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That last bit about his wife acting different in Paris interesting to me for a different reason. I’ve noticed that certain cities seem to affect my personality

That last bit about his wife acting different in Paris interesting to me for a different reason. I’ve noticed that certain cities seem to affect my personality in different ways. For instance in NYC I feel I’m more assertive.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago
NYC citizens have a particular reputation, it would make sense if psychologically you were motivated to be more assertive by your knowledge of that reputation.
- mannykannot 2y ago
  Indeed - so we have two examples of behavior modification possibly attributable to the person's awareness of being in a different culture than before. If that is the case (which, we should note, is not established by these anecdotes) then it seems plausible that a switch in language could also trigger the same response, if the languages are associated, at least in that person's mind, with different cultural norms. We can also wonder if something subtle was changed in translation, and I think it would be interesting if we could follow up by showing each of the experiment's subjects the two sets of questions side-by-side, and ask them whether they feel each pair is asking exactly the same question. I have been reading John McWhorter's 'Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue' (strongly recommended), and only yesterday I read this passage: "In German, one example [of the little complexities that creep into all languages] is a passel of little words that convey nuances of personal attitude. Using them is indispensable to sounding like an actual human being in the language - and mastering them is only possible via a year or more's exposure to the spoken language. Do you have your socks? is, in a vanilla sense, Hast du deine Socken? But you can also stick in the word auch - Hast du auch deine Socken? - in which case the sentence conveys "You have your socks, don't you?" In this usage, auch conveys a subtle, personal note of warning, impatience, correction..." I am in no position to vouch for McWhorter's claim here, but his translation of the second version shows that this sort of nuance is present in idiomatic English. I have just realized that this post is a sort of preemptive response to any suggestion that the outcome reported in the article is explicable only as an example of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
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onemoresoop 2y ago
To me it seems obvious that the environment is likely to change our behaviours somewhat if not more than that
AlchemistCamp 2y ago
That's because in NYC, you'll get run over if you're not assertive.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

NYC citizens have a particular reputation, it would make sense if psychologically you were motivated to be more assertive by your knowledge of that reputation.

mannykannot 2y ago
Indeed - so we have two examples of behavior modification possibly attributable to the person's awareness of being in a different culture than before. If that is the case (which, we should note, is not established by these anecdotes) then it seems plausible that a switch in language could also trigger the same response, if the languages are associated, at least in that person's mind, with different cultural norms. We can also wonder if something subtle was changed in translation, and I think it would be interesting if we could follow up by showing each of the experiment's subjects the two sets of questions side-by-side, and ask them whether they feel each pair is asking exactly the same question. I have been reading John McWhorter's 'Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue' (strongly recommended), and only yesterday I read this passage: "In German, one example [of the little complexities that creep into all languages] is a passel of little words that convey nuances of personal attitude. Using them is indispensable to sounding like an actual human being in the language - and mastering them is only possible via a year or more's exposure to the spoken language. Do you have your socks? is, in a vanilla sense, Hast du deine Socken? But you can also stick in the word auch - Hast du auch deine Socken? - in which case the sentence conveys "You have your socks, don't you?" In this usage, auch conveys a subtle, personal note of warning, impatience, correction..." I am in no position to vouch for McWhorter's claim here, but his translation of the second version shows that this sort of nuance is present in idiomatic English. I have just realized that this post is a sort of preemptive response to any suggestion that the outcome reported in the article is explicable only as an example of the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
- deleted 2y ago
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onemoresoop 2y ago

To me it seems obvious that the environment is likely to change our behaviours somewhat if not more than that

AlchemistCamp 2y ago

That's because in NYC, you'll get run over if you're not assertive.