
How does our language shape the way we think? (2009) - c-oreills
http://www.edge.org/conversation/how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think
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diego_moita
As a speaker of 3 different languages (English, German and Portuguese/Spanish)
I believe that although correct this is a wrong discussion. Yes, languages
does influence the way we think, but overall culture does influence a million
times more.

One example is the democratic debate in English speaking countries compared to
the same debate in Portuguese/Spanish countries. I hear a lot of words that
don't have a direct translation to a single word: entitlement, pork,
accountability, delusion, bullying, patronage, solipsism, ... Because words
similar to these don't exist in Spanish/Portuguese I feel that the democratic
debate is sometimes so truncated and clunky.

Another example might be how any discussion in English is so strongly focused
on providing empirical evidence for claims; even today Anglo-Saxon remains the
culture of Sir Francis Bacon and the inductive method.

~~~
kafkaesque
I was an English <> Spanish translator in another life.

While I agree with your general idea that there are some untranslatable words,
most of the words you cite do have equivalents in Spanish, unless you are
referring to false friends. In that case, it'd be great if you could
elaborate. But generally speaking, the translations are regionalisms. Also,
I'd like to add that language is very much embedded in culture and vice versa.
They work off each other and influence each other.

I think words are concepts. Some of the discourse of translatability in the
Spanish-speaking world, especially when the source language is English,
usually deals with the illogical sense of English words. Bullying is a good
example, actually. Bullying comes from the Dutch word "brother" and its
definition has drifted far away from "fine fellow". In Spanish, the word
"bullying" in the 21st century English-speaking sense would be related to mean
"acosador", which comes from the Latin cursus/currere which can probably best
be defined as "to proceed" in English. So "bullying", as you suggest, might
not have a one-word translation, but it could be translated as "acosador
escolar". However, because Spanish-speakers understand the importance of world
integration, "bullying" is also used, though you get purists and word-rebels
in some regions who, incidentally, are also anti-American, anti-consumerism
and sceptical of the English-speaking world in general.

A similar phenomenon occurs in the UK. You see certain people use an
indigenous equivalent instead of adopting a standard "London English" word. It
certainly happens in South America. So yes, culture and language are very much
tied together.

Personally, I think Portuguese, though a romance language, really shouldn't be
grouped together with Spanish, even though I can understand most of it, though
I've never taken a single Portuguese course in my entire life. My
understanding it has to do with studying Latin and Italian. I think the
average, _educated_ Spanish speaker would be able to read maybe 50% and
understand spoken Brazilian Portuguese even less. Some words and
pronunciations have seeped into Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia, however.

~~~
saraid216
> I think words are concepts.

My notion of this is that words are _pointers_ to something in a concept
space. The words themselves don't and can't contain everything that the
concept is; through cultural immersion, you gain a more complete notion of the
concept and can more reliably refer to it by using an appropriate word.

This is why a lot of words are used to mean things completely unrelated
(apparently) to their definition. The address they have in concept space
simply changed.

And then there's the detail that concepts easily and frequently overlap.

I'm sure this has been covered by an Actual Linguist more credibly, though
I've never seen it.

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codeulike
Edge.org presents things as 'conversations' but they are generally just
essays, with no possibility for other edge members to leave comments. Thats
not a conversation. There's no dialogue, nothing anyone says is challenged.
None of these 'great minds' at Edge are actually presented talking to each
other.

Consequently although Edge.org says its all about conversation and advancing
knowledge, I suspect its really just about selling pop-science books.

It would be a much better site if it was a proper forum (for the 'great minds'
that are members) and we could all watch the discussion, disagreements,
flameouts and ragequits. Seriously.

~~~
glenstein
Well I'm looking at the front page story, "A Conversation with Lee Smolin." It
leads with a monologue from Smolin followed by a response from Arnold Trehub,
followed by a response from Sean Carroll, followed by an entry from Lee Smolin
responding to Carroll's response. Bruce Sterling enters the conversation to
express sympathy with ideas Smolin as raised then Trehub comes back with
another response and finally Amanda Gefter gives a reply to Smolin.

This event is put under the site's conversations section, and a quick perusal
of this section reveals tons of similar conversations with multiple
contributors all responding to each other, and they've been doing this for
years.

~~~
codeulike
Hmm, I looked before and didn't find much, but you're right. Still, on page 1
of the list of 'conversations' there only seem to be 9 that are genuine
dialogues, the other 41 are just singular essays or people all answering an
open question. But yeah, thats a bit more like it. Still some way to go before
it becomes a bubbling forum of discourse though.

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RyanMcGreal
And just when I'd finally flushed Sapir-Whorf out of my system...

~~~
david927
From what I understand, the original Sapir-Whorf thesis (now the strong
version) was (correctly) discredited because it was about language _limiting_
and determining thought. The weak version, that it _influences_ the way we
think, is now widely accepted.

~~~
aadsam
Widely accepted is stretching it. There are very few linguists who believe
there's enough evidence to support the weak hypothesis.

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robmclarty
Wittgenstein said it best: "The limits of my language are the limits of my
world."

~~~
netrus
Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.

~~~
flyinRyan
And the quote attributed to Einstein ("If you can't explain it to your
grandmother, then you don't understand it yourself") also expresses this idea.

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jeltz
"For a long time, the idea that language might shape thought was considered at
best untestable and more often simply wrong."

I dislike sensationalism. The idea that this can be tested is as old as the
modern controversy. There were studies on words for colors in the 1950s.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate)

~~~
fernly
All of which brings back memories of Loglan[1] which was specifically designed
as a tool for testing Sapir-Whorf, although in the end and after many years of
painstaking development it was never used for that. Loglan has a successor
Lojban[2] which is still a hobby project for a small community.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan> [2]
<http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban>

~~~
ancarda
There are a few children who are being raised bilingually with Lojban as a
mother tongue so the original purpose may end up being fulfilled. It'll be
interesting to see how they turn out.

xu baupli la .lojban. .i mi nintadni

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scjr
Check out her talk as well - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPGpZp1pfQQ>

~~~
david927
I just saw that last week. Fascinating!

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grownseed
This is extremely subjective but as a speaker of two languages (English and
French), I find it interesting how certain things come to me in one language
and other things in the other. I have friends more or less in the same boat as
I am and it's funny to see how we switch languages when expressing different
ideas without even thinking about it. Funnily enough, I happen to talk in my
sleep on occasions, and I apparently speak a mash-up of both languages, but in
a fairly consistent manner (i.e. words will be one language or the other). The
brain's a wonderfully intricate thing :)

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c-oreills
Adds weight to the idea of the Blub Paradox:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html>

~~~
nnq
Yep. And I think this linguistic influence means _way more for programming
languages than for natural languages_ \- when thinking or communication to a
human you can always "escape the language traps" by thinking visually or
drawing/sketching or just showing things, but _when you "communicate" with a
computer your minds is basically "trapped" in the language_ (the only escape
is being able to think the "domain language" instead, like thinking an
algorithm in mathematical language or a business problem in business terms).

~~~
serans
I think you can "escape" a programming language by sketching in quite the same
way you can do it for natural languages, if not more easily. After all, we'll
been using Flowcharts and the like since the beginning of computing.

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franzwong
Number system of some Asian languages (e.g. Chinese) is base 10, so the
children can learn Maths easier.

~~~
7rurl
What do you mean? The arabic number system that most of the world uses is base
10. Also, I don't see why the base of the number system would make math any
easier or harder.

~~~
taejo
The arabic numeral system is base-10, but English numerals are only sort of
base 10: consider 2, 10, 12 and 22. In English, these are spoken as "two",
"ten", "twelve" and "twenty-two". The words "twelve" and "twenty" are both
derived from "two", it's true, but in two different ways. "Teen" and "ten" are
similar, but there's nothing about "twenty" that indicates a connection to
"ten".

In Japanese (IIRC), 2, 10, 12, 22 is spoken "ni, ju, ju-ni, ni-ju-ni": "two,
ten, two-tens, two-tens-and-two".

It's not that one base is better than another: the idea is that a single
consistent base is better than inconsistency.

~~~
scott_s
Thank you. I had flirted with the thoughts before, but never really explicitly
considered how odd the English words "eleven", "twelve" and then the "teens"
are. Not only is "teen" not quite "ten", we also put it _after_ the ones
digit. That is, 19 is "nine- _teen_ ", but 91 is " _ninety_ -one".

~~~
archangel_one
This is true of Germanic languages more generally, where they have special
cases for teens too but also read higher numbers as "five-and-twenty" etc. And
then French has their vigesimal thing - 92 is quatre-vingt-douze, ie. "four
twentys and twelve". English gets off relatively lightly with teens only...

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dschiptsov
Very simple - the way you cursing affects how you think. Some cultures are
exceptional in using "bad words". Russians, for example, using all the dirty
details of a sexual intercourse, while, say, Italians using some blasphemy.
Here lies the answer.)

