just wrong, the whole video is about the deeply questionable Sapir-Whorf theory, which a majority of linguists consider false, and which is based on faulty research. First video on this channel I've disliked, it's plain silly.

[cookiecan]

I'm bilingual, I speak English, Dutch, Python and C#