the language instinct

That's why I consider English grammatically very easy... My English ex-whatver saw me like some sort of genius cos I can keep in mind all the Italian tenses (which are similar to the Spanish)...while it's not like I keep them in mind really...they're there cos they're my naitve way of expression... While English has not much inflection in its verbs really... And don't get me started about Russian verbs...they're hell for a non-slavic speaker, and surely the Russians feel our verbs lack something, cos theirs are much more precise: like the example I made about verbs of motion, or like they have prefixes that indicate the beginning of the action while we use another verb... or they even have a word which means 'talk while you're doing something else'!!!
This is what i was meaning when i said that different languages may feel richer in a sense and poorer in another, cos they express things in different ways, and it's sometimes hard to grasp the way of thinking of the other language.

Anyway, back on language/thought... think of the aphasics (--> people that have an illness where they can't speak): it's not like they don't think... !

Been trying to edit but the forum is playing up... :(

That's why I consider English grammatically very easy... My English ex-whatever saw me like some sort of genius cos I can keep in mind all the Italian tenses (which are similar to the Spanish)...while it's not like I keep them in mind really...they're there cos they're my naitve way of expression... While English has not such variety (even if ti does have some more precise sides imo) nor much inflection in its verbs really... And don't get me started about Russian verbs...they're hell for a non-slavic speaker, and surely the Russians feel our verbs lack something, cos theirs are much more precise: like the example I made about verbs of motion, or like they have prefixes that indicate the beginning of the action while we use another verb... or they even have a word which means 'talk while you're doing something else'!!!
This is what i was meaning when i said that different languages may feel richer in a sense and poorer in another, cos they express things in different ways, and it's sometimes hard to grasp the way of thinking of the other language.

Anyway, back on language/thought... think of the aphasics (--> people that have an illness where they can't speak): it's not like they don't think... !

Great thread! Emily, I enjoyed your post; it was thought provoking for me. You obviously have thought in depth about this subject. Sadly I do not understand Hebrew. I wish I did, since as you mentioned, the thoughts, philosophy, history, and faith put forth in the Hebrew Bible has had a tremendous impact on the world in the last few of thousand years.
- Koa, linguist extraordinaire, I think you’re right so I’ll defer to your judgment. I do believe, however, that our primary language does influence our thoughts some what, if only slightly. I hate to stereotype, but Germans, to me, seem stoic, the French cultured and nuanced the Spanish passionate I’ll leave the Italians to you. I know I shouldn’t have written that last sentence, it was poorly thought out and simple. I’ll open myself up to a thorough thrashing now.
In English, being a mixed language, our legal terms are mostly Latin based; our cultured terms mostly French based (Compliments of the Normans) and our Earthy terms mostly Germanic Anglo (like, well – “earth”) We don’t eat a slice of cow (Anglo) but we consume the cuisine of beef (French based). Cow – Beef, Pig – Pork, Deer – Venison. Hey this is fun.
- AP, how’d you learn so much stuff? Hope you’re feeling better. I read something last week about a new theory in human evolution. Apparently some scientists now believe that about 2.5 million years ago a mutation made the jaw bone of our ancestor’s weaker thus requiring the development of a larger brain.
- Stan, communication without thought; excellent post!
- Verb tenses: certain Native American languages have only one verb tense. However they indicate present tense by pointing to the ground; future tense by pointing to the horizon and past tense by pointing over their shoulder. Which brings up my next question: Do you guys think that some languages are more complex than others? Btw, sorry this post is so disjointed. I’m in a hurry and trying to get out of the door on a 6 day trip. Work stinks

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Originally posted by Sancho
- Koa, linguist extraordinaire, I think you’re right so I’ll defer to your judgment. I do believe, however, that our primary language does influence our thoughts some what, if only slightly. I hate to stereotype, but Germans, to me, seem stoic, the French cultured and nuanced the Spanish passionate I’ll leave the Italians to you. I know I shouldn’t have written that last sentence, it was poorly thought out and simple. I’ll open myself up to a thorough thrashing now.

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Well sorry but it does seem a bit stereotyped... i really really don't feel that... As i said, in my opinion the influence can be in the way we relate to things and express them... I iwhs I could think of an example of the times when I thought 'hey, this really sounds much better in English', though I DID have that thought in my mind anyway, just I had a poorer way to express it in my language...

Yeah the English vocabluary is pretty varied, I enjoy to find pairs of word that have the same meaning (unless it changes slightly and noone ever told me) but different root: heaven/paradise (italian: paradiso), wish/desire (italian: desiderio) and so on... :D

I read that also some Asian language don't express the concept of time with senses, but there are no languages that are more advanced than others: all of them can express every concept, in one way or another...at least for the main concepts, cos there are some that are related to the local life... Lots of languages don't have articles, like the slavic ones, but they express the cathegory of determinatess (??? the english 'the') or indeterminatess (the english 'a') in other ways, like putting the subject at the beginning or at the end of the sentence.... and they absolutely dont feel the need of having articles... Languages are so incredibly varied, it's frustrating not to have the possibility to have at least a glimpse of them all...

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Originally posted by Sancho
Great thread! Emily, I enjoyed your post; it was thought provoking for me. You obviously have thought in depth about this subject. Sadly I do not understand Hebrew. I wish I did, since as you mentioned, the thoughts, philosophy, history, and faith put forth in the Hebrew Bible has had a tremendous impact on the world in the last few of thousand years.

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Thanks Sancho. I don't know Hebrew either, but I have a Jewish friend and things he's mentioned about the language have me really interested in learning it.... I know, I can get quite wordy -- as I've said before, overanalysis is my forte (or weakness. Take your pick). Probably because of the "Celtic knot" thing; one thought doesn't produce another thought, it produces a general feeling encompassing zillions of thoughts. (Hyperbole is my other weakness, btw ;)) Hence, I'm rarely without a strong opinion on a subject.... Anyway, I'm finding this thread fascinating too. Learning so much about languages from Koa, but some of the opinions here, especially, are really thought-provoking.

And Koa, to add to your comment about Asian languages -- I unfortunately don't know any yet, but my (incredible, miss-him-so-much, prof favorite) high school English teacher said since Chinese characters are mostly literal images, that tenses, adjectives, and most abstract ideas are communicated through the specific arrangements of nouns and verbs. I only have a vague concept of how it must work (I hope I'm not way off), but for instance: the tense of a verb may be determined by the placement of the noun's adjective, or something like that, since there is no change in their appearance or pronunciation. I suppose it's a lot like what you said about Slavic languages and the placement of words substituting for articles. (Sorry, "substituting" sounds sort of demeaning, but -- ironically -- I couldn't think of a better word.)

And just as an afterthought: ...In this sense I can certainly understand how -- while not necessarily the way we think, -- the way we process ideas might sometimes be related to how our language conditions us to think about the world around us. What I mean is... if in the west our thoughts while watching a raging storm at sea might be "passion, fury, embodiment of the power of the universe," and other such abstracts, a person whose language uses literal terms to describe emotion might think things like, "a cold volcanic eruption, a living mountain range, god throwing a tantrum." But just because the images it invokes are technically different, they are connected to the same centers in their respective brains, so the ideas that result are more or less the same. I hope I'm making sense. I'm tired.

No more long ones, I promise. :p

my brother's teaching english in japan, and i have a friend from osaka (O-sa-ka, not o-SAK-a); apparently, learning a multitude of symbols for their two alphabets, plus chinese characters, (plus english lettering in junior high or so) tends to make their brains function more rationally, and so abstract thoughts don't come as second nature quite as often as in other cultures where childhood is spent learning the symbols for one language only.

which isn't to say that the link between language/speech is deficient at all!!!, it's just interesting to note how that affects the whole right/left brain thought pattern.

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Originally posted by amuse
it's interesting, one of my best friends is from panama, and i took spanish recently; asked her about the 14 different verb tenses in the spanish language and how hard was it to learn english - she said it feels like it's "missing something" that was the only way she could explain it - and she has a degree in english and teaches both languages to high school students. i wish i had some grasp of what she was getting at, because i had never found my native language lacking...but now i do - a sort of "what if?"

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Interesting. I believe that learning english when you speak spanish is MUCH easier than learning spanish if you speak english, specially the talking part. From what I see, English is a much richer languaje than spanish, but it's more rigid also.

What about the idea of linguistic determinism, that language determins the range of thought a person has. Like the words collateral damage allowing people not to think about deaths and therefore effecting how they treat death.

nobody buys that crap do they really?

I don't see how it could work, it's not language that is shaping thought, but thought that is shaping language. If people didn't just ignore deaths in 3rd world countires then they wouldn't put labels on their death status. Pha.

the american military puts that label on it. quite a blanket statement you made there, btw. it's not people in other countries treating their loved ones with cavalier attitudes, as if they're dead sticks off a tree.

there is still a theory taught in psychology called the "liguistic relativity hypothesis" that outlines basically what you are saying simon; refer to my first post to this thread. it's basically been left in the dust with new research results, but there is still some support for it.

I question the depth of thought originally present in individuals who could be fooled by phrases like "collateral damage." If you know what it means, you think of genocide and fields strewn with corpses. If you don't, you think "I wonder what that means." Is it possible to know that something means "death" and yet train yourself not to think "death" when you hear it?

the pentagon does.

the military uses tons of phrases to describe what you mean emily.
http://www.medialit.org/reading_room/article75.html
http://www.zoran.net/afp/text/zmag/k...oublespeak.htm
like this:
http://www.chiprowe.com/magrev/doublespeak.html
the list goes on. i forget the phrase for air raids, but it's asinine. then again, aren't all the others.