Another Language Question

[Urbanredneck]

Words from other languages get added all the time. Take the Japanese word “Manga” or type of animation which is now part of English.

[JKellyMap]

The point has been made…I’ll just add that, if the Aztecs had been the ones with the guns, germs, and steel, many folks today would be waxing rhapsodic about how Nahuatl is uniquely suited to explain computing technology…

I’ve been wanting to mention one example of an interesting difference in how some languages work which DOES seem to reflect something fundamentally distinct in brain function: A few native languages in Australia and the Americas don’t have words for “right” or “left,” but only for “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west.” That is, to describe ANY relative location, you have to use ABSOLUTE directional terms – meaning, you have to know where north is, usually without even consciously thinking about it, at all times!

This seems extraordinary. Kids grow up learning to keep track of which way is north, even when walking through the rooms of a house, or wandering on a dark forest path…Surely, THIS must be a real example of Sapir-Whorf in action, no?

No, not really. That’s just it – these languages developed in specific environments. Flat desert or savanna settings, in cultures with small houses. There ARE no multi-room mansions, nor winding forest paths. When speakers of these languages move to cities or forested areas, they quickly abandon the cardinal directions thing. Yes, they will always have a better-developed sense of direction than your typical Westerner, but it’s not a fundamental, worldview-determining property of their brains. So, Sapir-Whorf is still wrong.

[pianodave]

@John_Mace

Nothing. Why would you even ask the question? Making up new words is one of the easiest things in the world. Either combining or modifying old words or borrowing from other languages to do so. It makes no never mind whether you call something a telescope or a far-seer.
I have never heard anyone claim that technological advances were dependent on linguistics. I’m curious where you got this idea from?

Thanks for the clarification. As to where I got the idea from, I just speculated, making grand generalizations from my little tiny perspective. Now I know better! :smack:

[Shodan]

@JKellyMap

As to your first question – “widely used”: not quite; the point is, it was widely used specifically by people using it as a second language in the home (mainly, Danish men living in England with Anglo-Saxon wives in the 800s), and passing on the resulting simplifications to their children. But, yes, there is surely a positive correlation between a language being “widely used,” and the likelihood that such second-language households will be common enough to affect the language as a whole.

As for a pidgin developing into a creole, yes, creoles are definitely more complex. Most experts consider pidgins to not be true “languages,” while creoles most definitely are. Creoles have a full grammar, etc., while pidgins are barely standardized collections of words (usually with vocabulary pretty much limited to a particular realm, say fish trading) with which one doesn’t do much more than point and speak. (John Mace expressed this well, in the previous post.)

Thanks.

Regards,
Shodan

[John_Mace]

@pianodave

Thanks for the clarification. As to where I got the idea from, I just speculated, making grand generalizations from my little tiny perspective. Now I know better! :smack:

Oh, OK. Sorry I was snarky in that post, but it seemed like such an odd question to ask that I thought for sure you had gotten that idea from sone nonsense you read some nonsense on the internet.

Anyway, English is where it is because of the military might behind the speakers, not the other way around. And 500 years hence, it might Mandarin or, who knows… Estonian!

[JKellyMap]

“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”