Language and Experience

Benjamin Lee Whorf issued a theory seventy years ago, that remained popular up to these days. He stated that the mother tongue can restrict what we are able to think. He stated that the Native Americans did not have the possibility of understanding some of the concepts we consider basic.

He believed that the main reason for that was the fact that their language offered them a different sense of reality than ours. He stated that they are not capable of understanding terms such as stone, or actions such as fall. This theory puzzled the scientists and the regular people for very long periods of time. His theory did not last, as he was unable to back up what he claimed and as a result he was quickly contested by the critics. The reactions were very harsh, and the scientists did not accept any other similar theories for decades. New discoveries and researches have been made in the domain in the recent period of time and it has been discovered that there is in fact a connection between the language we primary speak and the thinking process.

Whorf made many mistakes when he issued his theory. First of all, he believed that the mother tongue can restrict our thinking ability, and that it can allow us to learn only certain things. He believed that if a language did not have a word for a certain concept, then those people would not be able to understand that concept. If a language did not have the future tense, he believed that the people who speak that language would not be able to comprehend the notion of future. I am certain that you find these theories absurd, but back then the people thought that he might have found something true.

The theory was absurd because for example even if you do not understand the German word Schadenfreude, you certainly understand the concept of enjoying someone’s misfortune. Another thing that destroys his theory is the fact that if a language does not contain certain words, then that language would never evolve, and as we all know that is not true. There is no evidence that the language can be a barrier when it comes to learning new things. However, it has been discovered that the language can shape our experience of the world.

The main difference between the languages is that one language obliges us to think about a certain thing whereas a different language does not. If that does not make any sense, I will give you an example. Let’s take the following sentence: “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor”. You do not known if the neighbor was male or female, and I am not obliged to tell you that. I might tell you if you ask me, or I might tell you that it’s none of your business. Now, the situation is different in German or in French. For example in German I would be obliged to tell you that I was either with a Nachbar or with a Nachbarin. In French I would be obliged to say that I was either with a voisin or a voisine.

These languages would make me tell you the sex of my companion even if I feel that that is none of your business. This does not mean that the English speaker do not have the capacity of distinguishing between the two sexes as Whorf suggested, it simply means that they do not have to state whether the friend, child, teacher, neighbor and so on is a male or a female, whereas the people who speak other languages have. English have various situations when the speaker has to reveal certain information about an event.

For example to process of having dinner; a person speaking in English will have to mention if he dines, is dining, will be dining, and so on, That is not mandatory in Chinese, as the speaker does not have to reveal information about the time when he/she will have dinner. In their situation the same verb is used for all the tenses. That does not mean that the Chinese are not able to understand the concept of time, simply because they do not use it when they speak. This means that depending on the language, you have to pay attention to certain things which a speaker of a different language doesn’t. Since this behavior is required from an early age, it is only natural for the experience of the speaker of a certain language to be affected by it.

In order to see if there is any evidence for this to happen in practice, let’s take a look at the gender s again. In many languages such as Russian, French, German, Spanish, and so on, the speaker is obliged to think about the sex of a person and also about the sex of the inanimate object as well. A beard has the feminine gender in French, and the water has the masculine gender in Russian. Why? Why is beard feminine, when the only ones who have it are the men? Mark twain wrote about the confusion the genders caused him, in his work “The Awful German Language.” He found it very difficult to understand the concept, but ask anyone who has been born in country that uses a gender-based language and he will tell you that the process feels natural to him.

A bed will be “it” for an English peaking person, but it will be “she” for a Hebrew. It has always been “she” and it will always be. It has been proven that when the speaker uses genders in his language, he will feel a connection with those objects. For example the Spanish consider the fork to be masculine, whereas the French consider it to be feminine, and when they were asked to attribute a voice for a cartoon fork; they did it in the gender specific for their countries. Once again, that does not mean that the French, Russians, German, and Spanish people do not understand that the inanimate objects do not have a gander. They simply make these connections, and as a result their experiences in relation to certain things are changed.