🚀 go-pugleaf

On 22 Apr 1996, Ross Thompson wrote:

--clip--
> Oh, man, won't this myth ever die?  The notion that people's thoughts
> are limited by the language that they speak has been debunked for
> decades, and yet you still see it being quoted every month or so.  The
--clip--

I don't know whether people are limited by their language. Perhaps 
people's decision that something is important may be affected by how much 
their culture, and language, stress it. Whatever.

I DO believe that the reverse is true. People make lots of words for
whatever is important in their culture. And also... there is a style of
thought, carried over into language, that is particular to every culture. 
People attempting to learn about another culture can get inside the
mindset, to a degree, by becoming good enough at the language that they
can think in it. That is how Spanish is for me; after a few days in Mexico
I stopped translating for myself (except when faced with an unknown word,
and then I simply did the standard language-class trick and put a spanish
ending on the word regardless of the word's language of origin). I don't
claim to know how it is to be Mexican, but I claim I'm closer than the
tourists who spent all their time on booze-boats speaking English to other
tourists and treating the people of the land as servants. 

And also, it makes me much more capable of mentally turning the tables
when encountering a non-native english speaker. In other words, I don't
automatically see them as having an intelligence level equal to their use
of english words, given that my IQ, rated in spanish, is guaranteed to be
lower than mine in English. And that goes for other things, like southern
accents (which often make northerners decide the southerner is slow in
general) etc. The only one I really can't deal with is Boston Southie. 

--L