Posted on 11/07/2013 6:13:36 AM PST by Cronos
LAST week, Johnson took a look at some of the advantages of bilingualism. These include better performance at tasks involving "executive function" (which involve the brain's ability to plan and prioritise), better defence against dementia in old age and—the obvious—the ability to speak a second language. One purported advantage was not mentioned, though. Many multilinguals report different personalities, or even different worldviews, when they speak their different languages.
..Benjamin Lee Whorf, an American linguist who died in 1941, held that each language encodes a worldview that significantly influences its speakers. Often called “Whorfianism”, this idea has its sceptics, including The Economist, which hosted a debate on the subject in 2010. But there are still good reasons to believe language shapes thought.
An economist recently interviewed here at Prospero, Athanasia Chalari, said for example that:
Greeks are very loud and they interrupt each other very often. The reason for that is the Greek grammar and syntax. When Greeks talk they begin their sentences with verbs and the form of the verb includes a lot of information so you already know what they are talking about after the first word and can interrupt more easilyIs there something intrinsic to the Greek language that encourages Greeks to interrupt? ...A group of French intellectual worthies once proposed, rather self-flatteringly, that French be the sole legal language of the EU, because of its supposedly unmatchable rigour and precision. Some Germans believe that frequently putting the verb at the end of a sentence makes the language especially logical.
Neo-Whorfians continue to offer evidence and analysis that aims to prove that different languages push speakers to think differently
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
Do you have the same feeling when you speak different languages?
Well, when Morticia speaks French, it drives Gomez MAD!
This is almost inescapable…..the construction of Hebrew, for example, is totally different than, say, Greek, and they are both different than English. Then there’s the less technical differences, in the sounds of the language as well. (German V French for example)
I don’t think there’s any doubt about this.
An economics magazine writes an article on language and psychology? No wonder our economy is so screwed up.
Touche’
Absolutely
I have always thought you could only understand the Constitution in English
Je dois dire à ceci est un mot... 
Merde!
And, Garçon John, I have one word for you, too... 
Schmuck!
Maybe the ancient Greeks were more polite (they didn't have coffee), or maybe they knew better than to interrupt Pericles.
“Whorf, ... held that each language encodes a worldview that significantly influences its speakers.”
It is certainly true for Klingon.
is that in modern Greek or Koine or Attic?
I’m sure I’m more logical in French, more charming in Italian, and more macho in Spanish.
What Pericles spoke is by definition the very height of classical Attic.
Modern Greek has very little similarity. Not surprising after 2500 years. LOL
To address the point of this article, it makes considerable sense on various levels.
For instance, if I’m late to work, in English I might explain to the boss that “I missed the bus.” Which is my fault.
In Spanish, “The bus left me.” Which is the fault of the bus.
So English by its structure encourages personal responsibility while Spanish discourages it.
Now that I think about it, Orwell was a Whorfian (Whorfite?). Newspeak was specifically designed to make it impossible to even think anti-Party thoughts. It doesn’t seem at all unlikely existing languages will shape thoughts in similar if less drastic ways.
I agree that it does. I learned German at age 35 and got to speak it well. You have to speak it, though, to notice the effect.
Compared to English it is much harder to give shades of meaning. There are few gray areas possible.
It is a very exact but complex language; especially in its verb forms. This is why in my experience living there and working for German companies for 28 years, I came to realize that their orderliness and attention to detail was rooted in their language. Anyone who has worked with SAP software knows this.
It is not completely true that one must construct complicated words in German to describe an idea, as another poster has suggested. One of my favorite words is “doch”, which is used in response to another’s statement of fact. It’s like “Eu contraire” in French, and means what you just said is not true and the opposite is. That’s a useful word and spoken often.
I guess I am a Wolferist although I never heard of him before.
Or as the Emperor Charles V put it, “”I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”
When I took German in school I keep experiencing an irresistible urge to wear black leather and march into France.
Yeah, it did that to me too. Fortunately there’s always an outlet for anyone who has a desire to rule the world, dictate the minutest activities of everyone’s lives, and crush their opposition under the iron boot-heel of oppression - the Democrat party.
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