Most linguists agree that, to some extent, the languages you speak play a role in shaping how you see the world. If you speak German, you might be a little more pragmatic; if you speak French, you might be just a touch more emotional; if you speak Klingon, you might be a bit of a virgin -- you see where we're going with this. But you might be surprised about the extent that your brain is wired differently depending on whether you think thoughts in Japanese, English, or Swahili. For example ...

5 "Gendered" Languages Encourage Discrimination

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Speakers of English are often confounded by gender markers in foreign languages. In German, for example, there are three different words for "the" depending on whether the object in question is masculine ("der"), feminine ("die"), or neutral ("das"). For instance, in Germany all dogs are masculine and all cats are feminine. Don't ask us how the hell they keep making more dogs and cats.

Martin Falbisoner

They're probably manufactured by Mercedes-Petz.

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Now, you may not think that identifying all bridges as being female ("die brucke") would have any ramifications for ladies who speak German, but this is Cracked, and we pretty much only bring things up if you're wrong about them. It appears that bridges were designated female because they are things that people walk all over, and yes -- societies where gendered languages are spoken tend to be male-dominated. Not only that, the effect increases with the number of gender markers present in the language.

It's been posited that being forced to assign a gender to all objects gives more importance, in the mind of the speaker, to people's gender than if they were using neutral language. And the effect isn't negligible. In countries where the dominant language employs a sex-based system of gender identification, female participation in the work force drops by about 12 percent, whereas in countries where the language uses a non-sex-based gender system, female work force participation actually increases slightly, by about 3 percent.

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"Non-sex-based gender" instead discriminates against the poor, the elderly, the undead, etc.

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So there you go: Want to boost the economy? Quit insisting that all bicycles are girls because you can ride them as much as you want and then leave them in the street.