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The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would tell you differently. The very ideas that you can hope to have depend on the language you use to interpret the world. Lose a la

by msg 17y ago

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis would tell you differently. The very ideas that you can hope to have depend on the language you use to interpret the world. Lose a language, lose a perspective. This is also one of the things 1984 is about.

abstractbill 17y ago
I don't disagree with your point. However, my understanding is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says the language you speak determines the range of things you can think about. But that doesn't seem to preclude the existence of a "super-language" that encompasses the range of every currently used language. Maybe we could make one? Or maybe one will evolve naturally over time?
- msg 17y ago
  This is an old program of the philosophers. Can you, even in principle, find the language at the back of reality? Can you eliminate all ambiguities when you refer to ordinary objects? Are we all talking about more or less the same things? How could we talk about exactly the same things? The picture gets a little muddled when you think of the choices and distinctions each language makes. Some of them will contradict each other. Suppose Language 1 has 150 words for snow, but only one for love, while Language 2 has 150 words for love, but only two for snow. Would the uber language preserve the distinctions for each word? Maybe you're losing something by learning all this detail. You can do the same thing with the intensional meanings of words (connotations). I think one of the original Sapir-Whorf examples traces the meaning of a word for corn in Language A to words in Language B that mean "enemy food". Would the uber language remove connotations? It would probably lose the word from Language B. But this gets into an even deeper point, which is that when you use a language, words aren't isolated. They frame a certain outlook on the world that hangs together. There were probably a bunch of words in Language B that talk about foreign or "enemy" things. Can you really say those words and mean them without taking on their perspective? There are many more examples. We have this kind of thing in English too. We have "kill" and "murder". We have the Anglo-Saxon words and the Norman words. And finally and most importantly, what perspective on the world does the super-language take? Objective? Involved but fair? Polemical? Propagandizing?
Herring 17y ago
Well chances are you weren't getting any perspectives from a Bo speaker anyway. Societies spend considerably more energy teaching the current lingua franca than in preserving dying languages, which leads me to think the value of a language is largely in communication. Besides, there's a lot of variation among just english speakers.. the ease of communication sort of disguises that.
- msg 17y ago
  I would not look to what societies spend energy on as a definition of value. There's a wisdom of crowds, but there's a folly of crowds too. If your perspective focuses on English, then yes, you can notice lots of e.g. sociolinguistic and geographical diversity. But what do you see when you look beyond it? You can ask a similar question about American cultural hegemony, or the Internet. What kinds of expression do you lose or diminish by co-opting millions of viewers into the Hollywood frame of mind? Or the Facebook news feed?

by msg 17y ago

abstractbill 17y ago

I don't disagree with your point. However, my understanding is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says the language you speak determines the range of things you can think about. But that doesn't seem to preclude the existence of a "super-language" that encompasses the range of every currently used language. Maybe we could make one? Or maybe one will evolve naturally over time?

msg 17y ago
This is an old program of the philosophers. Can you, even in principle, find the language at the back of reality? Can you eliminate all ambiguities when you refer to ordinary objects? Are we all talking about more or less the same things? How could we talk about exactly the same things? The picture gets a little muddled when you think of the choices and distinctions each language makes. Some of them will contradict each other. Suppose Language 1 has 150 words for snow, but only one for love, while Language 2 has 150 words for love, but only two for snow. Would the uber language preserve the distinctions for each word? Maybe you're losing something by learning all this detail. You can do the same thing with the intensional meanings of words (connotations). I think one of the original Sapir-Whorf examples traces the meaning of a word for corn in Language A to words in Language B that mean "enemy food". Would the uber language remove connotations? It would probably lose the word from Language B. But this gets into an even deeper point, which is that when you use a language, words aren't isolated. They frame a certain outlook on the world that hangs together. There were probably a bunch of words in Language B that talk about foreign or "enemy" things. Can you really say those words and mean them without taking on their perspective? There are many more examples. We have this kind of thing in English too. We have "kill" and "murder". We have the Anglo-Saxon words and the Norman words. And finally and most importantly, what perspective on the world does the super-language take? Objective? Involved but fair? Polemical? Propagandizing?

Herring 17y ago

Well chances are you weren't getting any perspectives from a Bo speaker anyway. Societies spend considerably more energy teaching the current lingua franca than in preserving dying languages, which leads me to think the value of a language is largely in communication. Besides, there's a lot of variation among just english speakers.. the ease of communication sort of disguises that.

msg 17y ago
I would not look to what societies spend energy on as a definition of value. There's a wisdom of crowds, but there's a folly of crowds too. If your perspective focuses on English, then yes, you can notice lots of e.g. sociolinguistic and geographical diversity. But what do you see when you look beyond it? You can ask a similar question about American cultural hegemony, or the Internet. What kinds of expression do you lose or diminish by co-opting millions of viewers into the Hollywood frame of mind? Or the Facebook news feed?