Monday, January 02, 2006

Do we hear in the language we speak?

The title does sound bizarre. But I was just wondering about this. Sounds that we hear, we try to repeat them using our vocal cords. But do we hear differently based on the language we speak. Still am not making sense? Here are some examples.

In most Indian languages the sound made by
  • a dog barking is 'bow bow' or 'bow wow' but in America the doggie goes 'arf arf'
  • a cow is 'amaaa' but here it says 'mooo'
  • a rooster says 'kokarakko kok' (in Thamiz) but apparently the rooster in America goes 'cock-a-doodle-doo'!!
  • a crow goes 'kaa kaa', in the English speaking world I think the sound is same but written with sophistication as 'caw'
  • a pig ,wonder how that goes?, but people that speak English claim it goes 'oink oink'

That is the point I am trying to make. So back to my question 'Do we hear in the language we speak?'

But apparently we 'see based on the language we speak'

University of California researchers tested the hypothesis that language plays a role in perception by carrying out a series of colour tests. They found that people were able to identify colours faster in their right visual field than in their left.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study said it was because the right field is processed in the brain area responsible for language.
...

For example, speakers of English judge colours that straddle the green/blue boundary as less similar than speakers of Tarahumara, a language spoken in Mexico which does not have separate words for the colours.


Update: The answer to my question is Yes! Check this out

7 comments:

raj said...

Interesting. In his book, "The Emerging mind", Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran describes an experiment that he carried out with people of different cultures, speaking different languages. He scribbles an object with rounded edges and another with sharp edges and asks them to identify which of those is "booba" and which is "kikki". Across all cultures, people identified the object with round edges as "booba" and the one with sharp edges as "kikki". He concludes that the human brain forms certain 'mental associations' with sounds and this is fairly consistent in all cultures. But the examples that you have given do contradict this finding.

Nilu said...

What if you happen to hear Spanish?

Do you associate with English or Tamil? That tells quite a story.

Sowmya said...

Raj and Nilu
I would've said the same about booba and kikki. Here is a website which extensively talks about animal sounds and languages we speak!! Have a look see. It is very interesting!

tony said...

......which was quite funny.

Walked in via Hawkeye

Sowmya said...

tony, thanks for stopping by!

tilo said...

I've been asked this same question by a villager but did not have an answer for him!

Sowmya said...

tilo, Now you do! ;-) I thoroughly enjoyed the link about various animal sounds in various languages.