Verbs for thinking and understanding
- Conclude has a similar meaning to deduce, but also has the sense of being a judgement arrived at after some thought, whereas deduce implies an immediate judgement.
- you may assume that counting is a universal human trait
- We can probably deduce from this that they don’t feel the need to quantify precisely in the way that many of us do.
- it is possible to comprehend something even if you don’t have a specific word for it.
- you will obviously grasp that these colours are different from each other.
Linguistic relativity
- This concept is referred to as linguistic relativity or, more famously, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, after two scientists who both wrote, separately, about this idea.
- this theory is something of a myth, not least because there isn’t a single Inuit language, but a variety of dialects.
- There is certainly plenty of evidence that different languages (and cultures) appear to see the world through different filters.
- Whether that means that their language affects their thinking is yet to be conclusively proven.
Examples of language and perception
- speakers of Guugu Yimithirr, a language used in North Queensland, Australia, would always refer to someone’s position using the words for the directions: north, south, east and west.
- Some indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil simply distinguish between a smaller amount and a larger amount.
- the word for bridge has a masculine gender in Spanish and a feminine gender in German.
- the Spanish speakers tended to use more stereotypically masculine adjectives, such as big and strong, whereas the German speakers used more stereotypically feminine adjectives, such as beautiful and elegant.
- A 2006 study of bilingual Mexican-Americans asked them to take a personality test in both English and Spanish.