3 ms·

Your reasoning doesn't work if the language in question really doesn't have a word for 'left' or 'right'. Whether this is the case because they never though of

by felxh 16y ago

Your reasoning doesn't work if the language in question really doesn't have a word for 'left' or 'right'. Whether this is the case because they never though of it or because it was strongly stigmatized in the past and as a result these words came out of use and eventually were forgotten, the result is the same: Present day speakers truly have no possible way to say 'left' or 'right' without making up new words or describing it in some way.

ithkuil 16y ago
I was always intrigued by the fact that some languages (especially ancient ones) appear to miss the word for "yes" and "no". I've heard that gaelic and latin for example don't have a real word for "yes", but instead the answer repeated the affirmative form of the verb or similar. Many argue that latin did indeed have the word for yes, namely "ita", but all the dictionaries I looked at translate it as "so; thus; indeed; ..." Other languages like japanese rely much on repetition of the verb but do have words for yes and no (hai to iie). I wonder if it really makes a difference to think in a language which doesn't have a word for yes and no (for whatever reasons is not present in the language, historical stigma etc). I see how it can change your way to discuss with people: "don't be tricky! answer simply, ehm uhm" but I feel this doesn't count as a major mind shaping issue. Don't get me wrong, I was intrigued as anyone with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis but I'm aware that sometimes some intriguing memes get more resonance than they deserve.
- cynicalkane 16y ago
  I can understand lack of "yes", but lack of "no" seems pretty strange. What do babies in these cultures shout when they don't want something? The idea of "do not want" seems to be one of the most basic things a human will want to express, starting from a very early age.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    Classic Arabic has few words for "no", each expressing refusal/denial/rejection of a different sort: la, kalaa, balaa, lam, laysa, lan, etc. la no kalaa definitely not balaa but not lam did not laysa is not lan will not However, colloquial arabic just uses the ma- prefix and collapses all those different words into one: maa/mish/mush/makoo, depending on the dialect. E.g. "I will not try": mish hagarrab (Egyptian) maa `amjarab (Levantian) makoo nijarib (Iraqi/Kuwaiti) maabaa nijarib/nigarib (Yemeni, North/South)
- RyanMcGreal 16y ago
  >I've heard that gaelic and latin for example don't have a real word for "yes", but instead the answer repeated the affirmative form of the verb or similar. Then they have a way to express affirmation.
  - ithkuil 16y ago
    Yes, the fact that you don't have a specific word for a concept doesn't mean that you don't have a concept The trick is probably that some concepts are activated when our language center parses more than one word; we don't think about them as separate words. There are plenty of examples in the vocabularies of various languages, one of my favorites is the word 'alarm': I asked a lot of people in the Italy if they recognize what the word "allarme" comes from. Surprisingly only few recognized the exhortation "all'armi!" (to the weapons!) (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=alarm http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=alarm). Sometimes this effect creates a new word, but sometimes a concept remains indirectly expressed, while the speaker unconsciously extracts the high level meaning of it. However, I noticed that most of the amateur discussions about linguistics scratch only the surface because mostly only nouns are touched. For example when I was younger and still living in Croatia. A relative of mine was Macedonian and told me that they have a verb mood that is used when you state something which you are sure that is true, vs only being told that is true. I'm not really sure what is that, after a bit of research I think it's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood. "The inferential mood (abbreviated infer or infr) is used to report a nonwitnessed event without confirming it" Does this shape the way you think? After all, even English speakers are able to express the fact that they didn't witness an event; I guess they do, didn't check :-)
    - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
      Interesting etymology of alarm - reminds me of the English "Mayday!" from the French "M'Aider!" (Help me!)
- blacksmythe 16y ago
  >> I've heard that gaelic and latin for example don't have a real word for "yes", but instead the answer repeated the affirmative form of the verb or similar. That is commonly used the same way in Chinese (at least on the Pimsleur beginner lessons). The answer to 'do you want' is 'want' or 'don't want'. I asked a native Chinese speaker if they have a way to say yes and no without referring to the action involved, and he said that they do. I have notice that people who have gender-neutral pronouns have a lot of trouble mixing up 'he' and 'she' in English.
quant18 16y ago
Is there really any language which completely lacks words for left and right? At minimum, people want to distinguish their good hand from their bad hand, or the side of the body that has their liver from the side that has their stomach. I can't say anything for Australian aboriginal languages, but I'm quite familiar with Malayo-Polynesian languages in general (I speak Tagalog and Malay) ... and Balinese has definite words for left and right (kiwa and tengen). And you can elicit these very easily from a native Balinese speaker. Be a foreigner or an Indonesian from another island, ask "where's the bathroom" in heavily accented Balinese, then act confused if the answer has anything about geographic directions. Like I said, there's no linguistic barrier against giving directions based on left or right in Balinese. It's merely cultural. Balinese people just don't do it when talking to each other. You might say, they demonstrate solidarity with each other against outsiders by using this geographic knowledge which sets them apart. (In Honolulu, which was originally populated by very distant linguistic relatives of the Balinese, the buses run "windward" and "leeward" even in English.) And besides, it's not very deep knowledge anyway --- the direction words are literally seaward-sunriseward-mountainward-sunsetward. What's more confusing is, there's Balinese villages both north and south of the big mountain, and they all use those directional words according to their local geography. Thus the ordering of the points is different. A counterclockwise turn for a southerner and a counterclockwise turn for a northerner take them through the above-mentioned points in opposite orders. I suspect the problem with the Balinese dancer boy to which the NYT is alluding comes from the following problem: his teacher wanted him to do something in a circle and he kept going the wrong way. Which leads to the final rambling point: you'll probably notice that all the languages the NYT have mentioned are tiny ones you haven't heard of, unless you did a linguistics degree or came from the same province. I highly doubt all the big languages have always been purely egocentric-direction ones. Rather, they became that way when people who came from widely separate geographic areas had to use them with each other. It's easy to keep track of your North and South if you're in the middle of a giant desert or in a village where you've lived your whole life. It's hard if you're a merchant who sailed from the other end of the archipelago and walked down the streets of an unfamiliar port city, and so, you start asking for, and receiving, left/right directions instead.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
kd0amg 16y ago
Your reasoning doesn't work if the language in question really doesn't have a word for 'left' or 'right'. An explanation as to why an argument isn't a proof doesn't "not work" simply because the statement being argued happens to be true. GP suggests that a particular argument is used to justify the claim that some language lacks some term, and he points out that that argument does not prove the claim.

by felxh 16y ago

ithkuil 16y ago

I was always intrigued by the fact that some languages (especially ancient ones) appear to miss the word for "yes" and "no". I've heard that gaelic and latin for example don't have a real word for "yes", but instead the answer repeated the affirmative form of the verb or similar. Many argue that latin did indeed have the word for yes, namely "ita", but all the dictionaries I looked at translate it as "so; thus; indeed; ..." Other languages like japanese rely much on repetition of the verb but do have words for yes and no (hai to iie). I wonder if it really makes a difference to think in a language which doesn't have a word for yes and no (for whatever reasons is not present in the language, historical stigma etc). I see how it can change your way to discuss with people: "don't be tricky! answer simply, ehm uhm" but I feel this doesn't count as a major mind shaping issue. Don't get me wrong, I was intrigued as anyone with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis but I'm aware that sometimes some intriguing memes get more resonance than they deserve.

cynicalkane 16y ago
I can understand lack of "yes", but lack of "no" seems pretty strange. What do babies in these cultures shout when they don't want something? The idea of "do not want" seems to be one of the most basic things a human will want to express, starting from a very early age.
- mahmud 16y ago
  Classic Arabic has few words for "no", each expressing refusal/denial/rejection of a different sort: la, kalaa, balaa, lam, laysa, lan, etc. la no kalaa definitely not balaa but not lam did not laysa is not lan will not However, colloquial arabic just uses the ma- prefix and collapses all those different words into one: maa/mish/mush/makoo, depending on the dialect. E.g. "I will not try": mish hagarrab (Egyptian) maa `amjarab (Levantian) makoo nijarib (Iraqi/Kuwaiti) maabaa nijarib/nigarib (Yemeni, North/South)
RyanMcGreal 16y ago
>I've heard that gaelic and latin for example don't have a real word for "yes", but instead the answer repeated the affirmative form of the verb or similar. Then they have a way to express affirmation.
- ithkuil 16y ago
  Yes, the fact that you don't have a specific word for a concept doesn't mean that you don't have a concept The trick is probably that some concepts are activated when our language center parses more than one word; we don't think about them as separate words. There are plenty of examples in the vocabularies of various languages, one of my favorites is the word 'alarm': I asked a lot of people in the Italy if they recognize what the word "allarme" comes from. Surprisingly only few recognized the exhortation "all'armi!" (to the weapons!) (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=alarm http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=alarm). Sometimes this effect creates a new word, but sometimes a concept remains indirectly expressed, while the speaker unconsciously extracts the high level meaning of it. However, I noticed that most of the amateur discussions about linguistics scratch only the surface because mostly only nouns are touched. For example when I was younger and still living in Croatia. A relative of mine was Macedonian and told me that they have a verb mood that is used when you state something which you are sure that is true, vs only being told that is true. I'm not really sure what is that, after a bit of research I think it's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferential_mood. "The inferential mood (abbreviated infer or infr) is used to report a nonwitnessed event without confirming it" Does this shape the way you think? After all, even English speakers are able to express the fact that they didn't witness an event; I guess they do, didn't check :-)
  - RyanMcGreal 16y ago
    Interesting etymology of alarm - reminds me of the English "Mayday!" from the French "M'Aider!" (Help me!)
blacksmythe 16y ago
>> I've heard that gaelic and latin for example don't have a real word for "yes", but instead the answer repeated the affirmative form of the verb or similar. That is commonly used the same way in Chinese (at least on the Pimsleur beginner lessons). The answer to 'do you want' is 'want' or 'don't want'. I asked a native Chinese speaker if they have a way to say yes and no without referring to the action involved, and he said that they do. I have notice that people who have gender-neutral pronouns have a lot of trouble mixing up 'he' and 'she' in English.

quant18 16y ago

Is there really any language which completely lacks words for left and right? At minimum, people want to distinguish their good hand from their bad hand, or the side of the body that has their liver from the side that has their stomach. I can't say anything for Australian aboriginal languages, but I'm quite familiar with Malayo-Polynesian languages in general (I speak Tagalog and Malay) ... and Balinese has definite words for left and right (kiwa and tengen). And you can elicit these very easily from a native Balinese speaker. Be a foreigner or an Indonesian from another island, ask "where's the bathroom" in heavily accented Balinese, then act confused if the answer has anything about geographic directions. Like I said, there's no linguistic barrier against giving directions based on left or right in Balinese. It's merely cultural. Balinese people just don't do it when talking to each other. You might say, they demonstrate solidarity with each other against outsiders by using this geographic knowledge which sets them apart. (In Honolulu, which was originally populated by very distant linguistic relatives of the Balinese, the buses run "windward" and "leeward" even in English.) And besides, it's not very deep knowledge anyway --- the direction words are literally seaward-sunriseward-mountainward-sunsetward. What's more confusing is, there's Balinese villages both north and south of the big mountain, and they all use those directional words according to their local geography. Thus the ordering of the points is different. A counterclockwise turn for a southerner and a counterclockwise turn for a northerner take them through the above-mentioned points in opposite orders. I suspect the problem with the Balinese dancer boy to which the NYT is alluding comes from the following problem: his teacher wanted him to do something in a circle and he kept going the wrong way. Which leads to the final rambling point: you'll probably notice that all the languages the NYT have mentioned are tiny ones you haven't heard of, unless you did a linguistics degree or came from the same province. I highly doubt all the big languages have always been purely egocentric-direction ones. Rather, they became that way when people who came from widely separate geographic areas had to use them with each other. It's easy to keep track of your North and South if you're in the middle of a giant desert or in a village where you've lived your whole life. It's hard if you're a merchant who sailed from the other end of the archipelago and walked down the streets of an unfamiliar port city, and so, you start asking for, and receiving, left/right directions instead.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

kd0amg 16y ago

Your reasoning doesn't work if the language in question really doesn't have a word for 'left' or 'right'. An explanation as to why an argument isn't a proof doesn't "not work" simply because the statement being argued happens to be true. GP suggests that a particular argument is used to justify the claim that some language lacks some term, and he points out that that argument does not prove the claim.