Language and thinking

[heliopausa]

Language affects thought.  I think... the article looked pretty convincing to me.  And I know from experience that it's really hard to see a difference when you don't have the language to identify the difference - or to see it as a real difference anyway, a significant difference, and not just hair-splitting. 

So how is my thinking tilted by the fact that I think in English with its multitudinous tense and moods for verbs?  "Would that he had been jumping!" for example.  Or even "I will have eaten breakfast."  Any ideas as to how thinking might differ in a language that doesn't put such huge emphasis on relative time and mood?  Would it be as straightforward as having a different way to view causality, or the past and the future?

Comments

[autumnia]

So for the example about previous/next month -- my first thought was the Chinese way of speaking/thinking of the terms: 上月 for previous month (the characters are literally up/top month) and 下月 for next month (literal "down month"). I don't really think of it as directional but how it was taught to me as a child, or listening to other Cantonese speakers say it.

For me, using Chinese or English thought process is probably determined by context or environment. If I'm writing about time, I'll usually say or think I'm looking "forward" to next month or "back" to some event, etc but never think of the up/down relationship used in Chinese.

[heliopausa]

Thank you for this - more food for thought! (And I think I've seen those characters before... the "up" and "down" ones, in the context of "previous chapter" and "next chapter" :) )