PROFESSOR:
People possess the same
physical organs for sensing the world: we have eyes for seeing, ears for hearing,
noses for smelling. But does everyone really sense the world in exactly
the same way? Two linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, didn't think
so. Sapir and Whorf believed that people's perception of the world depends
very much on the language they speak. It's called the Sapir Whorf
hypothesis.
PROFESSOR:
They believed that
language is essentially like a pair of eyeglasses, it influences the way which
we 'see' the world. Think about the bands of a rainbow. How many
colors do you see? Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple.
I see six colors.
PROFESSOR:
Is that all of them? Do
you see any others? In many cultures, speakers of different languages
might tell you there are more than six colors. Or they might tell you
there are less! Two linguists went to Mexico to investigate this
perception of color, comparing the difference between English speakers and the
indigenous Tarahumara people in Mexico.
PROFESSOR:
The Tarahumara use one
word for the two words English uses for
blue and green. They label blue and green as one color. If you give
English speakers blue and green chips, they are more likely to separate the two
colors, to separate them. The Tarahumara will push them together because they perceive them as very
similar. So the Tarahumara would say that green and blue are not two
separate colors of the rainbow, but rather one and the same.
PROFESSOR:
In fact, rainbows are
actually a continuum of color; there are no actual stripes or bands yet people
see the bands for which their language has color words. Another famous
example demonstrates how language can be a reflection of concepts important to
a particular culture. Americans and the British use only a few terms to
describe snow: snow, sleet, freezing rain, and a few others. Eskimos, on
the other hand, have many words to describe snow. Snow that is falling,
snow on the ground, snow in blocks, and snow that makes wavy patterns - each
are explained through the use of
separate words.
PROFESSOR:
Snow is an important
part of Eskimo life and its culture, thus it is necessary that Eskimo's have
the vocabulary to specifically describe it. But does this mean that
because a language doesn't have a word, the speakers of that language will not
be able to understand the concept? Today, many linguists say that although
the Sapir Whorf hypothesis is thought provoking and probably holds much truth,
it cannot be totally accepted in its extreme form. Yes, language
influences thought, but it doesn't determine what concepts we're able to think
of. It influences how we perceive
the world, but if we don't have a particular word in our language, it just takes
more time and more words for us to
describe that concept.
PROFESSOR:
It is a problem of
translation; not of our ability to be able to imagine the concept. I might
not have a word for this kind of snow: But I can communicate the idea to you. It
looks to me like shiny glimmering tree crystals melting delicately upon the
branch. If a language doesn't have a particular word, it doesn't mean a
person who speaks that language can't imagine the concept it's just a little
trickier to do the translation.