If we hear Chinese, we perceive the sounds, but there is no inner response to the words; they are meaningless and dead for us; we have no interest in them.

If we hear the same thoughts expressed in our mother tongue, every syllable carries its meaning and message.

Then we are readily inclined to fancy that this additional significance which belongs to the familiar language and which is absent from the foreign one is something which comes to us in the perception itself as if the meaning too were passing through the channels of our ears.

But psychologically the meaning is ours.

In learning the language we have learned to add associations and reactions of our own to the sounds which we perceive.