Time passes quickly or slowly depending on the language you speak

A new study has revealed: the language you speak can change your perception of time. This is caused by words about time in your native language.

In English, one can talk about a "long day " , while the Greeks talk about a "full" day (full day). These minor changes but seem to change our perception of time, scientists said.

A group of researchers from Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Lancaster University in the UK say that their work also shows that speaking two languages ​​encourages the human brain to think in new ways.

Panos Athanasopoulos - a member of the group from University of Lancaster, told Mic: " Language can transform our perception and basically, it makes them experience time in a specific way."

In one experiment, a computer animation was projected slowly in a straight line. It is displayed with 40 Spanish speakers and 40 Swedish speakers. All animations last only 3 seconds, but the straight line increases a lot, sometimes increases less.

Language can affect time.(Photo: Unsplash).

Researchers predict that because the Swedes talk about time as a distance, they will have difficulty estimating exactly how much time has passed. And scientists are right.

Meanwhile, Spanish-speaking people who talk about time as a volume (for example, they often say a 'small' destruction is more than a 'short-lived' destruction) of time awareness. They realized that 3 seconds had passed despite how much the straight line had gone up.

Emanuel Bylund, a linguist, is also a researcher at the University of Stellenbosch, explaining Popular Science: "The Swedes tend to think that, if the line is going to be farther away, it will take longer. "Meanwhile, Spanish speakers are not fooled by that. They seem to think, no matter how far the straight line goes, it still needs time to go up."

In another test, participants were watching the animation of a vase being gradually filled with money. The length of the animation is fixed, but the bottles are filled with different amounts of money.

And this time - certainly - Spanish speakers have trouble estimating the passage of time. Another interesting thing is that when the examples related to specific languages ​​are removed, the volunteers rated the time much better.

For more details on what happened, scientists continue to experiment with 74 volunteers who can speak both languages: Spanish and Swedish. These people are shown the same animation as before.

After the experiment, the results are similar. When the instructions are displayed in Swedish, volunteers are easily fooled by straight line images. And when the instruction was in Spanish, the image of the filled jar interfered with their perception of time.

But we should note that this change is not large. Researchers only say that "unrecognizable distinctions" are influenced by language, when the length of the road is not too long or short, or when the bottle is not too full or empty.

So what's going on here? The team suspects that if we grow up in a language that refers to a larger length meaning more time ("a long day") , our brains automatically assume that : a longer line takes more time to draw.

Language can affect our most basic feelings.

Bylund said: "We guess this is an experience bias . They are related to the fact that the longer we travel through space, the more time it will take us."

"Even children who have not mastered the language recognize the relationship between physical length and the length of time. It can be something that is innate and can also be what we learn. when moving through space, " he added.

The experiment also provides evidence that speaking more than one language can help upgrade parts of the brain. In this case, it allows us to think about time in two different ways.

Athanasopoulos explains: "By learning a new language, you suddenly become in tune with the cognitive dimensions that you never knew before. Bilingualism seems to be able to help us switch between the two ways. thinking, that shows how deeply the language has a impact on the brain '.

"Language can affect our most basic feelings, including emotions, visual perception, and now also affect our sense of time," he added.