clipped from www.npr.org

"How Does Our Language Shape the Way We Think?"

Look at it for a moment and ask yourself, "What three descriptive words come into my head when I look at a bridge?"

OK, here's the same bridge. Does it by any chance look:

Or, are you more likely to describe it as:

The first batch of words — such as beautiful, elegant, slender — were those used most often by a group of German speakers

Lera Boroditsky,

told the group to describe the image that came to mind when they were shown the word, "bridge.

The second batch of words — such as strong, sturdy, towering — were most often chosen by people whose first language is Spanish.

What explains the difference?

because the word for "bridge" in

is a feminine noun

in Spanish — el puente — is a masculine noun, native speakers unconsciously give nouns the characteristics of their grammatical gender

William Shakespeare may have said

"a rose by any other name would smell as sweet

but Boroditsky thinks

Words, and classifications of words in different languages, do matter