Learning Tibetan changed the way I think (2023) (opens in new tab)

Roman Jakobson (probably one of the most important linguists of the 20th century) has famously said: "Languages essentially differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they can convey".

I think this sums up the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis quite well. The strong version of the hypothesis claims that monolingual speakers of a certain language find it hard to think of concepts that cannot be expressed by their language. But as Roman Jakobson hints, with enough effort you can express most concepts in most languages. Quite frankly, I'm not aware of any evidence of this strong form of linguistic determinism, except for Daniel Everett's research of Pirahã[1], which is rather controversial.

The weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is more interesting, but most of the research I've seen was on pretty boring (in my opinion) subjects that seem to appeal to a modern European audience. In other words, it's mostly about color and grammatical gender (obviously only when that gender is Masculine, Feminine and Neuter, not something too foreign like Bantu noun classes).

The most interesting research I remember reading was on the Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr, which uses a cardinal direction system. Instead of using the relative direction "left" or "right" to describe the location of objects in relation to you, you'd have to use their compass-direction like "The tree that is westwards of me" instead of "the tree on my west". That pretty clearly forces every Guugu Yimithirr speaker to have to be constantly aware of the compass directions so they can clearly point at things, it's quite unsurprising that they are very good in instinctively knowing where the north is without a compass.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language#Pirah%C3%...

English grammar also has features for expressing uncertainty, unreality, hypothetical, wishes, demands with uncertain outcomes etc. by use of the subjunctive mood.

"If I were a bird, I would be able to fly." (were, not was) "God bless you." (bless, not blesses) "The teacher demands that students be on time." (be, not are)

Though many native speakers, even very intelligent ones, fail to properly use subjective mood at a high rate. Or otherwise do not recognize it. As some of the other comments note, there are some interesting differences around what a languages grammar will strictly enforce, where as in English, proper use of the subjunctive mood is less strict. Obviously, this is also far less expressiveness in English around this in grammar than there is in other languages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjunctive_mood#English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_subjunctive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_mood

>by tweaking the formality of our register).

what does register mean in this context? the tone of voice or something similar?

Yes. And some Quakers were offended by all this unnecessary politeness and continued to use "thou" for a couple of centuries. So English and French used plural "you" for politeness, and so did German at one point, but modern German uses "they" as a polite "you", and so does Italian, I think. So there was an international trend to avoid singular "you" when being polite. But recently in Sweden (1960s/1970s) they've gone back to universal use of singular "you", which seems like a good thing to me, though it's presumably too late for English, despite the holdouts in Yorkshire.

> […] In official speech one almost never says singular "you" […]

With a notable exception being addressing the sovereign (king/queen/tsar/etc) where the singular «you», «thou» and similar were used, in all languages. The sovereign was seen as a direct peer, the ultimate protector of the people and the last instance of appeal, and the connection was also perceived as deeply intimate.

The practice fell out of favour in England (I'm not sure when exactly but probably with the transition to the constitutional monarchy), although it lived on elsewhere in mainland Europe until the demise of all major monarchies.

Indian philosophy is not translingual though, its all written in one language, Sanskrit, and translated from that language. If anything, Indian philosophy demonstrates hierarchal dominance in its cultural context.

Its more likely that you hate what you see in people than the people themselves.

As a multilingual and multicultural person, I experience this daily. When I want to think about emotional things or intimate relationships, I think in Spanish. When I want to do math, I think in English. Engineering is in English. Social analysis in Spanish.

English is my primary language and I learned Spanish in my 40s. But many things work much better in Spanish, so I do them in Spanish. In my experience , language absolutely influences your thoughts and your values.

I have an entire identity in Spanish that contains many relationships. If I think about or talk about those people in English, it is as if I am talking about someone I barely know. It is really odd, actually.

As for Japanese, the by far more important difference is, in my opinion, that the verb comes last. Imagine an automatic Star Trek Universal Translator feature: Can't happen. You can't translate the sentence as it's being spoken, you have to wait until the last word before you can get past the subject if you're translating to English.

What this means in practice is something you'll have to watch for to notice: It's far more common for Japanese people not to reply until the other party has finished the sentence. Because, depending on context, the verb is important. Important parts happens at the end of the sentence, while in my own language important things are at the beginning of the sentence and the remainder is just fluff, so it's extremely common to hear people communicate in overlapping patterns - you start replying mid-sentence (and the other party automatically stops because the point has already been made so it's fine). This is something which absolutely infuriates my Japanese wife, even though she speaks my language nearly perfectly. She can't get out of the habit of expecting people to wait until the very end, even though as far as the other party is concerned everything is already clear.

But this does instill a good habit - there's way less interruptions. Because when you learn your pattern of replying mid-sentence, sometimes you do miss the real point. And more.

Look at how English treats time as money. You save, invest, spend, waste it. There are plenty of these things out there, but they're subtle.

Yes, instead it is an opening-minded language :), as in, it creates work and business openings, being the de facto international language of business.

Depends where you are coming from.

I think Chomsky's theories became popular in anglophone linguistic circles (and later in the rest of the world) because their math-like structure and close applicability to computer science. They've proven to be useful in some cases, but there has been no proof of a universal grammar. The fact that you can create a formal system to represent an idea, is not a proof by any stretch of that definition.

This is why some people would even go as far as classifying Chomsky's theories as pseudo-science (see one of the replies to GP). I wouldn't go as far, but considering the almost toxic disdain Chomsky himself has to every linguist who is not interested in researching his supposed Universal Grammar (he has famously compared structural and functional linguistics to "butterfly collectors"), we should view this theory with more criticism.

I'm actually glad you posted this because it reminded me of a quote from Wittgenstein's page on Wikipedia [1]

> According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise when language is forced from its proper home into a metaphysical environment, where all the familiar and necessary landmarks and contextual clues are removed. He describes this metaphysical environment as like being on frictionless ice: where the conditions are apparently perfect for a philosophically and logically perfect language, all philosophical problems can be solved without the muddying effects of everyday contexts; but where, precisely because of the lack of friction, language can in fact do no work at all.[259] Wittgenstein argues that philosophers must leave the frictionless ice and return to the "rough ground" of ordinary language in use. Much of the Investigations consists of examples of how the first false steps can be avoided, so that philosophical problems are dissolved, rather than solved: "The clarity we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear."

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

Maybe not, but most of them are expecting users to have English in mind to some degree, plus the top ten most used are definitely all procedural paradigm plus some encapsulation such as OOP, as opposed to something like prolog.