Does Language Influence Culture? Lera Boroditsky for the Wall Street Journal:

English speakers tend to say things like “John broke the vase” even for accidents. Speakers of Spanish or Japanese would be more likely to say “the vase broke itself.” Such differences between languages have profound consequences for how their speakers understand events, construct notions of causality and agency, what they remember as eyewitnesses and how much they blame and punish others.

Somewhat related: what language do the deaf think in? (thx, Tanushri)