7,000 Universes: How the Language We Speak Shapes the Way We Think

By Lera Boroditsky

”We have 7,000 languages. Each of these languages encompasses a world-view, encompasses the ideas and predispositions and cognitive tools developed by thousands of years of people in that culture. Each one of those languages offers a whole encapsulated universe. So we have 7,000 parallel universes, some of them are quite similar to one another, and others are a lot more different. The fact that there’s this great diversity is a real testament to the flexibility and the ingenuity of the human mind.” —Lera Boroditsky