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Mandarin also does not have direct equivalents of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. There is a negator word 不 bù, but just answering 「不」 wouldn’t make sense. You answer a questio

Mandarin also does not have direct equivalents of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. There is a negator word 不 bù, but just answering 「不」 wouldn’t make sense. You answer a question with the verb that was asked. ‘Do you like coffee?’ ‘Like!’ or ‘不like‘. It doesn’t feel any different or make me experience any sort of mental contortion to use this pattern to convey the exact same information I’d convey in English. I used to really like these pop linguistics kind of articles about exotic languages without tenses or plurals or what have you. It made my imagination churn to think about how it might influence your conception of the world if you expressed time in terms of length, size, or quantity. I remember a RadioLab show about the ancient Greeks having no word for blue, and that as a result they couldn’t perceive it. I’ve since learned that this all stems from a theory called linguistic relativism, that the language we use constructs our worldview. I’m much less excited in this kind of idea since learning mandarin. I express the exact same thoughts and ideas I have in English, even if I express them without syntactical tenses, plurals, or whatever. Feels the same.

Tainnor 4y ago
> linguistic relativism is a really hot button issue in linguistics, because it obviously correlates with certain ideological worldviews one way or another. If you actually look at the data... it's complicated. In my view, neither the hardcore relativists nor the hardcore universalists are right. Probably there is some symbiotic relationship between the concepts we express in language and the saliency of certain distinctions in our habitual cognition. IOW, it's highly unlikely that the Ancient Greeks didn't perceive the colour blue (much less so that this was caused by their language), but it is possible that the distinction between the colour blue and certain other colours was not seen as as significant as other distinctions (e.g. saturation, brightness). But all this theory ultimately stems from this one expression in Homer about the "wine-red sea" and one can only speculate. If you want a good pop-sci overview of the situation, though still written by a linguist, try Guy Deutscher's "Through the Looking Glass". That said, he does come down a bit more on the pro-relativism side, so you may also want to read the counterarguments in John McWhorther's "The Language Hoax", which I haven't read though.
- Ichthypresbyter 4y ago
  The book is "Through the Language Glass", which I agree is very good.
  - Tainnor 4y ago
    Of course. It's a clear reference to Lewis Carroll, something which I obviously remembered better than the actual title of the book. Thanks for correcting.
- Swizec 4y ago
  Not having the word for a color, or living in an environment where it doesn’t feel relevant, does impact your ability to distinguish that color. You can still see it, of course, but it takes you measurably longer to perceive. Almost like a form of mild color blindness. Like you have to focus harder to tell colors apart if you don’t have a word for them. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0701644104 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0701644104
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    It's never been very clear to me that these kind of studies where you measure response time differences (usually measured in tens or hundreds of milliseconds) are really all that insightful, or say all that much about anything meaningful. In this case, the English speakers were actually faster than Russian speakers, and the accuracy was identical, only when "two colours if they fell into different linguistic categories in Russian" were the Russian speakers faster. Plus "English speakers as a group drew nearly the same boundary as did the Russian speakers". In this case it seems like a categorizing problem: it's not that English speakers can't distinguish the colours, it's just that the boundaries of your categories are less clearly defined than in Russian, so it takes a few more brain cycles to select the right category. I think everyone already agrees that some concepts can be easier or harder to express in certain languages (as a simple example, in Dutch there is no word for sibling). I don't really read any support for a "mild colour blindness" in that study.
- a1369209993 4y ago
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> Mandarin also does not have direct equivalents of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. This is going a little too far; 是的 is a direct equivalent of "yes".
- eloisius 4y ago
  It’s the equivalent to ‘yes’ in a subset of contexts where ‘yes’ would make sense, for example ‘Is he the guy you were talking about?’ 「是的」 would make sense to say yes. But it wouldn’t work as an answer like ‘yes, I like hiking’.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I suppose 對 would be able to cover the rest of the contexts.
    - yibg 4y ago
      That’s still not complete. You wouldn’t answer 對 to the question “do you like hiking?”. The standard answer would be “like”. Or the versatile 嗯
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        - 你喜歡爬山嗎? - 對,我喜歡 Sounds fine to me. Though I suppose that's more like saying "That's correct/right, I like hiking."
        yibg 4y ago
        Yea exactly. In that phrasing you're putting an affirmation to the original question. Just "對" doesn't work.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
adastra22 4y ago
> I express the exact same thoughts and ideas I have in English, even if I express them without syntactical tenses, plurals, or whatever. Feels the same. It feels the same now. But you're not (and can't) compare what it was like to think that way before learning mandarin and after. Even your memories are modified by your present linguistic understanding. Language doesn't strongly determine how you think and feel. It's more complex than that. But many studies have shown the benefits of bilingualism, and the limited-in-scope effects that language can have on your thinking. Linguistic relativism is a real thing.
brazzy 4y ago
> There is a negator word 不 bù, but just answering 「不」 wouldn’t make sense. That goes a bit too far. It would certainly be understood, but be considered quirky, or an indication that you're not a native speaker. My kids are bilingual German/Mandarin, and use it like that quite a bit.
Enginerrrd 4y ago
Oooh I really like that for when people ask ambiguous questions. So is there an equivalent in mandarin for "Have you stopped beating your wife"? It seems like maybe you could just say "no beat" and there's no linguistic trap.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  > "Have you stopped beating your wife"? The correct answer to this perennial bad riddle is "only because your mom got jealous".
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- messe 4y ago
  I'm not sure how that's any less ambiguous than answering "I don't beat her".
- eloisius 4y ago
  I think I’d have trouble explaining this joke to someone. There is a way to say ‘I’ve stopped’: 我停止了, but I think they’d probably just answer me 我從來沒有打過我的太太 ‘I’ve never beaten my wife’. It does make the binary logic humor answer ‘yes’ to ‘do you V A or B?’ impossible, because there are different ways to express ‘or’ for questions or statements. I suppose puns and humor dependent upon word play is one area where I do think differently in Chinese vs English. You can crack jokes if you know how similar sounding words might be mistaken.
Aransentin 4y ago
> You answer a question with the verb that was asked. ‘Do you like coffee?’ ‘Like!’ or ‘不like‘. Surely this explains that Chinese bootleg Star Wars translation meme where Darth Vader's "Nooo" is subtitled as "Do not want"? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-want-do-not-want https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-want-do-not-want
- xobs 4y ago
  That's it exactly. "要" means "want", and "不要" means "not want".
- adastra22 4y ago
  Yes, because that's what a Mandarin-speaking Darth Vader would have said in that context. 不要 literally means "don't want" but is probably the most common negated verb combination used as "no." It's what a 2 year old would yell if you made them do something they didn't want to do. Here it's more an emotion expression "no, this is not what I wanted!"
  - raffraffraff 4y ago
    So does this mean that there isn't a simple, single word exclamation in Mandarin to denote "Nooooooo!"? How about "ffffuuuuuuuck!" etc?
    - adastra22 4y ago
      不要 is a single word/lexeme in the linguistic sense, even if it is two syllables.
    - thaumasiotes 4y ago
      > How about "ffffuuuuuuuck!" 肏, often euphemistically spelled as 操. But also commonly seen in the expression 我操, which would be two words. You can analyze 不要 in the use under discussion as one word, or as two. There's no rule that says a word can't be more than one syllable long, but then again 不要 is not exactly etymologically opaque.

Tainnor 4y ago

> linguistic relativism is a really hot button issue in linguistics, because it obviously correlates with certain ideological worldviews one way or another. If you actually look at the data... it's complicated. In my view, neither the hardcore relativists nor the hardcore universalists are right. Probably there is some symbiotic relationship between the concepts we express in language and the saliency of certain distinctions in our habitual cognition. IOW, it's highly unlikely that the Ancient Greeks didn't perceive the colour blue (much less so that this was caused by their language), but it is possible that the distinction between the colour blue and certain other colours was not seen as as significant as other distinctions (e.g. saturation, brightness). But all this theory ultimately stems from this one expression in Homer about the "wine-red sea" and one can only speculate. If you want a good pop-sci overview of the situation, though still written by a linguist, try Guy Deutscher's "Through the Looking Glass". That said, he does come down a bit more on the pro-relativism side, so you may also want to read the counterarguments in John McWhorther's "The Language Hoax", which I haven't read though.

Ichthypresbyter 4y ago
The book is "Through the Language Glass", which I agree is very good.
- Tainnor 4y ago
  Of course. It's a clear reference to Lewis Carroll, something which I obviously remembered better than the actual title of the book. Thanks for correcting.
Swizec 4y ago
Not having the word for a color, or living in an environment where it doesn’t feel relevant, does impact your ability to distinguish that color. You can still see it, of course, but it takes you measurably longer to perceive. Almost like a form of mild color blindness. Like you have to focus harder to tell colors apart if you don’t have a word for them. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0701644104 https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0701644104
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  It's never been very clear to me that these kind of studies where you measure response time differences (usually measured in tens or hundreds of milliseconds) are really all that insightful, or say all that much about anything meaningful. In this case, the English speakers were actually faster than Russian speakers, and the accuracy was identical, only when "two colours if they fell into different linguistic categories in Russian" were the Russian speakers faster. Plus "English speakers as a group drew nearly the same boundary as did the Russian speakers". In this case it seems like a categorizing problem: it's not that English speakers can't distinguish the colours, it's just that the boundaries of your categories are less clearly defined than in Russian, so it takes a few more brain cycles to select the right category. I think everyone already agrees that some concepts can be easier or harder to express in certain languages (as a simple example, in Dutch there is no word for sibling). I don't really read any support for a "mild colour blindness" in that study.
a1369209993 4y ago

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> Mandarin also does not have direct equivalents of ‘yes’ and ‘no’. This is going a little too far; 是的 is a direct equivalent of "yes".

eloisius 4y ago
It’s the equivalent to ‘yes’ in a subset of contexts where ‘yes’ would make sense, for example ‘Is he the guy you were talking about?’ 「是的」 would make sense to say yes. But it wouldn’t work as an answer like ‘yes, I like hiking’.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  I suppose 對 would be able to cover the rest of the contexts.
  - yibg 4y ago
    That’s still not complete. You wouldn’t answer 對 to the question “do you like hiking?”. The standard answer would be “like”. Or the versatile 嗯
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      - 你喜歡爬山嗎? - 對,我喜歡 Sounds fine to me. Though I suppose that's more like saying "That's correct/right, I like hiking."
      - yibg 4y ago
        Yea exactly. In that phrasing you're putting an affirmation to the original question. Just "對" doesn't work.
        Apocryphon 4y ago

adastra22 4y ago

> I express the exact same thoughts and ideas I have in English, even if I express them without syntactical tenses, plurals, or whatever. Feels the same. It feels the same now. But you're not (and can't) compare what it was like to think that way before learning mandarin and after. Even your memories are modified by your present linguistic understanding. Language doesn't strongly determine how you think and feel. It's more complex than that. But many studies have shown the benefits of bilingualism, and the limited-in-scope effects that language can have on your thinking. Linguistic relativism is a real thing.

brazzy 4y ago

> There is a negator word 不 bù, but just answering 「不」 wouldn’t make sense. That goes a bit too far. It would certainly be understood, but be considered quirky, or an indication that you're not a native speaker. My kids are bilingual German/Mandarin, and use it like that quite a bit.

Enginerrrd 4y ago

Oooh I really like that for when people ask ambiguous questions. So is there an equivalent in mandarin for "Have you stopped beating your wife"? It seems like maybe you could just say "no beat" and there's no linguistic trap.

Tao3300 4y ago
> "Have you stopped beating your wife"? The correct answer to this perennial bad riddle is "only because your mom got jealous".
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
messe 4y ago
I'm not sure how that's any less ambiguous than answering "I don't beat her".
eloisius 4y ago
I think I’d have trouble explaining this joke to someone. There is a way to say ‘I’ve stopped’: 我停止了, but I think they’d probably just answer me 我從來沒有打過我的太太 ‘I’ve never beaten my wife’. It does make the binary logic humor answer ‘yes’ to ‘do you V A or B?’ impossible, because there are different ways to express ‘or’ for questions or statements. I suppose puns and humor dependent upon word play is one area where I do think differently in Chinese vs English. You can crack jokes if you know how similar sounding words might be mistaken.

Aransentin 4y ago

> You answer a question with the verb that was asked. ‘Do you like coffee?’ ‘Like!’ or ‘不like‘. Surely this explains that Chinese bootleg Star Wars translation meme where Darth Vader's "Nooo" is subtitled as "Do not want"? https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-want-do-not-want https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/do-want-do-not-want

xobs 4y ago
That's it exactly. "要" means "want", and "不要" means "not want".
adastra22 4y ago
Yes, because that's what a Mandarin-speaking Darth Vader would have said in that context. 不要 literally means "don't want" but is probably the most common negated verb combination used as "no." It's what a 2 year old would yell if you made them do something they didn't want to do. Here it's more an emotion expression "no, this is not what I wanted!"
- raffraffraff 4y ago
  So does this mean that there isn't a simple, single word exclamation in Mandarin to denote "Nooooooo!"? How about "ffffuuuuuuuck!" etc?
  - adastra22 4y ago
    不要 is a single word/lexeme in the linguistic sense, even if it is two syllables.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > How about "ffffuuuuuuuck!" 肏, often euphemistically spelled as 操. But also commonly seen in the expression 我操, which would be two words. You can analyze 不要 in the use under discussion as one word, or as two. There's no rule that says a word can't be more than one syllable long, but then again 不要 is not exactly etymologically opaque.