Your Language Is Shaping Your Thoughts (And You Don't Even Notice)
The language you speak isn't just a tool for communication — it's quietly shaping how you think, what you feel, and even who you are.
Have you ever noticed you become a slightly different person when you switch languages? More logical in one, more emotional in another? It's not your imagination — it's neuroscience.
In this video, I break down three ideas that completely changed how I think about language:
→ The Foreign Language Effect: why speaking a second language gives you emotional distance and makes you more rational
→ How English turns processes into "things" (and why that changes how you experience the world)
→ Emotional Granularity: Lisa Feldman Barrett's research on why precise emotional vocabulary literally improves your mental and physical health
→ Why social media labels like 内耗 are making us worse at understanding our own feelings
→ What Wittgenstein meant by "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world"
Learning a language isn't just about passing exams or ordering coffee abroad. Every word you learn is quietly expanding the world you're able to think in.
📚 Mentioned in this video:
An Anatomy of Chinese by Perry Link (Harvard University Press)
Research by Lisa Feldman Barrett, Northeastern University
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus