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I think this is a horrible idea; unifying the mindsets of all people via the same language would mean that we might get forever stuck in some local optimum and

by bitL 6y ago

I think this is a horrible idea; unifying the mindsets of all people via the same language would mean that we might get forever stuck in some local optimum and there won't be any other culture that could push humanity forward. People tend to become complacent if they aren't feeling competition, leading to a downfall, and that is true for all aspects of life. It's like we are all in some sort of Reinforcement Learning algorithm and unifying the language portion would significantly restrict the exploration phase, the one that moves world forward. There are many concepts unique to each language, different emphasis on different things, different emotional response to different sentences, leading to unique ways of exploring the universe, and that all would be lost.

azangru 6y ago
> unifying the mindsets of all people via the same language There is a Sapir-Whorfian assumption here that it is the language that enslaves the mind, rather than the collective minds that are constantly shaping, morphing and bending the language. To me, the prospect of cultures having to communicate with each other via such a broken mechanism as translation is far more repugnant than a linguistically unified superculture within which ideas flow unimpeded. The more language users there are, the more capable of expression the language will become; so no, I am not particularly worried about getting stuck in a local maximum.
- djedr 6y ago
  I think it goes both ways: language shapes mind and mind shapes language. It's a feedback loop.
- viscanti 6y ago
  The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been widely debunked. It feels right, so it keeps getting spread around as a fact. The world is ultra connected now. It's fine for people to be bilingual and continue to communicate and respect their local history and culture. There's also a premium on being able to communicate wherever you go and with anyone you might meet. That's where English is already filling a dominant niche. The concern that some countries have with children learning English (when it's not their native language), is that their children might also grow up being heavily influenced by American/British culture (as they'll grow up watching English TV shows, reading English books, etc). That's a legitimate concern, where it's difficult to decouple the language from the associated culture. That said, I think there's a value in being able to communicate with everyone else and those countries could do other things to either limit screen time or increase the amount of historical and cultural content they give to their kids (this seems mostly like a problem for people who just want to sit their kids in front of a laptop and hope for the best - active parenting and teaching of local culture seems effective).
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    > The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been widely debunked. It feels right, so it keeps getting spread around as a fact. You say this as if there were consensus around that, but that's not true. The very strong, original formulation of Sapir-Whorf probably doesn't hold much water, but you'll still find enough linguists claiming that language influences thought nontrivially. But of course, you'll also find linguists arguing the opposite.
  - ludamad 6y ago
    I think it is true in an obvious but meaningful sense, though - word choices available impact meaning. If it's idiomatic to use a colourful dramatic phrase, a normally benign saying has subtlety pushed towards different connotations in people's minds etc. Now, I think this is true in pockets. In the larger sense, our available linguistic tools continues to grow, and speakers have no taboos even playing with basic grammar for effect
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >There is a Sapir-Whorfian assumption here that it is the language that enslaves the mind, rather than the collective minds that are constantly shaping, morphing and bending the language. You don't need Sapir-Whorf to see the point. Even if language is purely a tool, only relying on one language narrows cultural expression. Korean for example contains honorifics baked into the grammar of the language to express social status, this is not trivially doable in English, at least in any version that could be considered unified with what is called English today.
  - azangru 6y ago
    > only relying on one language narrows cultural expression I am not sure I understand what you mean. Sure, there are languages whose grammars require speakers to choose a more polite or a less polite form of a word; but I doubt this presents an insurmountable obstacle to the other culture for expressing the attitude of politeness, or the concept of hierarchy. Being speaker of a language that has two forms for the word "you" — a polite, plural one, and a familiar, singular one (I suspect that this grammatical behavior was imported from French in around 18th century; the distinction is similar to what Middle English had with you vs thou), I am sure that our concept of politeness is not markedly different from cultures whose languages do not have this distinction in second-person pronoun. The distinction cannot be trivially translated into modern English, true, but I don't think it matters a whole lot. Besides, if a culture really starts to feel a need for expressing a certain concept, they will find a way for doing that with the language they have.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      The specificity and formality of honorifics in Korean or Japanese goes way beyond the formal 'you' (speculating you may be German, Du/Sie?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorifics_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorifics_(linguistics) Korean has seven different levels of speech depending on the level of casualness one engages in and the Japanese language has features to raise or lower the status of the addresse as well encoding different feelings in the language. There is no analog for this in English, and also not really in Western culture. There's a very distinct notion of politeness in several Asian cultures that has no corolarry in Western societies because we don't tie it formally into social status. There's also a lot of other issues. A lot of major religious traditions rely on revealed scripture whose meaning is only precisely accessible through a particular language. In Islamic theology this would be Arabic and for Jews it is Hebrew of course. It would be an extreme cultural loss for billions of people to lose this access to their traditions.

by bitL 6y ago

azangru 6y ago

> unifying the mindsets of all people via the same language There is a Sapir-Whorfian assumption here that it is the language that enslaves the mind, rather than the collective minds that are constantly shaping, morphing and bending the language. To me, the prospect of cultures having to communicate with each other via such a broken mechanism as translation is far more repugnant than a linguistically unified superculture within which ideas flow unimpeded. The more language users there are, the more capable of expression the language will become; so no, I am not particularly worried about getting stuck in a local maximum.

djedr 6y ago
I think it goes both ways: language shapes mind and mind shapes language. It's a feedback loop.
viscanti 6y ago
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been widely debunked. It feels right, so it keeps getting spread around as a fact. The world is ultra connected now. It's fine for people to be bilingual and continue to communicate and respect their local history and culture. There's also a premium on being able to communicate wherever you go and with anyone you might meet. That's where English is already filling a dominant niche. The concern that some countries have with children learning English (when it's not their native language), is that their children might also grow up being heavily influenced by American/British culture (as they'll grow up watching English TV shows, reading English books, etc). That's a legitimate concern, where it's difficult to decouple the language from the associated culture. That said, I think there's a value in being able to communicate with everyone else and those countries could do other things to either limit screen time or increase the amount of historical and cultural content they give to their kids (this seems mostly like a problem for people who just want to sit their kids in front of a laptop and hope for the best - active parenting and teaching of local culture seems effective).
- Tainnor 6y ago
  > The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been widely debunked. It feels right, so it keeps getting spread around as a fact. You say this as if there were consensus around that, but that's not true. The very strong, original formulation of Sapir-Whorf probably doesn't hold much water, but you'll still find enough linguists claiming that language influences thought nontrivially. But of course, you'll also find linguists arguing the opposite.
- ludamad 6y ago
  I think it is true in an obvious but meaningful sense, though - word choices available impact meaning. If it's idiomatic to use a colourful dramatic phrase, a normally benign saying has subtlety pushed towards different connotations in people's minds etc. Now, I think this is true in pockets. In the larger sense, our available linguistic tools continues to grow, and speakers have no taboos even playing with basic grammar for effect
Barrin92 6y ago
>There is a Sapir-Whorfian assumption here that it is the language that enslaves the mind, rather than the collective minds that are constantly shaping, morphing and bending the language. You don't need Sapir-Whorf to see the point. Even if language is purely a tool, only relying on one language narrows cultural expression. Korean for example contains honorifics baked into the grammar of the language to express social status, this is not trivially doable in English, at least in any version that could be considered unified with what is called English today.
- azangru 6y ago
  > only relying on one language narrows cultural expression I am not sure I understand what you mean. Sure, there are languages whose grammars require speakers to choose a more polite or a less polite form of a word; but I doubt this presents an insurmountable obstacle to the other culture for expressing the attitude of politeness, or the concept of hierarchy. Being speaker of a language that has two forms for the word "you" — a polite, plural one, and a familiar, singular one (I suspect that this grammatical behavior was imported from French in around 18th century; the distinction is similar to what Middle English had with you vs thou), I am sure that our concept of politeness is not markedly different from cultures whose languages do not have this distinction in second-person pronoun. The distinction cannot be trivially translated into modern English, true, but I don't think it matters a whole lot. Besides, if a culture really starts to feel a need for expressing a certain concept, they will find a way for doing that with the language they have.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    The specificity and formality of honorifics in Korean or Japanese goes way beyond the formal 'you' (speculating you may be German, Du/Sie?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorifics_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorifics_(linguistics) Korean has seven different levels of speech depending on the level of casualness one engages in and the Japanese language has features to raise or lower the status of the addresse as well encoding different feelings in the language. There is no analog for this in English, and also not really in Western culture. There's a very distinct notion of politeness in several Asian cultures that has no corolarry in Western societies because we don't tie it formally into social status. There's also a lot of other issues. A lot of major religious traditions rely on revealed scripture whose meaning is only precisely accessible through a particular language. In Islamic theology this would be Arabic and for Jews it is Hebrew of course. It would be an extreme cultural loss for billions of people to lose this access to their traditions.