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The problem is that often you hear things like "Tribal people X have no word for 'lying' in their language" as if that meant that they couldn't understand the c
by jhbadger 6y ago
The problem is that often you hear things like "Tribal people X have no word for 'lying' in their language" as if that meant that they couldn't understand the concept. But of course they do, even if they call it "not telling the truth". Similarly, people like to point out words in languages like German that are compound words, and as amusing as things like "Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän" (Danube steamship company captain) are to English speakers, it isn't as if we can't understand the concept. There just is no evidence that people of different languages think differently.
- thwarted 6y ago> There just is no evidence that people of different languages think differently. Languages are used to express ideas. We have debates on this very website about the expressiveness of languages, how expressiveness of language enables (in)efficiency, and which languages are best for a given task. The expression of a thought influences and, in some cases, limits the kinds of thoughts that can be expressed. This is evident when you see things like someone "writing Java in perl".
- perl4ever 6y agoI've been writing perl in VBA. It seems to me that this, or your example, demonstrate the opposite of language controlling thought. People have thoughts that are very different from the norm in the language they are using, and they find a way to express them. In fact, I've been recently trying to express my usual programming concepts in a language that's far more of a straitjacket than VBA.
- Gravityloss 6y agoYeah, I agree. A lot of this "weird thing about culture X" is nonsense. It works especially well for people who haven't experienced many different cultures.