| Sapir–Whorf hypothesis |
| Definition:
In a nutshell, this hypothesis claims that the structure of the language you speak determines the way you think about the world. Now, this must be true when it comes to vocabulary. For example, if you understand the vocabulary (thus the concepts) of physics and chemistry, you will have a much different understanding of the universe than someone who doesn't. But how can one prove that the hypothesis is true when it comes to, say, syntax. If the language has no past tense, does it mean that its speakers have no way of thinking about the past. Note: The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is, thus, actually an axiom (i.e., an unprovable assumption that provides a starting point for reasoning). If it were a hypothesis, it would require some sort of proof either through logic or experimentation, but nobody has figured out how to do that yet. According to the Wikipedia (s.v. Sapir–Whorf hypothesis): "In 1955, Dr. James Cooke Brown created the Loglan constructed language … in order to test the hypothesis. However, no such experiment was ever conducted." How would Brown have performed that experiment? Would he have raised a cohort of Loglan-speaking infants in a bubble on an island and then given them a multiple-choice exam when they were 21 to try to figure out their world-view? But: There's an excellent New Yorker article about a remote Amazonian people that perhaps proves that the hypothesis might be more that just an axiom: The Interpreter |
| Example: In British Columbia we have 52 different words for marijuana, but only one word that expresses the concept temperance. |