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Jordan: > On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 11:33:47AM -0400, John Cowan wrote: > > Jordan DeLong scripsit: > > > Them there savages can't not thunk it like us white folk. They > > > ain't even got no word for 'compassion', I tell ye > > > > <p lang="en-ru">Ha. As is well known, superstitious Americans cannot > > even make obvious distinction between _sinii_ and _goluboi_, but refer > > to both colors as merely "blue". Further, they introduce spurious and > > irrelevant distinction between proximal and distal parts of obviously > > unitary body part _ruka_, namely "arm" and "hand". Americans clearcut > > victims of much dreaded Whorfian mind lock.<p> > > This is a good example of the total bogus shit SW-ists like to talk about > > I can talk about "light blue", or "R:0 G:0 B:200", or whatever > > I can differentiate between different shades of a color, even if I > call them all "blue". (or "light blue", "not so light blue".). Go > to a paint store sometime and you'll see what I mean---there will > be far more distinctions of "blue" than are commonplace in this > sinii language you talk about I intend no offence, but I think that, without realizing it, you may be underestimating or unaware of the range of rather diverse views that 'whorfianism' encompasses. The one that you debunk -- that language places absolute limits on thought -- seems to be a not at all salient strain of whorfianism. More usual, and more plausible, and more relevantly to Lojban, is the notion that language *influences* thought. For example, people who speak a language that classifies nouns into sexual gender related classes may tend to think about the masculinity and femininity of things more than people who speak a language that classifies nouns by their shape and consistency. Or, when engaged in a task of judging how different two different hues are, speakers of a language with separate words for blue & green, or dark blue and light blue, might judge there to be a greater difference than speakers of a language that has just the one word for blue and green or for light blue and dark blue. It is this sort of whorfianism that interests the likes of xod & Michael Helsem: the plausible idea that in Lojban one may encounter both new concepts and new habits of thought, which in turn may alter perceptions. I don't think any of this makes Lojban a scientifically interesting experiment, but I do think it makes xodism/helsemism a perfectly intelligent outlook & not bogus or crap. > The fact that languages draw lines in different places doesn't > proove that speakers of the languages *think* differently or are > incapable of understanding certain distinctions, and simple > consideration suggests that they likely don't[1]. And claiming > certain sections of a population "think differently" than everyone > else counts as racism to me > > [1] A simple test could be designed for your color fetish: Just > show people who speak different languages similar shades of colors > and ask them if they can tell the difference between the two. There > will be no effect on the results based on what language people > speak, if all they are asked to do is say whether two shades are > different. The human eye is capable of percieving relatively slight > changes in light frequency, and its performance is *not* affected > by race, or the language(s) you happen to speak There is in fact a substantial literature on the relationship between language and colour perception. I am going by memory here, but I believe you are correct that language does not affect the ability to discriminate between hues, but it does affect how we classify hues (grouping them by similarity) and, less obviously, it affects our perceptions of similarity. Repeating what I said above, I don't see ideas about people being *incapable* of understanding distinctions being bandied about, but I do see ideas about people tending to thinking differently because of language. And surely that is not surprising. Suppose one language calls 'democracy' what another calls 'mob-rule'; it is not implausible that the prevailing political views in the two countries might be somewhat different because of the different terminology. --And.