The Medical Daily – Dana Dovey
“A recent study, now published in Psychological Science, showed that the grammatical differences of English and German actually affect the ways speakers perceive a situation. For example, in the study German/English bilinguals were asked to watch a short non-verbal video of an individual completing an action and then describe what they saw. The videos were simple, showing scenes such as a woman walking toward a car or a man riding his bike to a supermarket. The results showed that despite being shown the same videos, English and German descriptions of the actions consistently differed in the same manner. The German replies tended to describe both the actions and the goal of the scenario. For example, they would answer: “A woman is walking toward her car.” The English replies tended to only describe the action and leave out the goal, thus describing the same video as: “A woman is walking.” The researchers involved in the study believe that the different replies are based on the differences in English and German grammar. This hypothesis seemed to uphold after the researchers found that as the bilinguals’ understanding of the intricate grammar of their language increased, so did the similarity of their descriptions following the aforementioned pattern. The team believes this lingual difference actually shaped the way individuals viewed the scenarios, with German speakers more likely to focus on possible outcomes of people’s actions and English speakers more focused on the action itself.”(more)