Bullets for the Battle

The Bullet of Direction: Describe That Bridge!

The more scientists study language the more we discover the complexities of thinking involved in just one single word. Furthermore, language makes a startling impact on our selves and our culture. One recent study explored the relationship between the gender of a word in different languages and the descriptions assigned to the object the word represents. One such object and word pair is “bridge.”

Both German and Spanish are languages using gender case for words; a simple example is the Spanish word for boy and girl. The word for boy is Niño and is in the masculine case. Niña, the word for girl, is in the feminine case. In German the word for bridge has feminine gender. Words used to describe a bridge by German speakers tended toward beautiful, elegant, slender, etc. In Spanish, bridge is masculine. The words used to describe a bridge in Spanish tended toward strong, dangerous, sturdy, etc. In short, the researchers discovered, the way we think about gender influences the way we think about and describe an object based on the gender given to a word by its mother tongue.

The researchers discovered this to be true even when they “made up” a language and assigned gender to various objects. They concluded that their findings “… suggest that the grammar we learn from our parents, whether we realize it or not, affects our sensual experience of the world. Spaniards and Germans can see the same things, wear the same cloths, eat the same foods and use the same machines. But deep down, they have very different feelings and perceptions about the world around them.” We are so familiar with and unreflective about our language, we usually fail to understand how much it shapes us. Depending on a person’s culture and education, words can be a bridge, a detour or even a dead end!

These new findings only make it more evident that we need “big help” to understand the reality and meaning of our world, ourselves and the words we use to interpret both. Thank God we have a Helper Whose job it is to teach us what we need to know! A Helper Who will guide us through our rapid complexities of experience. A Helper Who will interpret for us the mysteries of life. A Helper Who will enable a person to build a bridge between “where I am” and “where I need to go” in order to become “what I need to be”! A Helper Who will translate the words I read and hear so that I can appropriate truth … the truth from people and the truth from God.

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” John 14:26 (Emphasis added)