All languages have them: A new study on words "This" and "That"
Some languages are so unlike that it's even hard to understand whether people who speak them even think similarly.
But no matter how different they are, there are some specific terms that exist in all languages.
Let's see how and why people use terms like "this" and "that".
How it was detected
New research looked at how people from different parts of the world use words like 'this' and 'that' to describe things.
They studied more than 1,000 people who spoke 29 different languages.
Before, some thought that languages might make different distinctions when describing where things are located, and that this could mean people think differently depending on their language.
However, this study found something surprising.
They discovered that in all the languages they looked at, people use words like 'this' for things they can reach and 'that' for things they can't.
This means that, no matter where you're from, you tend to talk about things you can touch as 'this' and things that are far away as 'that.'
The researchers tested languages from all over the world, including English, Spanish, Norwegian, Japanese, Mandarin, Tzeltal, and Telugu.
They found the same pattern in all of them.
This suggests that this way of talking about things is really old and has been around for a long time.
It's interesting to see how people from different places use language in similar ways.
