This is tangentially related so I thought I'd post it here. The first 2 segments are about the subtle differences between words in different languages and the same word in different cultures. Of course it won't help you with your grammar, but it's interesting nonetheless.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/translation/

Quote:How close can words get you to the truth and feel and force of life? That's the question poking at our ribs this hour, as we wonder how it is that the right words can have the wrong meanings, and why sometimes the best translations lead us to an understanding that's way deeper than language. This episode, 8 stories that play out in the middle space between one reality and another — where poetry, insult comedy, 911 calls, and even our own bodies work to close the gap.

Thanks for the interesting link. Since you're interested in these kind of stories, I strongly recommend exploring the philosophy of language. W.V.O. Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis is an interesting idea that's likely to grab your interest. For a brief overview, here's the Wiki entry. And here's the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry, in case you want to go in depth.

Other interesting topics:
Linguistic Determinism: thoughts are determined, i.e. influenced and limited, by language. More extreme forms even claim that all experiences are determined by language.

Linguistic Relativity: a form of linguistic determinism that claims influences and limitations imposed by language are relative to each different language, e.g. an English speaker's worldview is shaped and limited by English in a different way from how a Japanese speaker's worldview is shaped and limited by Japanese.

A poorly curated, but nonetheless thought-provoking, introduction to some general issues related to language and thought

Thanks for the links vileru. I'm aware of those ideas, but haven't but haven't studied them specifically. However it's a fascinating subject. I myself believe in a weak form of Linguistic Relatively.

Thinking about interesting language topics has reminded me of another few interesting links about language that I'll post here in case anyone is interested:

A man without words. Is a book about a man who lives without language before he finally learns sign language at age 27. Also featured in a (you guessed it) RadioLab episode about words. What is memorable is his description of life before language.

A Man of Letters. An essay by Oliver Sacks about alexia - A brain disorder in which a person looses the ability to understand written words. What is interesting is that some alexic people can still write, but are unable to read their own writing. Suggesting that the skills are separate and therefor we language learners need to practice each skill specifically.

Quote:He hesitated, but, once he started, the writing seemed to flow all by itself, and he followed his signature with two or three sentences. The act of writing seemed quite normal to him, effortless and automatic, like walking or talking. The nurse had no difficulty reading what he had written, but he himself could not read a single word.

Do you know any other good radio shows yogert909? I also love radiolab but am always looking for more. I've found New Tech City (also by WNYC) and Quirks & Quarks (CBC) but any other suggestions would be great!

EDIT: I also wanted to add Ideas with Paul Kennedy (CBC) which I've been listening to recently. Thanks for all the great suggestions!

I haven't heard of New Tech City and Quirks & Quarks I'm only vaguely aware of. I'm glad you mentioned them and I'll be sure to check them out.

My taste is all over the map, but I'll just list my favorites and you decide if it's your cup of tea:

Hardcore History - Dan Carlin does a good job of making history accessible and interesting.
The Moth radio hour - Stories are true as remembered by the storyteller
Planet Money - Interesting stories about the economy explained for humans.
Econtalk - Economists talking about Economics (can get pretty esoteric)
The TED radio hour - You probably know what this is.
This American life - I'm sure you know this one too.
To the Point - News and Politics
The Joe Rogan Experience - I don't listen to every show because Rogan is into some weird things. But occasionally has interesting guests and asks pointed questions. (Try Neil de grasse Tyson)
Science Friday - Ira Flatow talking to scientists about their research.
The Tim Ferriss Show - Efficiency guru talking about business and fitness. Hit and miss depending on the guest. (Try Peter Thiel)

The podcasts I listen to:

This American Life
The Moth radio hour
Planet Money
Serial (sort of spinoff of TAL, really good so far)
The Diane Rehm Show (mostly just the Friday news roundups): It takes a little bit to get used to her voice but once you do it's a great show.

And some sports ones you probably aren't interested in. TAL and The Moth are my top choices out of those.

I used to listen to Wait Wait Don't Tell Me which I do enjoy but I just didn't have time for all the podcasts and this seemed to be the one I was usually letting slide.

Anyone ever consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it's the language that's shaped by the experiences and beliefs of people, and not the other way around?

It's pretty clear that, through history, major new religions and philosophical movements waltzed through language barriers without so much as tripping, and that their arrival invariably changed all languages they encountered into instruments for expressing and often also propagandizing for the new ideology.

Language (and conceptual thought, which is the underlying cause of language formation) is a tool. It can be used to objectively describe reality, or it can be used to lie about it and deceive the weak minded into thinking there's no alternative to the lie. But, no matter how much it is twisted, someone who is willing to do so will always be able to correct the distortions and revert to using language for its originally intended purpose.

Stansfield123 Wrote:Anyone ever consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it's the language that's shaped by the experiences and beliefs of people, and not the other way around?

Yes, plenty of people raised objections of this sort when linguistic determinism and relativity were first being published in journals. I just didn't bring them up because I wanted to share links that matched the OP's interests, and I assumed the OP wouldn't care for or would be overwhelmed by a comprehensive overview of an entire field (and, as a wise woman once said, "Ain't nobody got time for that!").

Anyway, as with most debates of this kind, it's rare for someone to defend an extreme form of a particular view. Most of the controversy is about to what extent language influences and limits our worldviews and, conversely, to what extent our worldviews influence and limit language.

However, there are thorny philosophical issues wrapped around these questions. For example, if my worldview is how I see things and language is how I express my worldview, then doesn't the former clearly give rise to the latter? However, the existence of other speakers complicates the matter because how they express their worldview, i.e. through language, can influence my worldview. Nonetheless, this might just seem like they're channeling their worldview to me via language, and so it's really not all that different from my initial observation that language is merely how I express my worldview—language is just a medium for transmitting worldviews. But if we generalize beyond individual speakers to the structures and conventions governing language, then we really get in the thickets. At this level of abstraction, the linguistic patterns we adopt by speaking a language seem to shape the way we think in a cookie cutter way (at least in my case, learning Japanese made it obvious how speakers of different languages tend to adopt certain habits of thought distinct to their language). Sure, we could claim that these patterns simply express a worldview or group of worldviews, but that's doesn't help us answer the question, especially from the standpoint of first language acquisition. When you learn your first language, do you start out with your worldview and then use language to express it? Or do you acquire a language, which then influences your worldview? If that's not overwhelming enough, the thickets get even thicker when we explore questions related to the connection between culture and language (e.g. is language just a subset of culture?), but I think I've said enough to show how complicated the debates are.

In any event, I don't think ideas like linguistic determinism and relativism were ever meant to be complete theories, but rather they were meant to be interesting hypotheses that are helpful for categorizing our positions. Perhaps ironically, they were originally introduced because language lacked the terms we needed to discuss the ideas they represent.

I would also be interested in the possible cultural influence of language.

Presumably, the easier a concept is to express, the more likely it is to become a successful meme, and the easier it is to combine it with other concepts & produce new memes.

I often finding myself wondering what effect the apparent power of Japanese in conveying meaning in a single word with a transparent etymology has had on Japanese culture. Japanese does seem to have a lot of words for things for which there is no direct equivalent in English.

I suppose it's even possible that grammar can have an influence too. Japanese grammar does have a tendency to produce phrases that can be applied adjectivally.

And if one were to view the mind as a meme machine for thoughts (a kind of 'culture of thoughts'), presumably language could influence what kind of concepts are easiest to ruminate about, especially for people with a tendency to reason verbally.

Come to think of it, I may have read about this in a Steven Pinker book yonks ago and half forgotten about it

Stansfield123 Wrote:Anyone ever consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it's the language that's shaped by the experiences and beliefs of people, and not the other way around?

Good point. Has there been any research into this? Perhaps studying subgroups within a population.. The language differences between democrats vs republicans or hate groups vs passivists living in the same communities. Things like that?

As vileru says, there's not much controversy that culture has an effect on language.

I think generally it would be accepted that fundamental aspects of a language are not affected by the people's experience or culture -- this would be things like whether nouns are inflected, or where the position of the verb is in the sentence. Linguists have debated for a long time whether aspects of your language's grammar actually changes the way you think. I believe the general consensus is that in most cases the answer is "no", but some disagree, and of course there are exceptions to any general principle.

Quote:I often finding myself wondering what effect the apparent power of Japanese in conveying meaning in a single word with a transparent etymology has had on Japanese culture. Japanese does seem to have a lot of words for things for which there is no direct equivalent in English.

I'm not sure what you mean by this -- I don't think the etymology of Japanese words is any more or less transparent than other languages, or what possible cultural influence that could have even if it were true. Any language has things that have no direct equivalent in other languages.

I think that generally linguists do not agree with trying to establish cultural value through grammar of a language -- for instance, if you were to try to draw cultural inferences between languages that have a true future tense like Latin, and ones that don't (like English or Japanese). There are exceptions, of course, but too often people just like to make claims without any actual research into the topic.

yogert909 Wrote:A man without words. Is a book about a man who lives without language before he finally learns sign language at age 27. Also featured in a (you guessed it) RadioLab episode about words. What is memorable is his description of life before language.

I liked the description of the experiment where you have a white room (walls, ceiling, floor), paint one wall blue, put someone in the room, let them watch you put something in one corner, spin them around and around (I guess?), and then have them find the object, and how rats and kids younger than *six* can't connect spatial ideas like "left" with color "blue", so they head towards the right corner only 50% of the time. I propose that we Koohiites replicate the follow-up experiment, on adults, ourselves: be the subject, put on headphones and listen to someone talking and shadow their speech as closely as possible, and have someone hide something in one of the corners, and see if you can find the object with more than 50% odds, i.e., if you can connect the "blue" and "left/right" while your language processing skills are fully saturated with verbal shadowing. Make videos of this to convince normal people that yeah, this is a real thing. Here's the (incredibly dry and jargon-laden) paper: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~lds/pdfs/hermer1999.pdf