The Power of Language • Hacker News Board

Re: The Power of Language

#41

Post by warmfuzzykitten » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 2:01 AM UTC

jfaucett wrote: post #2

Good article :), here's my dissent... I, like most europeans (or for that matter most of the non anglo-saxon world), speak multiple languages on a daily basis. I think its true that a language forces you to concentrate on certain things i.e. object gender, its relative distance, or shape when counting objects, but it doesn't make you "think" differently in any fundamental way. We all still perceive three chairs, or d…

If I were to heed a recent HN post, I would downgrade you for use of an anecdote in place of scientific data. I would do so, were it not that the article you comment on had not a single reference. So I guess "the state of my mind (as my inconsistency-rejecting brain perceives it) refutes your unfounded theories" is fair game.

Re: The Power of Language

#42

Post by a_bonobo » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 5:39 AM UTC

There's a mistake in that article -

Japanese does indeed have a word for green (midori, みどり(緑)) it's just relatively young, so especially traffic lights are still referred to as blue in some kind of weird linguistic hangover. All other green things (grass, clothes etc.) are referred to as actually green (midori).

Re: The Power of Language

#43

Post by gingerjoos » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 6:23 AM UTC

The Guugu Yimithirr are possibly an extreme case, but humans have always relied heavily on directions. The loss of stress on directions seems to be somewhat a modern phenomenon. At least till my grandfather's time it was fairly common for places/land to be associated with directions. For eg. a house would be called "Thekkeparambu" literally Southern field. We have railway stations and bridges that are commonly referred to as South or North. Some cities have places called East End and West End (London comes to mind).

Re: The Power of Language

#44

Post by mintplant » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 7:46 AM UTC

warmfuzzykitten wrote: post #41

jfaucett wrote: post #2

Good article :), here's my dissent... I, like most europeans (or for that matter most of the non anglo-saxon world), speak multiple languages on a daily basis. I think its true that a language forces you to concentrate on certain things i.e. object gender, its relative distance, or shape when counting objects, but it doesn't make you "think" differently in any fundamental way. We all still perceive three chairs, or d…

If I were to heed a recent HN post, I would downgrade you for use of an anecdote in place of scientific data. I would do so, were it not that the article you comment on had not a single reference. So I guess "the state of my mind (as my inconsistency-rejecting brain perceives it) refutes your unfounded theories" is fair game.

There are, indeed, references -- six of them -- at the bottom of the original post.

Re: The Power of Language

#45

Post by krollew » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 7:51 AM UTC

Yeah, that' true. I speak (better or worse) 5 languages and thinking in each of them is pretty different. :) The most interesting thing i found there are very few words that would have exaclty the same meaning in two different language. For instance, even the simpliest english words like "go" or "cat" doesn't have exact translations in polish. The exception i know are slavic languages, they are very similar to each other. Anyway set of available meanings in laguage has pretty big impact on what we think.

Re: The Power of Language

#46

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 10:22 AM UTC

ethanpoole wrote: post #9

The relationship between language and thought is unclear. To be polarising, psychologists believe that language influences thought/culture and linguists believe that thought/culture influences language. There are evidence to support both conclusions, but most of the debate in popular media focuses on examples that are severely misinterpreted. For example, if Language A does not distinguish green and blue, it does not…

> To be polarising, psychologists believe that language influences thought/culture and linguists believe that thought/culture influences language. There are evidence to support both conclusions(...)

I sometimes get the feeling that people in such debates don't understand the concept of feedback loops. It is entirely all right for language to influence culture and to be influenced by it at the same time. And it's not even that mind-blowing or difficult to reason about, one just needs to step one level higher on the ladder of abstraction.

Re: The Power of Language

#47

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 10:32 AM UTC

krollew wrote: post #45

Yeah, that' true. I speak (better or worse) 5 languages and thinking in each of them is pretty different. :) The most interesting thing i found there are very few words that would have exaclty the same meaning in two different language. For instance, even the simpliest english words like "go" or "cat" doesn't have exact translations in polish. The exception i know are slavic languages, they are very similar to each o…

I agree. When thinking (or talking with people fluent in both languages) I constantly switch between polish and english, as quite often one language captures intended meaning much better than the other. There are words and phrases that just cannot be translated without loosing some parts of their meaning.

Re: The Power of Language

#48

Post by timinman » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 10:59 AM UTC

Matz, the creator of Ruby talks about why languages matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix2DeCzuckc

The basic idea is that the structure of the language determines how you think about the problem and influences what you create.

Re: The Power of Language

#49

Post by ethanpoole » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 12:45 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #46

ethanpoole wrote: post #9

The relationship between language and thought is unclear. To be polarising, psychologists believe that language influences thought/culture and linguists believe that thought/culture influences language. There are evidence to support both conclusions, but most of the debate in popular media focuses on examples that are severely misinterpreted. For example, if Language A does not distinguish green and blue, it does not…

> To be polarising, psychologists believe that language influences thought/culture and linguists believe that thought/culture influences language. There are evidence to support both conclusions(...) I sometimes get the feeling that people in such debates don't understand the concept of feedback loops. It is entirely all right for language to influence culture and to be influenced by it at the same time. And it's not…

I completely agree. For the most part, people do accept the bilateral influence between culture and language. However, the debate generally focuses on the relationship between language and thought/cognition/mind (with culture mistakenly lumped in there) where bilateral influence doesn't make as much sense, at least intuitively. Consequently, the language-culture and language-thought relationships should be analysed separately, although not in isolation of course.

Re: The Power of Language

#50

Post by ethanpoole » Wed, Jun 20, 2012, 12:59 PM UTC

ealloc wrote: post #40

ethanpoole wrote: post #9

The relationship between language and thought is unclear. To be polarising, psychologists believe that language influences thought/culture and linguists believe that thought/culture influences language. There are evidence to support both conclusions, but most of the debate in popular media focuses on examples that are severely misinterpreted. For example, if Language A does not distinguish green and blue, it does not…

> if Language A does not distinguish green and blue, it does not necessarily mean that the speakers of Language A cannot distinguish them, but only that Language A does not distinguish them linguistically. True, but just to be clear: In the first link in the article it's shown how people speaking languages with no blue/green distinction are significantly slower at selecting the 'odd one out' when given a set of blue…

Yes, but this evidence does not necessarily say very much about language and the relationship between language and thought. For example, if a culture does not teach their children to swim and therefore the culture at large does not know how to swim, those people could still swim, albeit slowly. Does this say anything about their bodies? No. If some sort of conditioning by one's culture is required to distinguish colours (which seems to be the case), this is very interesting, but it says very little about language.