Shadowing Practice: How Language Shapes the Way We Think • Professor Lera Boroditsky • Duocon 2022 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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So, I'll be speaking to you using language, because I can.

This is one of these magical abilities that we humans have.

We can transmit our ideas from one mind to another across vast reaches of time and space.

So, right now, I could take the words that you and I both know and combine them in a new way and give you a bizarre new idea.

Like, I could say, "Imagine a bear who's looking for stamps because he has to send his new poetry collection to his literary agent, the owl." If everything's gone well in your life so far, that's a new thought for you.

You haven't had that thought before and I was able to implant it in your mind using language.

Now, of course, there's not just one language in the world.

There are about 7000 languages spoken currently and there have been many others in the past.

And so, these languages differ from one another in all kinds of ways.

They have different sounds, they have different words.

They have, importantly, very different structures.

That begs the question, "Do speakers of different languages actually think differently?

Do languages shape the way that we think?" Now, people have been offering opinions on this for thousands of years.

So, for example, Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, said, "To have a second language is to have a second soul." That's a very strong statement about the power of language.

When you're learning a language on Duolingo, are you just learning a new way of talking?

Or are you acquiring new souls?

On the other hand, Shakespeare has Juliet say, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Well, that suggests that maybe language isn't that important, doesn't change the way you think.

Now, people have been offering opinions on this topic for thousands of years, but there hasn't been a lot of evidence, scientific evidence, about this question until recently.

In the last few decades, research from my lab and other labs around the world has finally started to answer this question.

So, let me give you some of my favorite examples of how the languages we speak shape the way we think.

I'm going to start in an aboriginal community in Australia.

These are the Kuuk Thaayorre people that I had a chance to work with.

They live on the West coast of Cape York.

And what's cool about their language is they don't use word like, "left" and "right." Instead, everything is in cardinal directions.

Like North, South, East and West.

There are a lot of languages like this.

And when I say everything is in cardinal directions, I really mean everything.

In some languages you'd say, "There's an ant on your north-west leg." Or, "Move your cup to the south-south-east a little bit." The way that you say "hello" in Kuuk Thaayorre is, you say, "Which way are you going?" And the answer should be, "North-north-west in the far distance. How about you?" So, literally, you couldn't get past "hello" in this language if you didn't know your heading direction.

Now, it turns out that people who speak languages like this actually do stay oriented remarkably well.

They stay oriented better than we used to think humans could.

And we used to think, "Well, humans, human brains, just can't stay oriented as well as other creatures, because of some biological excuse we had like, "Oh, we don't have magnets in our beaks or magnets in our scales." But it turns out, no, there are lots of humans around the world that stay oriented remarkably well just because they have this linguistic and cultural practice.

To me, this example is so interesting because it shows you how much more our brains are capable of than we think.

Often what we think is possible for us is limited just by what we're used to.

In this case, being oriented in this way is not just impossible, turns out it's not even that hard.

We just didn't even think to try.

Now, languages differ not only in how they treat space, but also in how they treat time.

So, here are pictures of my grandfather at different ages.

I've laid them out here the way an English speaker would lay them out, from left to right.

And this is because of our writing direction.

If you use a language like Hebrew or Arabic, that's written from right to left, then you might lay these cards out from right to left, depending on writing direction.

But what about the Kuuk Thaayorre? They don't use left and right.

This aboriginal group I told you about. What would they do?

Well, let me give you a hint.

When we sat people down facing south, they would lay these cards out from left to right.

When we sat them down facing north, they would lay the cards out from right to left.

When we sat them down facing east, they would lay the cards out coming towards them.

What's the pattern?

It's from east to west, in this case the direction of the Sun, right?

That's incredible, for them, time is not locked on the body.

Instead, it's locked on the landscape.

Now, if you think about it, our way of doing it, locked on the body, it's kind of strange, right?

If I'm facing this way, time goes this way.

Very egocentric of me to make the dimension of time change its direction every time I turn my body.

For them, time goes in a fundamentally different reference frame.

From east to west.

Now, languages also differ in how they divide up the visual world.

For example, the world of color.

Languages differ in how many color words they have and where they put boundaries between colors.

Here's an example from Russian.

In Russian, there isn't a single word for blue that covers the entire spectrum of colors that English calls blue.

Instead there's one word for light blue, "goluboy," and another world for dark blue, "siniy." So Russian speakers have a lifetime of experience drawing a boundary between goluboy and siniy.

When we test Russian and English speakers in the same experiments, we find that Russian speakers are faster to make a distinction between colors that cross that boundary in language for them.

And when you look at the brains of people who speak languages that make these kinds of distinctions, as you're changing colors from light blue to dark blue, the brain of a Russian speaker will give a surprised reaction.

"Oh, something has categorically changed," when it crosses that boundary.

Whereas the brain of an English speaker that calls them all blue, doesn't give that surprise because nothing categorically changes.

Languages also have all kinds of grammatical quirks, and here's one of my favorites: a lot of languages have grammatical gender.

That means all nouns fall into one gender or another, for example masculine and feminine are two very popular genders.

Now, these gender assignments differ a lot across languages.

So, for example, the Sun is feminine in German, but it's masculine in Spanish.

And for the Moon, it's the reverse.

You could ask, "Does that actually matter for how Spanish and German speakers think about the Sun and the Moon and all of the other things named by nouns in Spanish and German?

Do German speakers actually think of the Sun as somehow more female-like and the Moon as somehow more male-like?" Well, turns out that's the case.

These connotations do bleed through from grammar.

So if you ask Spanish and German speakers to describe thing like a bridge, for example, they will give feminine adjectives, stereotypically feminine ones like beautiful, elegant, if they're talking about something that's feminine in their language.

And they'll give stereotypically masculine adjectives like strong, when talking about something grammatically masculine in their language.

Languages also differ in how they describe events.

Take this accident, for example.

Now, even though it's an accident it'd be normal in English to say, "He broke the vase." Even though clearly the person doesn't intend to do it.

In fact, in English, you could even say something like, "I broke my arm." Now, in a lot of languages, you wouldn't use that construction, "I broke my arm," to talk about an accident.

Unless you're a lunatic and you went out looking to break your arm and you succeeded, you got your arm broken.

In a lot of languages you might say, "To me it happened that my arm broke," "My arm got broken," "The vase broke" or "The vase broke itself." There'd be a different construction if it's an accident.

Turns out this matters for what people attend to and remember when they're looking at events.

So, English speakers, when they look at videos of accidents, because English describes these accidents as "He did it," "He broke the vase," English speakers remember who did it, they pay attention to that.

But speakers of other languages, like Spanish, for example, are less likely to remember who did it if it's an accident but they're more likely to remember that it was an accident.

They're more likely to remember the intention.

So, here you have two people looking at the same event but remembering different things from that experience.

Of course, this has a lot of consequences for eyewitness testimony.

It also has consequences for blame and punishment.

So, depending on how I describe an event to you, even if you can see it with your own eyes, or if you can watch the video, if I say, "He broke the vase," you're more likely to blame and punish someone.

You're more likely to ask for more money in damages, for example.

So language guides our construal even when we can see things with our own eyes.

Now, I've given you a few examples of how language shapes the way we think.

I gave you an example of how language can create really big differences in thought, laying out space and time in completely independent coordinate frames.

I've given you an example of how language can get in very early in our perceptual process.

Of course, making color distinctions is this tiny little thing that we do, but we're making thousands of these distinctions all the time, right?

And language is sneaking in and meddling even in these tiny little decisions.

Language can also have really broad effects.

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So, I gave you the example of grammatical gender, and of course it seems a little silly, but grammatical gender is a feature that applies to all nouns, requires wide-ranging agreement in the language.

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And so, what that means is language is affecting how you think about anything that can be named by a noun.

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Well, that's a lot of stuff.

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And I also gave you an example of how language can shape things that are weighty, important to us, ideas like blame and punishment.

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Applications like eyewitness testimony.

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Now, I want to leave you with three thoughts.

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The fact that we have so many languages, the fact of this incredible linguistic diversity is a testament to the true ingenuity of the human mind, right?

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We're able to invent not just one conceptual universe, but thousands of them.

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That's an incredible gift.

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Our brains are capable of a lot more than simply what we're used to.

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Unfortunately, we're losing a lot of this linguistic diversity at an alarming rate.

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By some estimates, half of the languages that exist today will be gone in the next hundred years.

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And for me, this is very sad because a lot of our science of the human mind and brain is based on, well, English speaking American undergraduates.

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That excludes most humans.

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That makes our science incredibly narrow and biased.

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And as scientists who want to understand the mind, we have to do better.

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But it also gives us an opportunity to reflect.

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When you think about how people elsewhere think in ways that are different from you, it also gives you a chance to ask, "Why do I think the way that I do?" "How has the language that I speak shaped me?" Or, "When I'm learning a new language on Duolingo, am I just learning a new way of expressing my thoughts, the thoughts I already have, or am I actually learning new ways to see the world, new ways to think?

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And if language is such a wonderful, powerful tool for creating ideas and disseminating them, then that gives you the power to ask, "What thoughts do I want to create?" Thank you.

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What You'll Practice in This Lesson

In this lesson, you'll explore how language shapes thought while improving your English speaking and listening skills. Using insights from the video, you'll practice understanding complex ideas, mimicking natural speech patterns, and applying the shadowing technique to enhance fluency. You'll also analyze how cultural and linguistic differences influence communication, making your English more nuanced and context-aware.

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Cardinal directions (North, South, East, West) – Essential for describing space in many languages.
Implant – To introduce an idea into someone's mind (e.g., "She implanted a new thought using vivid language").
Oriented – Aware of one's position relative to surroundings (e.g., "Speakers of this language stay oriented using directions").
Linguistic – Relating to language (e.g., "Linguistic practices shape how we think about time").
Landscape – The physical environment (e.g., "Time is locked on the landscape for some cultures").

Practice Tips for Shadowing & Pronunciation

The video's tone is conversational yet informative, with a moderate speed – perfect for shadow speak practice. Here's how to master it: 1. Start slow: Pause the video after 5-10 seconds, repeat the speaker's words, focusing on intonation and stress (e.g., emphasize "magical abilities" or "bizarre new idea"). 2. Use a shadowing app: Apps can help you match the speaker's pace and rhythm, making it easier to mimic natural speech patterns. 3. Focus on connected speech: Notice how words like "because I can" or "across vast reaches" flow together. Practice linking sounds to improve fluency. 4. Record yourself: Compare your recording to the video to identify areas for improvement, such as pronunciation of "Kuuk Thaayorre" or "literary agent." By practicing with this video, you'll not only improve English pronunciation but also gain cultural insights that make your communication more effective. Remember, learning English with YouTube is a dynamic way to combine language skills with real-world knowledge – so press play and start shadowing today!

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	have been offering
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to think
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	haven't had · have been · hasn't been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	being oriented · is not locked · can be named

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: How Language Shapes the Way We Think • Professor Lera Boroditsky • Duocon 2022 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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