Language affecting thought - the question arises again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1814973

by RiderOfGiraffes • 16 years ago

7 3 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Over here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1812165

the question has again arisen about language affecting thought:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1813181

I've replied there, but thought I'd start a separate discussion in case people are interested.

RiderOfGiraffes2• 16 years ago

Clickable:

+ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1812165

+ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1813181

And my reply: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1814970

Repeated here:

Many linguists claim that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH) has been soundly disproved. They have bags of evidence to show that the usual, strong interpretation is false.

And yet every programmer with proficiency in several languages knows that some problems are easier solved in Python, others in C++, and others in AWK. Further, every polyglot I know will shift language according to nuances in the thoughts they're trying to express, because some languages have more/better/finer distinctions about different things.

In Spanish the words for "to wait" and "to hope" are the same. In some contexts the words for "Even" and "Same" are both translated into the Frech as "meme" (as in "meme chose" - "same thing"). Perhaps these conflations of words show a conflation of concept. Yes, the differences in concepts exist in the minds of the speakers, but the language to express them precisely isn't always there.

There's a Spanish joke: "¿Cómo se llama a un ascensor en Inglés?" - "Con su dedo." It doesn't translate into English - you need to read the Spanish. Again, vocabulary conflation.

SWH has been debated here on HN before, many times, and no doubt it will again, with the research-based linguists saying there's no difference in lanugage chosen, and the polyglots snorting derisively.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1505365

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658951

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=218862

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1595991

OneWhoFrogs• 16 years ago

About 50 years ago, a researcher developed a language he designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis called "Loglan." A speaker of its successor (Lojban) posted an AMA on Reddit last year[1]. He posted this in regards to whether or not it broadened his thinking:

I believe that learning lojban has helped me learn to think much more precisely in general. The first example of this that comes to mind is how often I see questions and confusion of family and friends as just confusion about language. I can't actually verify, of course, how much of my perspective is unrelated to lojban, how much is from lojban specifically, and how much is from learning a language that's dramatically different from English.

So while it is superior for communication, it doesn't affect our thought process.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9c90z/i_speak_a_constr...

RiderOfGiraffes2• 16 years ago

I speak a little lojban, and I believe it has changed the way I think. My use, construction and perception of tenses has changed, and when I was reasonably fluent I found that I tended to think in lojban when doing math.

Again, impossible to verify, entirely anecdotal, and based on introspection, but it's what seemed to happen for me.

Language affecting thought - the question arises again.

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