Does the language you speak change how you think?

Tom Scott · 1.6M views · 2023-11-06 · 5:25

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Overview

Tom Scott, with linguists Gretchen McCulloch and Molly Ruhl, examines whether the language you speak changes how you think. The short answer is mostly no, with caveats about the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

On Hacker News

Linked as a concise, accessible rebuttal whenever linguistic relativity comes up in a thread.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2023–2024

Topics

Language & linguistics Consciousness & cognition

What people said

cardanome · 2024-06 · Recommendation
Note that Orwell promotes an hard form of the Sapir Whorf hypothesis called linguistic determinism meaning that a language would make it impossible think certain thoughts. This is obviously wrong. Have you ever experienced anything for which you didn't have the words to explain? This already proves that you can feel and think things that are not easily expressed in the languages you know. Also some people don't even think in words but are more visual thinkers. But even for the softer version, linguistic relativism, these is not much hard evidence. You subjective experience is not easily measurable. Yes, the act of learning new languages can gives you new perspectives and enrich you as a person because it gives you access to a whole new culture but that is different to saying you can suddenly experience new forms of emotions because you didn't have the words for it before or see more colors. I recommend this Tom Scott video on the issue: [VIDEO]
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wilg · 2024-01 · Reference
Tom Scott recently did a video about how linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf) is almost certainly not true: [VIDEO] It's an alluring idea, but it's been debunked.
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elvis10ten · 2023-11 · Reference
Related video which I just remembered: [VIDEO] So it seems languages might not change how you think, but might be able to emphasize certain aspects of things like you allude to (I believe).
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Video by Tom Scott, played through YouTube.

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