Imagine if the structure of your language’s grammar, or its vocabulary, made you think differently from people who speak other languages.
Most people find that notion highly appealing. Since the airing of the idea by amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1930s, the “language as thought” hypothesis has often been presented more as fact than question — which is odd given that it constitutes a grand insult to countless human beings worldwide.
Ironically, it is thought to be just the opposite. Whorf based his case on the Native American language Hopi, claiming it had no ways to indicate past or future, and that this was because the Hopi have a cyclical sense of time. He meant this as praise, under which the Hopi occupy a “higher plane of thinking” in contrast to the “bludgeon” of a language we English speakers are stuck with.
Since then, much Whorfian work has been dedicated to showing that the languages of groups often thought of as “primitive” give their speakers more sensitivity to life than European languages. Navajo has different words for “to handle” depending on the shape of the object handled, and one experiment suggested that Navajo children are more sensitive to shape in general than white Americans.
It is considered — justifiably — a mark of enlightenment to understand that all humans are equal, and that “civilization” can desensitize us to what is natural or “authentic.” The Whorfian idea, highlighting the insight of indigenous peoples, is thus deeply appealing to laymen. In 2010, a New York Times piece excerpted from Guy Deutscher’s “Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages” was on the newspaper’s “most-read” list for weeks.
However, the “language as thought” idea is less cuddly when we pull the camera back. It comes down to something quite simple: when marking what’s in the world, some languages are more “anal” than others. Much more. Whorfianism is a great way to paint the speakers of the “busier” languages as mentally sophisticated — but on the pain of implying that speakers of the less busy ones are dullards in comparison.
Take the simple sentence “I like Bob.” Russian’s version, “Mne nravitsja Bob,” translates as “Bob pleases to me.” In treating liking as something happening to you, Russian is more fine-grained than English which treats like as just one more ordinary verb that is about what you do to someone or something, like touching, dressing and drinking. Plus Russian really lays this on thick: it indicates that “to-ness” in the particular form of the pronoun mne, and yet again in the -sja suffix which means “to self.”
Now, under Whorfianism this means that liking is, to Russians, more vivid and genuine than it is to us English speakers – or at least, the Whorfian would consider this well worth investigating. Good – but then what about how the Japanese like things? The ordinary way a Japanese person would say I like Bob is “Bob ga suki,” which translates as “Bob, likeability.” Japanese can get the “I” part in if necessary, but normally would leave it to context.
Based on the “language as thought” idea, we have to treat the Japanese as less alert to affection than Russians or Americans — a prospect few would consider even worth investigating. And what happens with I like Bob in these three languages is typical of a general difference between the three. Russian tracks reality more carefully than English, while Japanese is a highly telegraphic language, in which it is almost surprising how little needs to be explicitly said.
And this is also true of countless languages of the world, including Chinese, many languages of Southeast Asia, and quite a few in Africa. So, we can celebrate speakers of the Native American language Atsugewi for the fact that in the sentence “The soot flowed into the creek,” just the word for flow, w’oqhputic’ta, has little pieces indicating that what flowed was dirt, that the flowing was downward, that the flowing was into water, and that all of this really happened rather than being hypothetical (!). There’s a busy language indeed – but if that makes Atsugewi speakers seers, then conversely, speakers of almost any language of Ghana or Laos must be curiously indifferent to life as we know it.
This is not to say that Whorfianism has no scientific value. Much current work in the subject does show small differences in perception. In English we say a long time; Indonesian has “a lot of time.” Shown a lengthening line and a gradually filling jar, English speakers are better at indicating how long they watched the line while Indonesian speakers are better at indicating how long they watched the jar. English means time is a line while Indonesian means it’s a substance. Neat.
But before we celebrate this as showing that people in Jakarta experience life in a dramatically different way than we do, we should consider that to embrace the idea of language differences as shaping perception in any radical way inherently denigrates the cognitive abilities of billions of the world’s human beings.
Most people find that notion highly appealing. Since the airing of the idea by amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1930s, the “language as thought” hypothesis has often been presented more as fact than question — which is odd given that it constitutes a grand insult to countless human beings worldwide.
Ironically, it is thought to be just the opposite. Whorf based his case on the Native American language Hopi, claiming it had no ways to indicate past or future, and that this was because the Hopi have a cyclical sense of time. He meant this as praise, under which the Hopi occupy a “higher plane of thinking” in contrast to the “bludgeon” of a language we English speakers are stuck with.
Since then, much Whorfian work has been dedicated to showing that the languages of groups often thought of as “primitive” give their speakers more sensitivity to life than European languages. Navajo has different words for “to handle” depending on the shape of the object handled, and one experiment suggested that Navajo children are more sensitive to shape in general than white Americans.
It is considered — justifiably — a mark of enlightenment to understand that all humans are equal, and that “civilization” can desensitize us to what is natural or “authentic.” The Whorfian idea, highlighting the insight of indigenous peoples, is thus deeply appealing to laymen. In 2010, a New York Times piece excerpted from Guy Deutscher’s “Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages” was on the newspaper’s “most-read” list for weeks.
However, the “language as thought” idea is less cuddly when we pull the camera back. It comes down to something quite simple: when marking what’s in the world, some languages are more “anal” than others. Much more. Whorfianism is a great way to paint the speakers of the “busier” languages as mentally sophisticated — but on the pain of implying that speakers of the less busy ones are dullards in comparison.
Take the simple sentence “I like Bob.” Russian’s version, “Mne nravitsja Bob,” translates as “Bob pleases to me.” In treating liking as something happening to you, Russian is more fine-grained than English which treats like as just one more ordinary verb that is about what you do to someone or something, like touching, dressing and drinking. Plus Russian really lays this on thick: it indicates that “to-ness” in the particular form of the pronoun mne, and yet again in the -sja suffix which means “to self.”
Now, under Whorfianism this means that liking is, to Russians, more vivid and genuine than it is to us English speakers – or at least, the Whorfian would consider this well worth investigating. Good – but then what about how the Japanese like things? The ordinary way a Japanese person would say I like Bob is “Bob ga suki,” which translates as “Bob, likeability.” Japanese can get the “I” part in if necessary, but normally would leave it to context.
Based on the “language as thought” idea, we have to treat the Japanese as less alert to affection than Russians or Americans — a prospect few would consider even worth investigating. And what happens with I like Bob in these three languages is typical of a general difference between the three. Russian tracks reality more carefully than English, while Japanese is a highly telegraphic language, in which it is almost surprising how little needs to be explicitly said.
And this is also true of countless languages of the world, including Chinese, many languages of Southeast Asia, and quite a few in Africa. So, we can celebrate speakers of the Native American language Atsugewi for the fact that in the sentence “The soot flowed into the creek,” just the word for flow, w’oqhputic’ta, has little pieces indicating that what flowed was dirt, that the flowing was downward, that the flowing was into water, and that all of this really happened rather than being hypothetical (!). There’s a busy language indeed – but if that makes Atsugewi speakers seers, then conversely, speakers of almost any language of Ghana or Laos must be curiously indifferent to life as we know it.
This is not to say that Whorfianism has no scientific value. Much current work in the subject does show small differences in perception. In English we say a long time; Indonesian has “a lot of time.” Shown a lengthening line and a gradually filling jar, English speakers are better at indicating how long they watched the line while Indonesian speakers are better at indicating how long they watched the jar. English means time is a line while Indonesian means it’s a substance. Neat.
But before we celebrate this as showing that people in Jakarta experience life in a dramatically different way than we do, we should consider that to embrace the idea of language differences as shaping perception in any radical way inherently denigrates the cognitive abilities of billions of the world’s human beings.
