A friend of mine from Vietnam was telling me about “Hmongoloids” - complaining that the Hmong were viewed as being backwoods and inferior in part because of the simplicity of their language (or something like that). I started thinking about the classic “78 words for snow” adage and began to wonder if some languages deal with information in a more sophisticated manner than others. I’m no linguist, amateur or otherwise, but having learned spanish and french in addition to my native English, it’s fascinating to see the differences in the ways that languages deal with different concepts in their own ways.
Are some languages inherently more sophisticated or inferior in the way that they process information and data?
This may not be exactly what you’re asking, but the language of numbers in some Asian countries is far more meaningful, sensible, and compact than numbers are in English. This seems to be a large part of why students there are significantly better at mathematics. (Getting my information from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers.)
Saying that people’s language or culture is simplistic is a time-honored way of slandering them. Languages have so many variables that it’s really hard to have an objective comparison on grounds of efficiency. I would be surprised if a language structure has much to do with math ability; might it not have as much to do with writing systems, tools (e.g. the abacus), or the way the subject is taught in schools as the language? (I realize Mr. Gladwell isn’t hear to defend himself.)
I call bullshit. What’s wrong with numbers in English and what’s so much better about these Asian languages? It’s not like we’re talking about Danish here (not that anyone seriously claims Danes are poor at math for linguistic reasons).
I’m no expert on languages, but I did recently read John McWhoter’s The Power of Babal, wherein he devotes a whole chapter to the idea that “The Thousands of Dialects of Thousands of Languages All Developed Far Beyond the Call of Duty”. Without going back through the book, I’ll just say that he points out that pretty much every language has picked up ways to make completely unnecessary distinctions.
Surely all languages process some information in a more sophisticated way than others ? Reflecting cultural mores and physical realities ?
Languages with “over a hundred words for snow” reflect how important the snow quality is, or was, in their location. The number of terms in British English which allow a sophisticated description of degrees of inebriation show how much time we spend thinking and talking about it.
I’d suggest that a lack of a precise way for a talking about a certain concept doesn’t mean the people are backward simply that there was no stimulus to develop, or preserve, a precise way for talking about that concept.
I wonder what language has the most number of distinct words/phrases for calling somebody a douchebag, asswipe, or dickwad. Something tells me that English is, maybe not the #1 language, but close to it, in that regard.
Actually, I might as well just link to Geoffrey Pullum’s “The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax”, since it’s apparently available online. Though, in the end, the essay isn’t really fundamentally about how many words the Eskimos have for snow…
The answer is certainly yes - if you include computer languages.
If you stick with human languages, probably not. There’s no good way to even begin to define information and data. Everything falls into those categories. Some languages will have more words or more precise constructs for certain bits and pieces of the world that are important to that culture. Kinship relations vary widely from language to language, for example. Some have words for both mother’s brother and father’s brother, while English makes do with uncle. Those languages might have fewer words for colors or for numbers, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t quickly invent or adapt words to use for those concepts if they became important. All languages are extremely flexible in that regard.
I don’t know of any mainstream linguistic experts who would today argue for the overall superiority or inferiority of any language. They used to in the Bad Old Days - linguistics was more a branch of European chauvinism and bigotry than a science a hundred years ago - but that particular sewer got cleaned out pretty thoroughly.
In high school, I used to make fun of Spanish for its simplicity. My Spanish teacher told me that my ignorance would be my downfall. She was oh so right.
Same here. Now I speak it quite well, and often times I have a hard time thinking up an apt phrase in English for something that comes quite naturally in Spanish!
Gladwell suggests that this is only half of the reason and that the other half is how the language deals with numbers. Obviously I’m just regurgitating what I read, so I’m very interested in seeing evidence either way, but what he writes makes sense to me and is at least plausible (though by no means proof of anything).
Some of his info comes from the book The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics; in the book they show that there is a direct correlation between the brevity of the words of the language that represent numbers, and how many numbers can be memorized easily by a person (with Cantonese winning as the most efficient). In addition he talks about how in those languages’ numbers above 9 are represented in a logical/consistent/systematic manner, whereas in English it’s a hodgepodge.
As I say, I would love to see evidence one way or the other.
One need only look at Latin, a supposedly dead language that keeps having neologisms created for it, to realize that language evolves to fit what is needed from it.
If the Hmong (just to go back to the OP) don’t have a particular term for “existentialism” they could sure identify with the philosophical concept after being invaded, counter-invaded and bombed.
The question is inherently unanswerable. Here is something that illustrates the difficulty. My wife is a professional French to Englsh translator. Generally, the translation is somewhat shorter than the original. In going in the other direction (which she doesn’t do) the length increases by about 10-15%. This is not just her impression; whenever we see bilingual things, say concert programs that have been translated, the French is invariably longer (how much depending on which way it was translated, which varies and is always noted). So English is more efficient than French, right? Wrong! The French seem to speak just enough faster to make up the difference.
This is not a particularly apt example, given that the two languages are fairly closely related with a huge overlap in vocabulary, but I still don’t see how you would begin to compare them.
