NYTimes: Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

I have always recalled events and topography in terms of cardinal directions. In fact, I've convinced myself on occasion that I can recall a vague memory better if I am facing in the same direction as when the event took place. I always just thought it was an oddity, but this essay describes a few scattered cultures where cardinal directions are a huge part of language, memory, and hence the speakers' experience of the world.
The essay also talks about how the gender assigned in some European languages influences native speakers' mental picture of those items - 'bridge' is masculine in Spanish, where bridges are associated with strength, but feminine in German where they are considered slender and elegant.
Mother tongue doesn't prevent our understand of concepts, but gives us a predisposition to think about concepts in a particular way: "if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about." TE

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

The idea that your mother tongue shapes your experience of the world may be true after all.

http://nyti.ms/9wCGNR