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> Reality is much more subtle. Language only determines what we have to pay attention to. Yes. I've read a entertaining book on the subject ( http://www.amazon

> Reality is much more subtle. Language only determines what we have to pay attention to. Yes. I've read a entertaining book on the subject ( http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Languages/dp/0312610491 http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Langu... ). Especially fascinating was the Guugu Yimithirr language, which has no words for relative directions, no "left" or "right". Speakers of this language gained an amazing ability to know compass directions. If you lead them through a winding museum and then ask them to describe the Mona Lisa they would: "It's a lady, facing east." The Guugu Yimithirr forces everyone to be aware of compass directions at all times, and they get good at it. The book draws the same conclusion: language forces us to learn, and reveal in conversation, certain concepts; but it does not limit our ability to understand foreign concepts. The fun question then: what concepts does English force us to be aware of?

thaumasiotes 13y ago
Well, again, the example you give is a point about the culture, not the language. Even if your language lacks words for "left" and "right", there's nothing stopping you from saying "there is an ant crawling up what would be your west leg if you were facing north". As to the conclusion you report, the first part ("language forces us to learn certain concepts") is obviously correct; the second ("language forces us to reveal certain concepts in conversation") is not so -- people are routinely blasted for speaking "evasively". If you really care about not revealing a certain piece of information, there's always a way to do it (although you may reveal that you're hiding something, or at least talking in a very shifty manner). > The fun question then: what concepts does English force us to be aware of? Rather than a direct answer to this, I want to talk about some related observations I've made. - In English, third-person singular pronouns ("he", "she", "it", and their inflections) are obligatorily gendered; they are marked for a sense of personhood, intimacy, or animacy ("it" vs "he"/"she") and for sex ("he" vs "she"). So, in the sense you reference, English "forces" speakers to be aware of whether the people they're talking about are male or female. The example is not a trivial one; in Mandarin Chinese there is only one third person pronoun ("ta"). Chinese-speaking English learners routinely use the wrong pronoun in their English speech. And it's also frequent for a sentence, or longer stretch of speech, in spoken Chinese to make no real indication of what the sex of the person under discussion is. However... Chinese people maintain the basically 100% awareness of what sex people are that you'd expect, regardless of the latitude their language allows them to ignore it.

thaumasiotes 13y ago

Well, again, the example you give is a point about the culture, not the language. Even if your language lacks words for "left" and "right", there's nothing stopping you from saying "there is an ant crawling up what would be your west leg if you were facing north". As to the conclusion you report, the first part ("language forces us to learn certain concepts") is obviously correct; the second ("language forces us to reveal certain concepts in conversation") is not so -- people are routinely blasted for speaking "evasively". If you really care about not revealing a certain piece of information, there's always a way to do it (although you may reveal that you're hiding something, or at least talking in a very shifty manner). > The fun question then: what concepts does English force us to be aware of? Rather than a direct answer to this, I want to talk about some related observations I've made. - In English, third-person singular pronouns ("he", "she", "it", and their inflections) are obligatorily gendered; they are marked for a sense of personhood, intimacy, or animacy ("it" vs "he"/"she") and for sex ("he" vs "she"). So, in the sense you reference, English "forces" speakers to be aware of whether the people they're talking about are male or female. The example is not a trivial one; in Mandarin Chinese there is only one third person pronoun ("ta"). Chinese-speaking English learners routinely use the wrong pronoun in their English speech. And it's also frequent for a sentence, or longer stretch of speech, in spoken Chinese to make no real indication of what the sex of the person under discussion is. However... Chinese people maintain the basically 100% awareness of what sex people are that you'd expect, regardless of the latitude their language allows them to ignore it.