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I speak 8 languages from many separate groups (Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Sino-Tibetan, Japanese), and my impression is that languages truly put constraints on
by bitL 8y ago
I speak 8 languages from many separate groups (Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Sino-Tibetan, Japanese), and my impression is that languages truly put constraints on one's ability to formulate thoughts. Of course, mentalese, the unspoken one, is different, independent, but it's rare people retain it to their older age and by then prevailing cultural/linguistic currents shape their thoughts. Sapir-Whorf might be discredited as general hypothesis, but it might correspond to 95% practical state statistically-wise.
- andrewem 8y agoWould you please give some examples where you've found "that languages truly put constraints on one's ability to formulate thoughts"?
- hoppelhase 8y agoI don't know what he is referring to. But one interesting things is that there is a language where you can express that someone is doing something without including the time when he is doing it. This is not possible in the languages I know of (De/En/Fr). I can imagine that this ability makes different thoughts possible. When looking at programming languages, it is indeed the case that your "lingua franca" limits the imagination of what software architectures are possible to solve the problem.
- bitL 8y agoFor a really eccentric example see: https://aymara.org/biblio/html/igr/igr3.html https://aymara.org/biblio/html/igr/igr3.html Or just use of 無 in (ancient) Chinese for a simple example (in the sense of "unasking the question").