英文原文：
I’ll be speaking to you today using language, because I can. It’s one of these magical things that we humans can do, right? We can use language, use sound, use writing to implant ideas in each other’s minds, to transfer knowledge. And in fact, so much of what we know about the world is stuff that we are taught through language.
Now, of course, there isn’t just one language that’s spoken around the world. There are about 7000 languages spoken currently. There used to be many more in the past. And each language differs from the next in all kinds of ways. That raises the question of, if you speak a different language, do you think differently? Do you see the world differently? Do you experience the world differently? And there’s an infinite set of things for us to potentially pay attention to. Languages select only some things for us to pay attention to in different languages, select really different ones.
But what I want to do today is walk you through some of my favorite examples of how language guides us to think differently in particular ways, even starting with the very basics. So I’ll start with how we think about time. So the word time is the most frequent noun in English. Other temporal words are also in the top ten. And this is very common across Indo-European languages. We’re obsessed with how we talk about time, but how people think about time really differs across languages and cultures.
You can all read this graphic very, very easily. This is a nutritional supplement for kids sold by Nestle. And you can look at this graphic and read it from left to right, and you can see what it’s trying to suggest this product would do for your child, right? When they started marketing this in Arabic speaking countries, they ran into a problem because Arabic is written from right to left. And so if you read this graphic from right to left, it’s actually quite puzzling what this product is supposed to do for your child.
So this is just a really basic thing about language. The way it’s written, just the mere direction that it’s written actually turns out, organizes all kinds of visual activity that we have, right? The way we scan images, the way we imagine things unfolding in our minds, will go systematically in the direction that we’re used to reading and writing. So that’s one way time can go, left to right or right to left.
Here’s another example. We used to think that the future had to be ahead. In English, we talk about the best things ahead of us, the past behind us, the worst things behind us, or putting things behind us, things like that, looking forward to a brighter tomorrow. And people always had some reason, some necessary biological reason, for why the future would have to be ahead. So we say things like, well of course, we have eyes on the front of our heads, not on the backs of our heads. We walk forwards, not backwards. It makes perfect sense, is biologically necessary, that the future should be in front.
Well, it turns out there are places where people put the past in front and the future behind. So here’s an example from the Aymara. These are folks that live in Bolivia, and this man here is talking about the olden days, and he’s gesturing in front of him because for them, the past is in front. The way they move their bodies when they talk about the past, references that it’s in front. Why would the past be in front and the future behind? Well, for the Aymara, it makes perfect sense. Of course, the past is known. It’s manifest. That’s why you can see it. Where the future is unknown. That’s why it’s behind your head, right? Once it becomes the present, becomes manifest, you can see it. Then it comes in front of your eyes, right? So for the Aymara, there is also a very necessary way that time had to be organized. It just happened to be exactly the opposite way that we’ve thought.
Here’s another way that time can flow. So so far, I’ve told you about time going left to right, right to left, front to back, back to front. Those are all with relation to the body. Here’s an example from an Aboriginal community in Australia that I had a chance to work with. These are the Kuuk Thaayorre people. They live on the west coast of Cape York. And in languages like Kuuk Thaayorre, and there are a lot of languages like this around the world, you don’t use words like left and right. And instead everything is laid out in some kind of cardinal or absolute directions. So in Kuuk Thaayorre, it’s roughly north, south, east and west.
So the way that you say hello, Kuuk Thaayorre, instead of saying, how are you, fine, they say, which way are you heading? And the answer should be something like north northwest in the far distance. How about you? So imagine as you’re walking around, everyone you greet, everyone you say hi to during the day, you have to report your heading direction. Of course, if you had to start doing this now, it would be very hard. But if you actually had to do that, if that was the price of admission to a conversation, if you literally couldn’t get past hello without knowing which way you were facing, you would very quickly get oriented. People who speak languages like this stay oriented extremely well. They actually stay oriented much better than we used to think humans could.
Now, if folks in cultures like this organize space in cardinal directions, how do they think about time? These here are pictures of my grandfather at different ages. I take these pictures, I put them in a stack, I scramble them, I hand them to you, and I say, lay these out in the correct order, right? The way I’ve put them out here is the way an English speaker would do it, normally from left to right. If you’re a Hebrew or Arabic speaker, you might do it from right to left. What would the Kuuk Thaayorre do if they don’t use left and right? Well, here I’m going to show you a little bit of data.
This is one person, they’re sitting facing south on this day. And what I’ve shown you is a bunch of different card sets. They’ve organized, and the numbers show the order. So they’ve organized each of these card sets going from left to right. There’s the same person on a different day, now they’re facing north, and you see they’ve organized all the card sets going from right to left. Here’s a different person. This person is sitting facing east, and they’ve organized all the card sets coming towards them. What’s the pattern? I’m hearing east to west, all right, the direction of the sun. Time is always going in the same direction for the Kuuk Thaayorre, always from east to west, always laid out in the same direction on the landscape.
Turns out time doesn’t actually even have to go in a straight line. So there’s some communities where time will travel in a line. Here, for example, are the Yupno of Papua New Guinea. For them, time rolls into the village at one angle, then after it hits the village, it takes a turn and rolls out at a different angle. And this has to do with the location of the mouth and the source of the Yupno river. These are important locations for the Yupno. So the topography of the place where they live dictates how they organized time.
And I just want to give you all of these examples to show you how rich the set of possibilities is beyond the norms that we’re used to, right? We have these very standard ways that we’re used to thinking about it. We sometimes argue that those are necessary, that it has to be from left to right, or it has to be the future in front and the past behind. But in fact, the human mind is so much more creative and so much more flexible, and their set of possibilities is so much more rich. Humans around the world, even for this very basic, simple thing of how to organize time, have come up with all of these different kinds of solutions.
Here’s another really smart human trick that may seem very simple to you. Suppose I ask you, how many penguins are there here? Eight, very good. Excellent. You pass the test. Those of you who participated, you might have done something like this. You might have gone one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You recited the number list that you learned as a child in order you named each element in the array. And once you had named each element in the array, the last word you said is the number of things in the array. It’s a really simple trick that we have learned as humans, and it’s a cultural tool. Took a really long time for humans to invent this tool. We now, of course, take it completely for granted.
But there are lots of languages that don’t have this trick. In fact, they don’t have number words at all. There are some languages that don’t use base ten number systems like we do. Instead, they use lots of other bases. For example, here’s a language spoken in Papua New Guinea that’s instead of being base ten is base 27. It still uses the body. Base ten, of course, is the number of fingers we have. Other languages have base five or base 20. You know, if you don’t wear shoes, you can wiggle your toes in. This language is base 27. So you start with the fingers on the one hand, and you just include more parts of the body instead of just the fingers. And the words for the body parts are actually the words for the numbers. So for example, if you want eight potatoes, that’s elbow potatoes.
So there’s an incredible variety of systems that languages have invented, including not really having exact number of words at all. Here’s an example from a community that lives in Brazil. These are the Pirahã, and there are no exact number of words in the Pirahã language. And here’s a really simple test that the researchers have constructed. The researcher put out a certain number of spools of thread and have asked the participant to lay out the same in balloons. And what the Pirahã can do is, if it’s two or three, they can do a good job of matching something you can do visually pretty easily. But once it gets above two or three or four, it gets harder. And because they’re not able to do the simple enumeration, a simple trick that you did to count the penguins, they start making errors. And the larger the set they need to match, the larger the errors that they make.
And that’s the kind of pattern that you get if you’re testing people who don’t have access to exact number words, if you find folks like this and you teach exact number of words, and the pattern changes and they start being able to match exactly, and the errors don’t increase in the same proportion. Here’s a really simple example where just having number of words in your language, of course, is not the same as understanding all of math. But if that first entry point, it’s a stepping stone into a whole world of knowledge, think about how much of human civilization, modern human civilization, is made on math. And here’s the simple feature of a language that acts as an entryway into the whole world of knowledge.
Languages also divide the world into absurd categories, right? So a lot of languages have grammatical gender. French, of course, has grammatical gender. Spanish and German, every noun is going to be masculine, feminine, German also neuter, which genders get assigned to which nouns has no rhyme or reason. There’s almost no correlation across languages. They can vary a great deal. So for example, the sun is feminine in German, masculine in Spanish, the moon is exactly the reverse. Does this matter for how speakers of French and German and Russian and Spanish think about the sun and the moon and everything else that can be named by noun? Do people actually take these genders as meaningful? Turns out that they do. And it starts very early.
So if you take young kids who are learning, say, French or Spanish as their first language, and you say, hey, you know what? We’re making an animated movie and we just need your help signing voices to these characters. So here we have an alarm clock that’s going to be a character, and we have this toaster that’s going to be a character. What voices should they have? And even very young kids start assigning voices that are appropriate to the grammatical gender in their language, right? So they say, it should have a boy voice if it’s grammatically masculine. It should have a girl voice if it’s grammatically feminine.
If you ask adults to describe objects, say, give us three adjectives that describe a bridge first, three that come to mind, people will give you adjectives that have these stereotypical gender connotations. So the bridges, masculine in your language, you might say bridges are long and strong and towering, right? And if bridges are feminine in your language, you might say that they’re beautiful and elegant. You know, we’re not asking people, if you were to go on a date with a bridge, what kind of bridge would it be? We’re just asking, you know, describe a bridge. And yet they’re giving us these stereotypically gendered adjectives as their prompts, suggesting that this is something that’s alive in their mind.
And this is actually an effect. This effect of grammatical gender is something you can see with your own eyes. If you go to an art gallery and you ask, when an artist is personifying time or painting death or painting charity, how do they decide what kind of body time or death or charity should have? How do they decide on that personification? Well, when you do an analysis of this, at least in European art, 78% of the time you can predict the gender of the personification from the grammatical gender. In the artist’s native language, you can actually see grammar carved in stone. So here’s Michelangelo’s dawn and day and dusk and night. And all of these are predicted by grammatical gender in Italian.
The other thing language does for us is it allows us to construe events. So things happen. They need to be understood by us. We need to think about them in some way. And language gives us lots of different tools for understanding those events. And languages differ in how they’re likely to describe an event. So in a case like this, in English, you might say he broke the vase, even though it’s clearly an accident. If he just took a mallet and smashed the vase very intentionally, you would still say he broke the vase. All it was just kind of weird in that, in that you can describe accidents using the same constructions that you would for an intentional action.
So in English, you can even say things like, I broke my arm, when in a lot of languages, you can’t use that construction unless you were a lunatic looking to break your arm, and you succeeded. You would have to say something else, you have to say something like, oh, my arm got broken, or it so happened to me that my arm broke. You have to express it in some way that marked that it wasn’t intentional. English is a little strange in that it doesn’t strongly distinguish between intentional and accidental actions. Languages like Spanish do more strongly. So you’re much more likely to say the vase broke or the vase broke itself if it’s an accident. But also if you’re not saying he broke the vase when it’s an accident, you say the vase broke or the vase broke itself. You’re not necessarily talking about who did it. You’re focusing on something else.
And so this raises an interesting set of questions. If speakers of English and Spanish and other languages look at a set of events, witness the same events, are they paying attention to the same things? Are they going to remember the same things? So if there are witnesses to some kind of incident, will they actually have the same memories of the event? Even if they witness the same thing? Sometimes it’s surprising for people to think that your memory could be not veridical. A lot of us like to think that we remember things perfectly. We’re so great, right? Memories are so great. What’s totally not? Our memories are terrible. We have this illusion that we remember things that happen to us, but actually, our brains are extremely selective at what kind of information they hold on to. And it turns out that one of the ways that we select what information to hold on to are the things that we’re likely to have to talk about, the things that are likely to make it into how you would have described it. So language, the patterns in our language guide our attention. Tell us what you should pay attention to, how you should think about an event.
So here’s a little example of a study we do. We show people videos. This guy, for example, is going to pierce the balloon. So very intentionally, he pierces the balloon and the balloon pops. And there’s also an accidental version where he’s just sitting there minding his own business. He happens to move his hand and the balloon pops, and he’s very surprised, right? So it’s clearly an accident. And there are lots of other events that we show them. And then later it’s just a surprise eyewitness memory test, right? So earlier you will have seen one of these guys perform some crime against a balloon, right? Which one was it?
Now, if you ask, which one was it, if it was an intentional action, English speakers, Spanish speakers, remember who did it. If it’s intentional, when it’s an accident, the picture is different. English speakers still remember who did it. They would have said he popped the balloon if it was an accident. And they remember who popped the balloon. Spanish speakers are less likely to remember who did it if it’s an accident. But if you ask, do you remember if it was an accident? The picture changes. Now it’s the English speakers who don’t remember whether or not it was an accident. And the Spanish speakers remember better. So you have speakers of two different languages looking at exactly the same event, they’re eyewitnesses to the same event, and they come away with memories of different things.
Languages and cultures make us extremely smart. We inherit so much of intellectual labor from people that came before us, right? Thousands and thousands of years of joint work by people who have developed our languages, developed ideas, built them into those languages that we now take completely for granted. Languages and cultures also reduce cognitive entropy. And what I mean is this, about any topic, there’s a huge variety of ways that our human mind can think about them. But once we’re entrenched in a particular language, in a particular culture, we tend to think about it in that one way. We kind of follow the grooves that language sets for us.
Just knowing that there are all these other possibilities, just knowing that there’s so much linguistic diversity, I think, is a wonderfully freeing thought. The fact that there’s so much linguistic diversity is a testament to the incredible ingenuity and flexibility of the human mind. Human minds have created not just one reality, but 7000 and many more. And also, languages are living things. We’re constantly changing them. We’re constantly moving them around to suit our needs. That gives you a way of thinking about what is the language that you would want to create? What is the set of thoughts that you would want to have? How would you want others to think? How do you actually want to craft this dance between language and thought? Thank you guys very much. I really look forward to your thoughts.
中文译文：
今天我将使用语言与你们交谈，因为我有这个能力。这是我们人类能做到的神奇之事之一，对吧？我们可以使用语言、声音和文字，将思想植入彼此的脑海，传递知识。事实上，我们对世界的了解，大部分都是通过语言传授给我们的。
当然，世界上并不只有一种语言。目前大约有7000种语言在使用。过去甚至更多。而且每种语言在各方面都各不相同。这就引出了一个问题：如果你说不同的语言，你的思维方式会不同吗？你看世界的方式会不同吗？你的体验会不同吗？我们需要关注的事物是无限的。语言只为我们选择了一部分去关注，不同的语言选择的关注点截然不同。
但我今天想做的是，带大家看一些我最喜欢的例子，展示语言如何引导我们以特定的方式思考，甚至是从最基础的层面开始。所以我先从我们对时间的思考方式开始。“时间”这个词是英语中出现频率最高的名词。其他时间词汇也排在前十。这在印欧语系中非常普遍。我们痴迷于如何谈论时间，但不同语言和文化中，人们对时间的思考方式却大相径庭。
你们都能非常轻松地读懂这张图表。这是雀巢出售的一种儿童营养补充剂。你可以从左到右看这张图，明白它想表达这个产品会对你的孩子产生什么效果，对吧？但当他们开始在阿拉伯语国家推销时，遇到了问题，因为阿拉伯语是从右向左书写的。所以如果你从右向左读这张图，这个产品到底对孩子有什么用就变得相当令人困惑了。
这只是关于语言的一个非常基本的点。书写的方式，仅仅是书写的方向，实际上组织了我们所有的视觉活动，对吧？我们扫描图像的方式，我们在脑海中想象事物展开的方式，都会系统性地顺着我们习惯的阅读和书写方向进行。所以时间的一种流向是从左到右或从右到左。
这是另一个例子。我们曾以为未来一定是在前面的。在英语中，我们说最好的事情在前方，过去在身后，最糟糕的事情在身后，或者把事情抛在脑后，诸如此类，期待更光明的明天。人们总有一些理由，一些必要的生物学理由，来解释为什么未来必须在前面。所以我们说，当然啦，我们的眼睛长在头的前面，而不是后面。我们向前走，而不是向后走。未来在前面是完全合乎逻辑的，是生物学上的必然。
好吧，事实证明有些地方的人把过去放在前面，未来放在后面。这是来自艾马拉人的一个例子。这些人生活在玻利维亚，这位男士正在谈论过去的日子，他指着前方，因为对他们来说，过去是在前面的。他们谈论过去时身体的动作，指涉的就是前方。为什么过去会在前面，而未来在后面呢？对艾马拉人来说，这完全讲得通。当然，过去是已知的。它是显现的。这就是为什么你能看见它。而未来是未知的。这就是为什么它在你的脑后，对吧？一旦它变成现在，变得显现，你就能看见它。然后它就来到你的眼前，对吧？所以对艾马拉人来说，时间的组织方式也是一种必然。只是恰好与我们所想的方式完全相反。
这是时间流动的另一种方式。到目前为止，我讲了从左到右、从右到左、从前到后、从后到前。这些都与身体有关。这是我在澳大利亚一个原住民社区工作的例子。这些是库克·塔约雷人。他们生活在约克角半岛的西海岸。在库克·塔约雷语这样的语言中——世界上有很多这样的语言——你不用“左”和“右”这样的词。相反，一切都按某种基本方位或绝对方向排列。所以在库克·塔约雷语中，大致就是北、南、东和西。
所以你打招呼的方式，库克·塔约雷人不说“你好吗，挺好的”，他们问“你要往哪个方向走？”回答应该是类似“西北偏北，很远的地方”。你呢？想象一下当你四处走动时，你问候的每个人，你白天打招呼的每个人，你都必须报告你的朝向。当然，如果你现在必须开始这样做，会很难。但如果你真的必须那样做，如果那是谈话的入场券，如果你真的不知道面朝哪边就说不出“你好”，你会很快就能辨别方向。说这种语言的人方向感极好。他们的方向感实际上比我们过去认为的人类极限要好得多。
现在，如果这种文化中的人用基本方位来组织空间，他们如何思考时间呢？这是我祖父不同年龄的照片。我拿着这些照片，叠在一起，打乱顺序，递给你，然后说，按正确顺序排好，对吧？我在这里摆放的方式是说英语的人通常会做的，通常从左到右。如果你是希伯来语或阿拉伯语使用者，你可能会从右到左排。如果库克·塔约雷人不用左右，他们会怎么做？好吧，这里我要给你们看一点数据。
这是一个人，这一天他们面朝南坐着。我给你们看的是一堆不同的卡片组。他们排列好了，数字显示了顺序。所以他们把每组卡片都从左到右排列。这是同一个人在另一天，现在他们面朝北，你看他们把所有的卡片都从右到左排列。这是另一个人。这个人面朝东坐着，他们把所有的卡片都朝着自己排列。规律是什么？我听到是东到西，好吧，太阳的方向。对库克·塔约雷人来说，时间总是朝着同一个方向流动，总是从东到西，总是在地面上按同一个方向排列。
事实证明时间甚至不必走直线。有些社区的时间是沿直线行进的。例如，这是巴布亚新几内亚的尤普诺人。对他们来说，时间以一个角度滚入村庄，然后撞击村庄后，转弯以另一个角度滚出。这与尤普诺河的河口和源头的位置有关。这些是尤普诺人的重要地点。所以他们居住地的地形决定了他们如何组织时间。
我只是想给你们这些例子，展示在我们习惯的规范之外，可能性的集合是多么丰富，对吧？我们有这些非常标准的思考方式。我们有时争论说那些是必要的，必须是从左到右，或者必须是未来在前过去在后。但事实上，人类的大脑更具创造力，更灵活，可能性的集合也更丰富。世界各地的人类，即使是对于如何组织时间这样非常基础、简单的事情，也想出了所有这些不同的解决方案。
这是另一个非常聪明的人类技巧，对你来说可能看起来很简单。假设我问你，这里有多少只企鹅？八只，很好。太棒了。你们通过了测试。那些参与的人，你们可能做了类似这样的事。你们可能数了一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八。你按顺序念出儿时学会的数字列表，给数组里的每个元素命名。一旦你给数组里的每个元素都命了名，你说的最后一个词就是数组里事物的数量。这是我们人类学会的一个非常简单的技巧，它是一种文化工具。人类花了很长时间才发明这个工具。当然，我们现在完全把它当作理所当然。
但有很多语言没有这个技巧。事实上，它们根本没有数字词汇。有些语言不像我们这样使用十进制。相反，它们使用许多其他的进制。例如，巴布亚新几内亚有一种语言，不是十进制，而是二十七进制。它仍然使用身体来计数。十进制当然是我们手指的数量。其他语言有五进制或二十进制。你知道，如果你不穿鞋，你还可以动动脚趾。这种语言是二十七进制。所以你从一只手的手指开始，然后不只是手指，还包括更多的身体部位。而身体部位的词实际上就是数字的词。所以举个例子，如果你想要八个土豆，那就是“肘部土豆”。
所以语言发明了各种令人难以置信的系统，包括根本没有精确数字词汇的系统。这是巴西一个社区的例子。这些是皮拉罕人，皮拉罕语中没有精确的数字词汇。研究人员设计了一个非常简单的测试。研究人员摆出一定数量的线轴，然后要求参与者用气球摆出同样数量。皮拉罕人能做到的是，如果数量是二或三，他们可以很好地匹配——这是你可以通过视觉轻松做到的。但一旦超过三或四，就变得困难了。因为他们无法进行简单的计数——你用来数企鹅的那个简单技巧——他们开始出错。他们需要匹配的数量越大，犯的错误就越大。
这就是你在测试没有精确数字词汇的人时会看到的那种模式。如果你找到这样的人，教他们精确的数字词汇，模式就改变了，他们开始能精确匹配，错误也不会按同样的比例增加。这是一个非常简单的例子，你的语言中有数字词汇当然不等于理解所有的数学。但这个最初的入口，是通往整个知识世界的垫脚石，想想人类文明，现代人类文明，有多少是建立在数学之上的。而这就是语言中作为一个通往整个知识世界入口的简单特征。
语言还把世界划分为荒谬的类别，对吧？很多语言都有语法性别。法语当然有语法性别。西班牙语和德语，每个名词都有阳性、阴性，德语还有中性，哪个性别分配给哪个名词毫无规律或理由。不同语言之间几乎没有相关性。它们可能差异很大。例如，太阳在德语中是阴性，在西班牙语中是阳性，月亮则正好相反。这对说法语、德语、俄语和西班牙语的人思考太阳、月亮以及其他所有可以用名词命名的事物有影响吗？人们真的把这些性别看作有意义的吗？事实证明他们确实如此。而且这从很小的时候就开始了。
如果你让正在学习法语或西班牙语作为母语的小孩子参与，然后你说，嘿，你知道吗？我们在做一部动画电影，需要你帮忙给这些角色配音。这里有一个闹钟将成为角色，还有一个烤面包机将成为角色。它们应该有什么样的声音？即便是很小的孩子也开始根据他们语言中的语法性别来分配声音，对吧？他们会说，如果语法上是阳性，就应该用男孩的声音。如果语法上是阴性，就应该用女孩的声音。
如果你让成年人描述物体，比如说，首先给出描述“桥”的三个形容词，脱口而出的三个，人们会给你带有刻板性别内涵的形容词。所以如果桥在你的语言中是阳性的，你可能会说桥是长的、坚固的、高耸的，对吧？如果桥在你的语言中是阴性的，你可能会说它们是美丽的、优雅的。你知道，我们并不是问人们，如果你要和一座桥约会，它会是什么样的桥？我们只是问，描述一座桥。然而他们却给了我们这些带有刻板性别内涵的形容词作为回应，表明这是他们脑海中活跃的东西。
这实际上是一种效应。这种语法性别的效应是你可以亲眼看到的。如果你去美术馆，问一个问题：当艺术家将时间、死亡或慈善拟人化时，他们如何决定这些概念应该拥有什么样的身体？他们如何决定那种拟人化？当你对此进行分析时，至少在欧洲艺术中，有78%的情况下，你可以从语法性别预测拟人化形象的性别。在艺术家的母语中，你实际上可以看到语法被刻在石头上。这是米开朗基罗的《黎明》、《白昼》、《黄昏》和《黑夜》。所有这些都可以通过意大利语的语法性别来预测。
语言为我们做的另一件事是它允许我们理解事件。事情发生了，需要我们理解。我们需要以某种方式来思考它们。语言给了我们很多不同的工具来理解这些事件。而不同语言在描述事件的方式上也有差异。在这样的情况下，在英语中，你可能会说“他打碎了花瓶”，即使这显然是一个意外。如果他只是拿了一把木槌，非常故意地砸碎了花瓶，你仍然会说“他打碎了花瓶”。这其中有点奇怪的地方在于，你可以用描述故意行为的同样结构来描述事故。
所以在英语中，你甚至可以说“我摔断了胳膊”，而在很多语言中，你不能使用这种结构，除非你是个想摔断胳膊的疯子，而且你成功了。你必须说些别的，你不得不说“哦，我的胳膊断了”或“碰巧我的胳膊断了”。你必须用某种方式来标记那不是故意的。英语在这方面有点奇怪，它不会强烈区分故意行为和意外行为。像西班牙语这样的语言会更强烈地加以区分。所以如果是意外，你更有可能说“花瓶破了”或“花瓶自己破了”。而且如果你在意外发生时不说“他打碎了花瓶”，而是说“花瓶破了”或“花瓶自己破了”，你就不一定在谈论谁做的。你在关注其他东西。
这引发了一系列有趣的问题。如果说英语、西班牙语和其他语言的人看一系列事件，目睹相同的事件，他们关注的是同样的东西吗？他们会记住同样的东西吗？如果有一些事件的目击者，他们真的会对事件有相同的记忆吗？即使他们目睹的是同一件事？有时候人们会惊讶地发现你的记忆可能不是真实的。我们很多人都喜欢认为我们能完美地记住事情。我们太棒了，对吧？记忆太棒了。完全不是这样。我们的记忆糟透了。我们有一种错觉，以为我们能记住发生在我们身上的事，但实际上，我们的大脑在保留哪种信息方面是极其有选择性的。事实证明，我们选择保留什么信息的方式之一，就是那些我们可能需要去谈论的事情，那些可能会出现在你的描述中的事情。所以语言，我们语言中的模式引导着我们的注意力。告诉我们你应该关注什么，应该如何思考一个事件。
这里有一个我们做的小研究例子。我们给人们看视频。例如，这个人要去刺破气球。所以他非常故意地刺破气球，气球爆了。还有一个意外版本，他只是坐在那里做自己的事。他碰巧动了动手，气球爆了，他非常惊讶，对吧？所以这显然是一个意外。我们给他们看很多其他事件。然后稍后进行一个意外的目击者记忆测试，对吧？所以之前你会看到其中一个人对气球犯下了某种罪行，对吧？是哪一个？
现在，如果你问是哪一个，如果是故意行为，说英语的人和说西班牙语的人都记得是谁做的。如果是故意的，而当它是意外时，情况就不同了。说英语的人仍然记得是谁做的。如果是意外，他们会说“他弄爆了气球”。他们记得是谁弄爆了气球。而说西班牙语的人如果是意外，就不太可能记得是谁做的。但如果你问，你记得它是否是意外吗？情况就变了。现在是不记得是否是意外的说英语的人。而说西班牙语的人记得更清楚。所以你会看到两种不同语言的使用者观看完全相同的事件，他们是同一事件的目击者，他们离开时带着对不同事物的记忆。
语言和文化让我们变得极其聪明。我们从前人那里继承了大量的智力劳动，对吧？数千年数万年的共同劳动，人们发展我们的语言，发展思想，将它们构建到我们现在完全习以为常的语言中。语言和文化还减少了认知熵。我的意思是，关于任何话题，我们人类的大脑都有各种各样的思考方式。但一旦我们固着于一种特定的语言、一种特定的文化，我们就倾向于以一种方式去思考它。我们有点像是沿着语言为我们设定的轨迹前行。
仅仅知道有所有这些其他的可能性，仅仅知道语言有如此多的多样性，我认为，这是一个非常解放的想法。语言如此多样性的这个事实，证明了人类大脑惊人的创造力和灵活性。人类的大脑不仅创造了一个现实，而是创造了七千多个，甚至更多。而且，语言是有生命的东西。我们不断改变它们。我们不断调整它们以适应我们的需求。这给你提供了一种思考方式：你想要创造什么样的语言？你想要拥有什么样的思想？你希望别人如何思考？你实际上想如何编排语言与思想之间的这场舞蹈？非常感谢大家。我非常期待听到你们的想法。