Rabbi Natasha Mann

It is easy to assume that words are just labels for objects and movements and ideas. That to translate from one language to another is just to find the series of sounds we make that parallel the exact same concept. That is to say: New London Synagogue is a synagogue, from the Greek συναγωγή, meaning “place of gathering”. We can translate that back and forth from the Hebrew Beit Knesset, “house of gathering”. Different sounds, but essentially the same meaning. So surely it doesn’t matter which language we are using.  Except within the field of linguistics, there are long arguments on whether and how the language of the speaker affects the mind of the speaker. We can all agree that culture shapes language, but maybe, some hypothesise, language affects cognition, too. The most famous example of this is regarding the colour spectrum. Speakers of languages like Zuni, a Native American language, have a harder time distinguishing between blues and greens because the Zuni language classifi...