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Comment by Mister_Snuggles | Hacker News Reader

> This and many other experiments have converged upon a simple conclusion: When people do not have number words, they struggle to make quantitative distinctions that probably seem natural to someone like you or me.

This kind of thing has always fascinated me. It's not just about numbers, it's about how language shapes thought.

If a language lacked the ability to express the concept of sadness, would its people be sad? Or would they just be angry because they can't explain how they feel to anyone?

If we had four digits on each hand, as some cartoon characters have, would we think in octal?

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It's not clear cut. It appears to be the case for things like counting, as detailed by the article.

For emotions, children obviously can express a range of them before acquiring language, so it does not seem it would be the case; but that is not really a settled matter (see eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_classification)

Regarding counting, some cultures have adopted different bases: for instance, some native american cultures do use octal as they count the space between fingers rather than fingers themselves. The Mayas used base 20, presumably due to using fingers + toes.

Sounds like it supports the Safir-Whorf hypothesis (mentioned here by booleandilemma), which has generally been refuted by linguists in recent years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

>which has generally been refuted by linguists in recent years

The strong version has been refuted, the 'soft' version is pretty well accepted among linguists.

> If we had four digits on each hand, as some cartoon characters have, would we think in octal?

-This is too good an opportunity to reference Tom Lehrer's "New Math":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4

My take is that it's not the language that shapes thought, but something else that shapes both language and thought.

Case in point: There are a few particular feelings which I experience sometimes that I recognize every time - I just find it impossible to describe them using any language I know.

Example: A sudden feeling of not recognizing the people next to you. I mean, I am consciously aware that these are my e.g. relatives, but for a split second this feeling of familiarity fades. It is clearly different than the one I get when I look at people I don't know.

I can't even tell if I'm the only one I know who experiences this, because there are no words that could describe it accurately.

I think of it as a pie that can be sliced up in different ways. All humans have a full pie. But how we choose to categorize our emotions and thoughts into words absolutely has a huge impact on our cultural and internal priorities, mores etc.

I think your example describes a type of jamais vu[1]. It happens to me (and presumably everyone else) too.

[1]"A sense of unfamiliarity with, or of never having experienced or seen before, something that should be familiar." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jamais_vu

> If we had four digits on each hand, as some cartoon characters have, would we think in octal

Almost certainly. Of course, 8 would still be represented as 1-0.

You should check this out if you're not familiar with it already:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

Non-mobile link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I think hexadecimal would be more natural.

Or base 15, since the (mathematical) concept of zero seems to evade primitive cultures.

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