Ordinarily, you'd call a pistachio a pistachio. But…

Ordinarily, you'd call a pistachio a pistachio. But if you're, for example, an immigrant from China and you've just seen a Ming vase, you would call a pistachio a “happy nut.”Because visual cues can affect language in people with multiple background experiences. That's according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers performed many tests with students who had come to the U.S. from China. In one, the students heard a recorded conversation, in English, about school life. But some looked at a Chinese face while they listened, while others saw a Caucasian face. The students then talked about their own lives. And the Chinese-American students who had listened while looking at a Chinese face spoke English more slowly and less fluently than those who listened while looking at the Caucasian face. In another test, when the students were exposed to Chinese icons, they were more likely to translate from Chinese into English literally. Thus pistachios became “happy nuts,” which is the name in China. This phenomenon shows that immigrants struggling with a new language can face unusual and unanticipated challenges. And that what you look can affect what you say.