So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I thought a lot about the Portuguese language while I was in Lisbon. I use the phrase "thought a lot about" very loosely, considering I don't speak more than a word of Portuguese, but I was surprised even by its slight similarity to Spanish. It was vaguely intelligible to read, because it's written a bit
like Spanish, but impossible to understand verbally, or at least for me. I could read an advertisement that translated poetically as "add some delight to your life," and another that was literally "because everything is better with bacon." So I felt very precocious, at least until I heard people talking. The
sounds are completely different from English and reminded me more of the noises that people make in the Sims games. In a good way. I'd really like to learn Portuguese, should I ever have the time.
But, what really got me thinking was the idea of how language shapes a person's entire worldview, which in fancy specialist terms is called linguistic relativity. I won't prattle for too terribly long, because I realize that most people are probably not as excited about words as I am, but the concept of linguistic relativity is pretty cool. More or less, it argues that a person's cognitive processes are affected by her language. (If you're interested in learning about it from someone who knows what they're talking about, here is the Linguistic Society of America's take on it, in addition to a link to the Stanford website above.)
For example, and this is probably the most famous example, there are plenty of languages which distinguish colors differently. In English, there are two separate words to signify the colors blue and green. In Ancient Egyptian, on the other hand, there is one word (wadjet) to signify both blue and green. Furthermore, there are languages like Turkish, which treat light- and dark-blue as two separate colors. To a native English-speaker, however, light- and dark-blue would instead be considered different shades of the same color. It would be impossible to say that people who speak different languages physically see different colors, but it does seem as though they may easily conceptualize of colors differently, based on their language.
Pretty cool, huh?
A window into this "linguistic relativity" opened a couple of years ago at the wedding reception of a friend and work colleague. I was seated at a table with a half dozen anthropologists (bride's father was the head anthropologist for the World Bank.) I expected a pretty boring evening of academic talk by these men and women, most from elite eastern universities. Until I chanced to hear somebody say."..and have you noted the propensity to be a romantic is in direct relation to the number of vowels in the spoken language?" The next half hour or so was bawdy and delightful as comparisons flew over stereotypes (maybe not, after hearing this). Picture the consonant-rich German portrayed as the mechanical lover. You get the idea. My next wedding party can't come close to that.
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