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How language can affect the way we think | ||
Tags: Thinking | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| rodrigoau Triglot Newbie Australia Joined 3420 days ago 19 posts - 52 votes  Speaks: Macedonian*, English, Spanish Studies: Italian, Turkish | Message 1 of 6 14 May 2016 at 10:49am | IP Logged | ||
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The idea that language affects the way we think has always felt intuitively right to me.
I've lived in different countries and speak different languages. I find the interesting article below just scratches the surface of this topic. I have thought about the subject of blame and English speakers much before I ever read this. http://ideas.ted.com/5-examples-of-how-the-languages-we-spea k-can-affect-the-way-we- think/ Edited by rodrigoau on 14 May 2016 at 10:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4230 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 6 15 May 2016 at 8:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Different languages have different ways of expressing the same or similar ideas. A lot of European languages don't distinguish family relationships as clearly as Chinese. You have aunts and uncles from the father or the mother side of the family having different terms. And in the past when people used to have large families, it is common to label your aunts & uncles by # than by name.
Chinese is a compact language written in characters instead of spelling out each syllables phonetically. In many cases, proper terms can be shortened to fewer characters such as 奥林匹克运动会 (Olympic Games in full) where the term for Olympic 奥林匹克 is shortened to just the first character 奥 and the term becomes 奥运会 (just 3 characters). There are words & phrases with 2 characters that are interchangeable in a sentence such as 尝试 (to try). In some cases, we can use 尝试 (2 characters together), just the character 尝 or 试 by itself in a sentence. Chinese has many characters that have the same / similar pronunciations. We can determine the meaning of words & phrases by the words before & after in a sentence. Edited by shk00design on 15 May 2016 at 8:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5654 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 3 of 6 10 October 2016 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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The idea that language can shape thought is definitely an enticing idea and might
feel intuitive for us language learners as we discover new concepts in different languages, but it's a theory that has been refuted by many respected linguists in the field. Certainly, we need to understand the degrees of politeness in German to form sentences, or understand to differentiate "connaître/savoir" in French, but to say that people acquire a different perception of the world by learning these languages is a strong exaggeration. One good example is on the Eskimo language, that apparently had a much richer vocabulary to describe snow in all its aspects. Well, It turns out that in English we also have a dozen of words (blizzard, avalanche, slush, etc) for that but don't realize it. It's not to deny the point that specialists will need more terms for things that are important in their environment. We might not have a special word for a given phenomenon that occurs daily but a physicist may help you finding the term that describes it precisely. Assuming that speakers of different languages have different world views can have strong implications in the real world. It could mean that a speaker of a language with less verb tenses have a different perception of time, which is definitely not true. What we have, are ways of organizing thought in the language that we speak. We can still perfectly imagine concepts abstractly or visually without having a specific word for it...or we might just invent one if it becomes necessary to describe it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rhian Moderator France Joined 6283 days ago 265 posts - 288 votes Speaks: English* Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 6 10 October 2016 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just a reminder that the majority of
members have moved to www.forum.language- learners.org after software problems here. You are welcome to post here or there or on both but note that you need to register on the new site (ie your HTLAL name and password won't work there). Don't worry - sign up is much simpler over on LLOrg 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5654 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 5 of 6 10 October 2016 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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I hadn't logged in here for a while. Thanks for letting me know, Rhian :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5106 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 6 of 6 11 October 2016 at 10:36am | IP Logged | ||
Like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis this myth has been debunked. For more information see: Eskimo words for snow (Wikipedia) The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax - Linguistics and English Language (PDF link) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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