the speakers of most other languages — describe the future as something in front of them that they’re moving towa

The concept of “linguistic relativity”
The Aymara, an indigenous people of South America, aren’t looking forward to 2021. That’s because, in their native language, the idea of “looking forward” to anything in the future would make no sense.
For a 2006 study in Cognitive Science, researchers documented the way the Aymara talk about time. While English speakers — and the speakers of most other languages — describe the future as something in front of them that they’re moving toward, the Aymara people talk about time from the opposite orientation. Since the future is unseeable, they reason, it must be behind them and out of sight. The past, which can be seen, therefore lies before them. The Aymara even gesture at their backs when talking about the future, the study team found.

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“It’s as complicated as chess or any science, but it also involves social interaction and activation and all of those processes.”
This is just one example of how language can influence the way a speaker thinks about life and the world. This influence is known as linguistic relativity. Anyone who has ever studied a foreign language — whether Spanish or French or Chinese — has likely noticed how that language’s treatment of certain ideas or concepts may differ from one’s own.
“When you learn a foreign language, you learn that other people may think about things very differently than you do,” Caldwell-Harris says. “This experience can reveal new shades of meaning.”
She offers two more examples. The Russian language, unlike English, has two distinct words for the color blue — one referring to light blue shades and the other to dark blue shades. And research has found that, thanks to this linguistic distinction, Russians are quicker than English speakers at spotting differences among closely related shades of blue.
She also brings up the German word schadenfreude, which refers to the pleasure one may feel from another’s misfortune. While English speakers can understand this concept just as well as Germans, the fact that German speakers have a specific word for it likely strengthens their ability to identify and acknowledge this emotion in themselves or others.
Learning a new language confronts the brain with these sorts of unfamiliar, perspective-shifting insights. Basically, it takes what the brain thinks it understands and shakes it up, and this sort of shake-up is not only “mentally invigorating,” Caldwell-Harris says, but it can also help people see the world — and one another — in new and enriching ways.
She says that there are countless language learning tools online — many of which are free. Those are great places to get started. Once a person has some rudimentary knowledge, there are services that can connect learners with native speakers. (Search online for “language exchange” programs, which can pair you up with someone who speaks the language you’re studying and is also interested in learning your language. Most are inexpensive.)
“The problem with learning a foreign language is that people really just want the end result — to be fluent,” Caldwell-Harris adds. While fluency is an admirable goal, the real payoff for the brain begins as soon as a person starts learning. And it doesn’t stop.