Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: Difference between revisions
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[https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cgll3m2m0r7o| Caleb Everett gave an interview to BBC] in which he argued that when a language contains dozens and dozens of terms for the same object, such as the Inuit having 50 words for ice or snow, this means that the people who speak that particular language give that object a high degree of importance. While this concept makes sense, it also gives room for prejudice. In english we have the words ''"sky"'' and ''"heaven"'', while in portuguese it's just one word, ''"céu"''. Does that mean that english gives more importance to ''"heaven"'' and ''"sky"'' to split it into two words? I don't think so. To add even more arguments to contradict this theory of language relativism is the fact that every language borrows words from other languages. | [https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/articles/cgll3m2m0r7o| Caleb Everett gave an interview (portuguese only) to BBC] in which he argued that when a language contains dozens and dozens of terms for the same object, such as the Inuit having 50 words for ice or snow, this means that the people who speak that particular language give that object a high degree of importance. While this concept makes sense, it also gives room for prejudice. In english we have the words ''"sky"'' and ''"heaven"'', while in portuguese it's just one word, ''"céu"''. Does that mean that english gives more importance to ''"heaven"'' and ''"sky"'' to split it into two words? I don't think so. To add even more arguments to contradict this theory of language relativism is the fact that every language borrows words from other languages. | ||
Revision as of 20:20, 8 February 2025
When I first watched the TED's presentation I was "Wow! This makes total sense!". But be careful! This idea that language shapes our minds is easily disproven. It's exciting and amazing at first, but soon you'll notice its flaws. Search for linguistic relativism or Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. I think that her example about that Australian tribe that uses the same words for cardinal directions and regular directions in daily life is flawed. Every language has words which are one and the same for different usages but depending on the context the meaning can differ. Doing a literal translation from one language to another always leads to weird effects.
If you think about it and mental health you'll be easily fooled and think that mental health disorders are deeply affected by the language, because every mental disorder has foundations on descriptions of emotions, time and space. Change the language and the disorder should change as well, right? Not quite. No disorder is caused by speaking a language. On the other way around, brain damage and neurological disorders can have an effect on memory and language.
What do you think would happen to depression and anxiety if you remove all the tenses of a language? In my Applied Science wiki I commented on how the Pirahã, which Caleb Everett (University of Miami) studied, lack words for numbers. Does it mean that the Pirahã tribe cannot comprehend mathematics? It's not that they cannot, it's because their social system does not rely on counting with numbers. It's not that their language makes them unable to learn math. At most they are unable to learn math within their language. If you compare one language to another, there are always going to be words which lack a direct translation. It's not that the idea or concept exists in one language while it's absent from another. It's the culture and the society from one country which is different from another.
This concept of language shaping your thoughts makes you believe that different languages would create different personalities in general. In other words, can you treat depression by making the person learn another language? Depression exists in all countries in the world and the cause of it is certainly not the language. Depression is caused by social and environmental factors in the majority of all cases. If Japan has certain behaviors and social norms which differ from America, that's all caused by geography and social factors. It's society itself that creates a language, not the other way around. To support this argument I'd cite some countries. United States of America and United Kingdom have english as their official language, yet they have different cultures and different accents. Compare Germany and Austria. China and Taiwan. Speaking the same language does not mean that the people from different countries behave or think the same way.
I once had a teacher of English tell how we feel a different person when we speak a different language. While this is true, it's not the language that is changing our personality. It's because our memories are tied to experiences. In turn, experiences tied to a language. The idea that our behavior can be affected by speaking this or that language is completely flawed. Were it true, then we would give rise to prejudice. Because then we would believe that the fact that the "moon" is masculine in one language, "house" is feminine in another language, "water" is genderless in a third language. Since when is sexism, racism or phobias tied to a language?
I once found a chinese teacher telling that the mandarim language makes math easier because the way you speak the numbers in mandarim makes you more proficient in operations of multiplication for instance. He argues that the Chinese language does not have specific words to name the numbers from 11 to 19. How do we speak "21"? We say the words for "20" and "1". In portuguese it's the same. In Mandarim, however, they don't have a word for "11" and "12" for example. They speak using the words for "10" and "1". By not having specific words for those numbers, he argues that the chinese students are forced to do math in their heads. Which translates to being forced to do the math "10 + 1" whenever you speak the number "11". Wait a minute! Are chinese students smarter at math because they speak mandarim? Then let's raise the grades of the whole country by teaching mandarin! Eureka! No, it doesn't work that way!
Caleb Everett gave an interview (portuguese only) to BBC in which he argued that when a language contains dozens and dozens of terms for the same object, such as the Inuit having 50 words for ice or snow, this means that the people who speak that particular language give that object a high degree of importance. While this concept makes sense, it also gives room for prejudice. In english we have the words "sky" and "heaven", while in portuguese it's just one word, "céu". Does that mean that english gives more importance to "heaven" and "sky" to split it into two words? I don't think so. To add even more arguments to contradict this theory of language relativism is the fact that every language borrows words from other languages.
