The Max Planck Society:
Their study has revealed that languages with a wide range of tone pitches are more prevalent in regions with high humidity levels. In contrast, languages with simpler tone pitches are mainly found in drier regions. This is explained by the fact that the vocal folds require a humid environment to produce the right tone.
I’m from a very non-humid climate. Maybe that’s the reason why it’s so hard for me to learn Vietnamese…
Stephen Anderson and Karl Fast in Figure It Out: Getting from Information to Understanding:
All cultures start with the ability to distinguish dark things from light things. This is followed by the recognition of red. After that, it might be the addition of yellow or green. And blue always seems to come last. Not every language follows the exact same path, but they adhere to this same general pattern.
One of the many odd things of the Vietnamese language is that both “blue” and “green” are “màu xanh”. In case you need to differentiate between the two you would add something like “of the sky” (màu xanh da trời) or “of the tree” (màu xanh lá cây).
I had one Vietnamese teacher that would mark the traffic light with “blue light” and the Korean presidential offices with “green house”.
Panos Athanasopoulos says bilinguals view the world in different ways depending on the specific language they are operating in.
Alice Robb:
It’s surprising, though, that people who are actually fluent in two languages also feel their personality shifting as they switch between languages. Yet researchers have confirmed this: Between 2001 and 2003, linguists Jean-Marc Dewaele and Aneta Pavlenko asked over a thousand bilinguals whether they “feel like a different person” when they speak different langauges. Nearly two-thirds said they did.
My English self is definitely different from my German one.