Ask HN: Does the languages we speak affect the way we think?
The thoughts of a conscious mind are greatly influenced and framed by the language in which they are conjured. Thought is never anything but concepts. Do you think this postulate is true?
Edit: Actually, there aren’t many submissions about the subject and I forgot that you can only view search results for comments in Date order and not Popularity order. (For the obvious reason that you can’t see the score of comments.) Googling gives results that may be satisfying:
site:news.ycombinator.com Sapir whorf hypothesisFor example the word computer 电脑 (Dian nao) consist of the word for electric/electricity and the word brain. Both together gives the meaning "computer". While English, German, and other 130 languages I googled, somehow represent the verb "to compute / to calculate" ..
in Chinese it's the "electronic brain".. the calculator is then ji suan ji (计算机) -> calculating machine.
The other things you mentioned are pure cultural influenced. Like "the Chinese is better suited to achieve great scientific discussions" which is actually achieved by accumulation of knowledge and learning. Another example, the best mathematicians are in France, Russia.., ..., and US by most. Gambia also has "one" mathematician.. while English being official. Shouldn't then there be more Gambian mathematicians? ... It's "culture" preventing the accumulation of knowledge, or, at least not teaching it amongst the pupils.
so, my postulation is:
the knowledge we gain shapes our thinking. Language itself is the transportation medium for the knowledge. Is the medium is small, so the knowledge described with the medium is also "small" or "not destinctive enough". We can use a "second" language then to make the knowledge more exact and mor destinct/tdefined.
But the knowledge can also be gained with other means - learning by doing, as exmaple. So, a language is not necessary to gain knowledge (numb and deaf and blind people also think, but are somehow limited in their expression ...)
so based on that, I postulate, it's a coincidence when a language shapes our thinking, but the cause and the "affecting part" is the real "knowledge-transfer" by the language. No matter if its sign language, pointing towards .. speaking piraha or russian or finnish-english.
As a result thinking in Latin is absolutely different than thinking in English which has yes/no questions that could not exist in Latin. When asked a yes/no question without receiving a yes or no answer English speakers immediately assume deception and that assumption is almost always correct. The exception is when the answering party fully fails to grasp the question, or the question's intent if the question is vague or itself deceptive. In Latin language answers without a yes or no were the default and even though there is not an option to apply a direct yes or no answer many times deception was none the less assumed regardless due to differing cultural norms, especially in elevated classes.
https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/1592/how-do-you-sa...
For example, in one of the languages I speak, husban and wife literally means owner and woman. So a woman would say that he is her owner, while the man would say that she is his woman.
Some languages have different “you” meanings. There is a “you” for someone you know, a formal “you”, a “you” when addressing someone older than yourself.
While these things sound minor, I do believe they shape the thinking of individuals and societies.
I have a blog post draft about it, and now you reminded me that I should probably proofread it and publish.
As a controversy to the theory of linguistic relativity..
That said the culture (relegion and other stories) we live in completely drive our cognition.
Culture & Ideology Are Not Your Friends (Terence McKenna) [FULL]
Presented at the Whole Life Expo, Denver, April 1999
I speak five languages myself. Being born and grown up in one country, went to highschool in second country, studied in a third country. But it's not the languages, but rather what i've learned and the discussions I had, that shaped the today's me. If I didn't study or argue with others, I would less utilize my thinking-as-an-engineer -> clear & aim-oriented, logically structured problem solving.
I notice the use of logical thinking in my daily life (if -> then -> but why? -> conclusion) even more after I started programming in spare time. Yes, it's a new language: strict, well defined, clear expression and problem-modeling. The new language did not change my thinking, but rather the way it solved my problems, and the new knowledge of e.g. data structures, did. So, for me, language is a tool for unlocking the knowledge and the knowledge shapes me.
another examples that supports my thinking "its the knowledge that shapes us": - when the war in Ukraine started, a lot of people said "We have. Give them long-range missles. Give them now.". But after learning that for some long-range missles it's neccessary to continiously monitor & control the missle with propriatary technology. This technology is secure and difficult to operate and rather shouldn't fall into the hands of enemies - the thinking about "give them" changed. But not the language.
- Trump's imposed tariffs: Quite a lot of US thinks the tariffs are paid by the producers. After learning, its paid by the importer, they change their thinking too. Language didn't change. But their thinking.
so, I'm opposed to the theory that language alone shapes our thinking. It's the knowledge we gain and the links and conclusions we make. Language is static, while knowledge is dynamic.
Yes, boolean logic and math are language invariant. But "thinking" is much broader context and I definitely see strong signs of how people change their thinking with changing the language.
Once I experienced such thing while teaching students: there was a group of 6 + 1 Ninjagirls (headscarfed, traditional clothing without skin visible). The one of seven was not wearing headscarf, but rather non-body-pronounced, ordinary clothes, but still covering skin. So, being a man myself, the 7 girls always kept distance to me, while I explained the technical subject. So, when it was about hands-on practice, a possibility to examine the partly finished product has been loudly used by 6 of 7: They warmed up and where happy smiling discussing the topic furiously among each other and me. Except that one girl. She was standing there and thinking and just looking at what we've produced. I noticed that and of course approached her with "why don't you participate in the discussion. It's important for gathering understanding. Do you have questions?" She was like: "I don't understand this. ... How does it exercise an influence on vibration inducement in the finished product?"
I was blown away by the question. Not because it's a difficult question, but rather because in 14y of teaching, no one - no student, no professors, no workers - literally, no one, has thoughts on vibration inducement at this half-finished state. It doesn't make sense to ask it. It's "too late to" and "too early to" at the same time..
So I, lost my words, said "Why do you ask this? I mean, I will be very happy to explain it to you, but please, let your conmilitones first finish their discussion." .. so, I explained it to her in the way she built up the understanding to answer her own question by herself.
I was so blown away by this, that I approached her after and asked her again "why did you ask it.. I'm very happy about it. In my 14y of doing this..." and closed it with "Keep up what ever you've were thinking. Don't let anyone tell you what to do or what to think or learn. I know, you're really special given the situation today.."
And you guess, that gave her a push in her self esteem. Such a big one, that she changed her style to short skirts, open wonderful hair and a lot of makeup and other girly-things over the next few months. She went literally from Zero to Bomb in 3 months. Also did her engagement in studying change. She enjoyed being smart then.
Nice story, I like to tell. Thinking changed. No other language involved. But here, it's more of the "culture thing" than knowledge, as you said.
Culture, by itself, influences the language and words used. In a patriarchal society the word "emancipation" is not used often. Agreed. Learning emancipation in a third language doesn't change the thinking towards emancipation. But knowledge of other women living a self-determined life does provoke thinking over the own situation.
Culture shapes behavior, behavior shapes language, language expresses accumulated social knowledge and back-fluences culture :)
Consciousness (existential inflection) and conscious (aware) are two separate things. Consciousness envelops one’s conscious experience, however there is much more (an entire mind technology.)
The mechanics of language and their influence on thought is yet another fascinating layer.
The apparatus of our minds which shape our thoughts are a technology. You shaping your thoughts is just as distinctive as your voice shaping your words. Many have a wide range of variability. There are many influences.
The technology of thought in our minds changes a great deal about who we are and how we interface with the world (more than just words and people.)
What is useful is not which language, for every modern language is mature through countless generations “polishing” it. What is useful is how much experience one has, and how they might articulate how this was processed.
The technology of the mind may at times seem like an arms race, though it is also like an ouroboros, devouring itself and reinventing through time.
If you want to think interesting thoughts, you need to think hard about things for a long time. That's the sine qua non of it. It can be in any language you want, or even in a nonlinguistic substrate like mental visualization. I would heavily caution people away from trying to shortcut this process by first spending 5 years studying e.g. ancient Assyrian and only then attempting to commune with pre-biblical demons (or whatever it is people think they want to do with this - if there's no particular goal in mind, I would say that's yet another red flag).
In general, I'm sorry to say, I think language learning is a tremendous waste of time and effort for almost everybody. Exceptions are mainly for hobbyists (even then, there are probably much more worthwhile hobbies you could take up), passing regulatory hurdles (all of mine so far), and integrating into a new culture (Finnish alone so far). If you want a pastime which will really push your brain to think hard and in new ways, philosophy and mathematics are both much better bang for your buck.
I take from that that you dont like Finnish, you learn it because you have to, and your level is not good enough yet to participate in society exclusively in Finnish.
Nothing wrong with that, but you are generalizing a lot from a very specific context.
A lot of profient L2 speakers will tell you that L2 learning is a very enriching experience indeed.
* I neither like nor dislike [roll - Tibetan]. I feel about the same way towards [roll - Kalaallisut] as I feel towards all languages, including my native [roll - French].
* I have always had a strong distaste for language learning in general, starting with [roll - Nauruan] when I ~4 years old. But I don't think that distaste is at all uncommon - it's just the obvious ugh reaction anyone would get to something which takes tens of thousands of hours with little to no concrete payoff.
* My level is good enough to "participate in society exclusively in [roll - Khanty]", but I admit it would take at least a few months of immersion I'm simply not interested in doing. However, this kind of statement is like saying "don't worry, tennis becomes fun once you make it to the professional leagues" - it makes the cost-benefit of starting tennis or language learning worse, not better, and much worse if we're talking about a strictly hobbyist approach. Very few other "good" hobbies are like this - 10 minutes of exercise a day, for example, has an astonishing ROI right from the start, if you're starting from zero.
* Your "enriching experience" comment leads us to an interesting question. Consider the group of all people who are C2 CEFR speakers of both, say, [roll - Slavey] and [roll - Sami]. If the experience was so enriching, why are they all not immediately spending another handful of thousands of hours learning a new language? It can't be a monetary cost thing, because language learning is basically free thanks to the Internet. There's no good a priori reason to suspect only the second language is enriching, and the third would be worthless - that would be even weirder. So why don't we see more of them learning e.g. [roll - Zulu]? Because the enrichment isn't worth it. Anything you do consistently for thousands of hours is going to enrich your life, but I would far rather spend those 10,000 hours becoming e.g. a world level Olympic tennis player than a pretty darn good speaker of [roll - Fijian].
1. You don't need to learn hundreds of random languages in order to claim you like languages. Most people feel attracted by some languages and not others, so your generalization point doesn't make any sense.
2. For most people I know language is fun once they start to communicate meaningfully, no need to be on the professional leagues.
3. Some people likes to learn a bit of many languages, others like to learn a ton of just two, others don't have enough time to learn as much as the would like, others like languages but maybe also likes sports as much. Even then, almost 1/2 of world population is bilingual and ~1/6 speaks more than 2 languages.
4. The overwhelming majority of people has the tremendous skill of being able to enjoy something in spite of not having any immediate payoffs. Otherwise no one would be doing difficult things of any kind and we all would be great at filling tax forms.