From: Paul Grant (shade999@optonline.net)
Date: Sun Jul 27 2003 - 22:44:10 MDT
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Lee Corbin
Sent: Sunday, July 27, 2003 4:51 PM
Paul Grant writes
Paul writes
> I think it's through an availability mechanism; I speak Arabic and
> English fluently, and certain thoughts or mechanisms are very
> difficult to "translate" semantically (ergo there exists no
> corresponding word or short phrase in the other language). In any
> event, I don't think that a language in and of itself necessarily
> limits thought development; however it can delay it.... Sufficiently
> intelligent people come up with new words all the time in their
> day-to-day dealings [that map to something significant missing from
> their current semantic set].....And eventually it filters down to the
> masses. Put another way, knowing several languages expands ur ability
> to capture a thought precisely {and thus is highly recommended};
> knowing one language does not necessarily hinder that development of a
> thought, just delays it. And that goes for radically different
> languages (like English or Chinese), in that left to their own
> devices, the English and Chinese would eventually identify all the
> notions they want... The order in which a particular semantic notion
> is discovered however, would probably be vastly different in such
> extremes.
[Lee] Sounds quite sensible. I especially appreciate your observation
that one language can *delay* the conclusions that one could or would
come to, without preventing them. Even that is quite a concession to
the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. While of course it can be harder to convey
in one language what is easy in another, it surely is about equally
difficult or easy to *think* certain thoughts. At least that's what I
am concluding from this discussion.
<Me> Actually whats really cool about something like that is the
function
it sets up for comparing the fitness between languages; that is,
depending
on the domain u're discussing, certain languages are better suited than
others
for arriving at a particular sequence or arrangement.
I've picked out a set of languages I wish to learn based on the
following criteria:
a) reading material of interest [based on who's publishing what types of
material]
b) different mode of thinking <the point we're discussing>
c) usefulness as it relates to # of people speaking that particular
language...
I also believe that language strongly shapes culture;
which implies a transitive nature to evaluating *cultures*
within a domain. Again for the simple reason that people
<generally speaking> use what comes to mind first rather
than examining all their options rationally.
I'm extremely interested in linguistic structures :)
omard-out
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