🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4m3hfa$7eo@usenet1.sjc.in.sel.sony.com>,
 <howeird@netgate.net> wrote:
>I speak English, Thai and Hebrew, and can guarantee you that I think 
>differently, and actually have a markedly different personality depending on 
>which language I am operating in. Granted, part of this is cultural, since I 
>learned each of these languages in the context of the culture in which it is 
>spoken. But I'm a much quieter, more polite and diplomatic person in Thai than 
>in English, and I'm downright offensive in Hebrew. I don't want to be that way 
>- Hebrew just doesn't have all the tools for speaking politely which Thai and 
>English have. 

Wrong.  The tools are there, and native speakers know how to use them,
but usually they don't bother.  The idea behind Hebrew (especially
Bible time Hebrew) is that language is a tool for action.  It should
be short, and with no ambiguity.  In English, ambiguity is the
"oil" of the machine.  It let you "agree" without actually talking
about the same thing.  E.g. see the long and bitter debates about
the meaning of the Second Amendment.  (IMO the NRA got it right,
but as a non-English speaker I'm not going to argue the point.)
Bible time law tried to be much more short, direct, and with no
ambiguity, even though some of that was lost in the translation.
E.g. "Lo tirzach" was translated to "you shall not kill."  An
accurate translation took two words and translated them to four words...

So, IMO, the tools you don't use in Hebrew is the ambiguity.  The
ability to say things which are not clear.  Native Hebrew speakers
don't like such talk and view that as a sign of dishonesty.  (This
attitude is not always bad; e.g. it lets diamond traders
summarized a deal verbally, and even if it is not written down
both sides understand exactly what it means.)

>As for the question about where different languages/cultures separate the 
>spectrum, I can give you a similar example. There was an African exchange 
>student in my high school district back in 1967 or so who was having a tough 
>time in geometry class. It seems his language and culture did all of their 
>building using arcs and circles. The concepts for squares and angles either 
>didn't exist, or were very vague. When he first started taking geometry, he 
>could not tell the difference between a square and a rectangle. They both 
>looked the same to him, and he had no way to describe the difference in his 
>native language.

That has little to do with language, and a lot to do with life
experience.  E.g. Hebrew has different words for snow and ice, still
I did not "feel" the difference between them till my first
snow storm.

Hillel                                    gazit@cs.duke.edu

"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to?" -- Clarence Darrow