(ELOG 9 for CS3790: Cognitive Science)
We all have an internal dialogue running in our heads all the time. It seems as though our very thoughts are tied to our linguistic ability. Given that this is the case, is it possible that these thoughts can ever be fully expressed in a language other than the one they are internally represented as? The linguistic relativity hypothesis, or Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, states that thought is so innately tied with language that there are thoughts in one language that are unique to that language and cannot be translated.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has a weaker version that most scientists actually believe to be more accurate – that language impacts the thoughts and perceptions of people such that certain thoughts become more difficult to express in other languages, but not necessarily impossible. There are several studies that have been done about this.
Some of the more interesting ones include a study of people of different languages tasked to separate tokens into groups however they saw fit. Russians chose to separate light blue and dark blue into two separate groups, Setswana speakers would group green and blue. The theory is that these differences come from the differences in language. Setswana has no separate words for green and blue. Russian has two words for blue, one light and one dark. It doesn’t seem surprising to think language might have something to do with it.
I’ve taken several Japanese courses, and I’ve had friends ask me “how do I say X in Japanese?” Often, I just don’t know because I don’t have the vocabulary, but I’ve also seen that certain basic sentences just don’t really fit with any grammatical structures I’ve learned for Japanese. I guess that’s the linguistic relativity hypothesis at work.
