"[O]nce you get to [ideas] that are more abstract or more removed from direct physical experience, lots and lots of differences [between languages] can arise. And even things that are very tied to physical experience -- like colour or representations of space -- humans have found different ways of conceptualizing and structuring them. So there are certainly strong general tendencies across languages that are driven by physics, by physiology, [and the fact that] human bodies are really similar across the world, and so on. But within those similarities, people still find incredible latitude to create their conceptual universe." (Lera Boroditsky, How the Languages We Speak Shape the Ways We Think - YouTube, n.d.)

Around the world people communicate with one another using a dazzling array of languages—7,000 or so all told—and each language requires very different things from its speakers. For example, suppose I want to tell you that I saw Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street. In Mian, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea, the verb I used would reveal whether the event happened just now, yesterday or in the distant past, whereas in Indonesian, the verb wouldn’t even give away whether it had already happened or was still coming up. In Russian, the verb would reveal my gender. In Mandarin, I would have to specify whether the titular uncle is maternal or paternal and whether he is related by blood or marriage, because there are different words for all these different types of uncles and then some (he happens to be a mother’s brother, as the Chinese translation clearly states). And in Pirahã, a language spoken in the Amazon, I couldn’t say “42nd,” because there are no words for exact numbers, just words for “few” and “many" (Boroditsky, 2011, p. 63).

 "[...] Kuuk Thaayorre speakers talk in terms of absolute cardinal directions (north, south, east, west, and so forth). Of course, in English we also use cardinal direction terms but only for large spatial scales. We would not say, for example, “They set the salad forks southeast of the dinner forks—the philistines!” But in Kuuk Thaayorre cardinal directions are used at all scales. This means one ends up saying things like “the cup is southeast of the plate” or “the boy standing to the south of Mary is my brother.” In Pormpuraaw, one must always stay oriented, just to be able to speak properly" (Boroditsky, 2011, p. 64).

When given  a sets of pictures showing the progression of time through some visual example, participants were asked to arrange the images to show the correct order of time passing. "English speakers given this task [would] arrange the cards so that time proceeds from left to right. Hebrew speakers will tend to lay out the cards from right to left. This shows that writing direction in a language influences how we organize time"  (Boroditsky, 2011, p. 64).

"The Kuuk Thaayorre, however, did not routinely arrange the cards from left to right or right to left. They arranged them from east to west. That is, when they were seated facing south, the cards went left to right. When they faced north, the cards went from right to left. When they faced east, the cards came toward the body, and so on. We never told anyone which direction they were facing—the Kuuk Thaayorre knew that already and spontaneously used this spatial orientation to construct their representations of time" (Boroditsky, 2011, p. 64).

"English speakers consider the future to be “ahead” and the past “behind" [and so they] unconsciously sway their bodies forward when thinking about the future and back when thinking about the past. But in Aymara, a language spoken in the Andes, the past is said to be in front and the future behind. And the Aymara speakers’ body language matches their way of talking" (Boroditsky, 2011, p. 64).

"The answer, it turns out, is both—the way we think influences the way we speak, but the influence also goes the other way. [For example, t]eaching people new color words, for instance, changes their ability to discriminate colors. [...] [B]ilinguals change how they see the world depending on which language they are speaking" (Boroditsky, 2011, p. 65). 

"What researchers have been calling “thinking” this whole time actually appears to be a collection of both linguistic and nonlinguistic processes. As a result, there may not be a lot of adult human thinking where language does not play a role" (Boroditsky, 2011, p. 65). 

"Each [language] provides its own cognitive toolkit and encapsulates the knowledge and worldview developed over thousands of years within a culture. Each contains a way of perceiving, categorizing and making meaning in the world, an invaluable guidebook developed and honed by our ancestors" (Boroditsky, 2011, p. 65).