satyreyes wrote:

Well, the ones they would reasonably learn growing up in Texas.  They'd know the words for sagebrush and liberty and so on, but probably not the words for pork dumplings or filial piety (unless those ideas are more widespread in Texas than I suppose).  If there's really something structural about the Mandarin language that changes the way its speakers view the world, those changes shouldn't vanish in the face of a few culture-specific words lost here and a few culture-specific words gained there.  Bear in mind that native Mandarin speakers in China don't know the word for pork dumplings either until they're exposed to them and ask "what's that?", or pick it up from their parents' conversation about tonight's dinner.  We can't run an experiment that controls for culture if we implicitly vary the culture the Texans have been exposed to going in through their vocabulary.

I spent much of my childhood all the way to high school in TX.

Yeah, the term "pork dumplings" and "filial piety" isn't too uncommon
Houston has a huge Chinatown, you can't miss pork dumpling or wanton soup, and filial piety was taught in high school World Geography class, at least in my high school anyway.

Let's see... mandarin... there's SOME sort of structure behind it. There are 33 vowels + consonants & 4 different pitches/flows. So you have a good deal of combination for words, and let's not forget the homonyms
But we really only need about 10% of all the Chinese words to get by in life.

If you want to know more about Mandarin or Chinese Texans, I'd like to talk more about it, (And, I'm sure Allegoriest can, too), but I have class now, ttyl!

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is getting new life. Do some searching on the Piraha language. There are claims that this language is a major challenge to what were thought to be established language universals.

The claims about Pirahã are controversial, but personally I hope they're true because I love "freak" languages like Pirahã that prove everything we know is wrong!    Pirahã's greatest oddity is supposedly that they have no words for number, just a word that means "a few" and a word that means "many."  If true, this seems to be a case where Sapir-Whorf is very likely true on the surface.  You can reasonably expect that if you tried to teach addition to a Pirahã speaker you'd have more trouble than if you tried to teach it to an English speaker, because the vocabulary to explain what you're doing simply isn't there.  If what researchers are saying is true, you can't do math at all in Pirahã.  You'd have to teach them to count using number words from a language that can do math and use those.

But while this makes Sapir-Whorf true on the surface, I think saying "you can't do math in Pirahã" is a lot like saying "in 1750 it was impossible to do economics in English."  True, we didn't have the vocabulary we needed to do economics, but that's because no one had thought of economics yet.  When we got around to inventing it we created new words and adapted old ones that were suited to the purpose of explaining what was going on.  Culture changed, and language changed to accommodate it.  (And in the meantime, not having the vocabulary to express formal economic ideas didn't mean no one understood that if you charged more for something people would buy less of it.)  Isn't this the same situation Pirahã is in with respect to math?  You can't do math in Pirahã because Pirahã people, indigenous Amazonian hunter-gatherers, don't have to do math.  If they did, they'd invent numbers.  Culture first, then language.

Ha ha, sure!  I don't know about idiot-speak, but basically the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says that the language you speak changes how you think.  In other words, there is some fundamental difference between how an English speaker thinks and how a French speaker thinks, purely because the languages are different.  For example, someone who liked this hypothesis might observe that when Japanese speakers count they attach different suffixes to their number words depending on what shape the objects they're counting are, and conclude that the Japanese language causes people to notice shape more than English does.  Or they might notice that English has a great many more color words than Japanese does and conclude that English causes its speakers to notice color better than Japanese speakers.  This is a controversial idea, and unfortunately one that's not easily testable, but it does make some intuitive sense: our minds work along the ruts they're used to working along, and if the language we speak forces us to tread those ruts all the time maybe they get deeper.

Last edited by satyreyes (04-03-2009 08:27:42 PM)

satyreyes wrote:

Isn't this the same situation Pirahã is in with respect to math?  You can't do math in Pirahã because Pirahã people, indigenous Amazonian hunter-gatherers, don't have to do math.  If they did, they'd invent numbers.  Culture first, then language.

Right, thank you very much for the explanation. Following this line of reasoning, isn't it therefore possible for anyone from any culture to understand concepts not found in their language if you either explain it using their language or alter the language so it accomodates those concepts? Then again, in the second case I suppose the langauge you speak would be slightly different anyway, making the thought possible....:S
(I'm quite interested in this becaise I'm a first year student of English linguistics, but like I said, first year, so please bear with us )

It is assumed that all languages have their own mechanisms to create new words that reflect new concepts. And while I have no idea how Pirahã would adapt to numbers, this is obviously not a reason to think that it can't.

On the other hand, the assumption that any language is perfect (meaning in this context, that it's able to be used in and adapted to all situations) is heavily influenced by that Enlightment myth of rational perfection, and I suspect that it relies on our wish to believe so. It seems common to give all languages the benefit of doubt before someone proves otherwise.

Oh, rambling, sorry. I recall that we discussed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis long ago... Nice memories.

Many people who study foreign languages claim that each language they study enables them to "see" the world in different ways. In fact some people study languages for that reason alone.

Indeed.
There once was a Russian king who knew eight languages and they called him Yaroslavl of the Eight Minds.

Itsuke wrote:

Can culture exists without language and vice versa? I don't study languages, I am only a history student. If one wants to become a historian on ancient Egypt, learning Egyptian hieroglyphs is a requirment. If one wants to study ancient Rome, mastering Latin is the first step. This proves that you can't have one without the other.

Well, but I expect the most important reason historians of Rome have to master Latin is so they can read Livy and the rest in the original.  Knowing Latin doesn't teach you what it was like to live in Caesar's time, reading Latin texts does.

You can't have a culture without a language or vice versa, true.  But that's because any large social group is eventually going to develop a language and a culture.  Culture influences language; language may influence culture; but they're inseparable because they both come from people, not because there's a clear and necessary relationship between them.

In order for a language/culture to remain alive, either one needs to constantly evolve and change itself. This means new words and phrases are constantly being invented or borrowed from another language (unlike many people, I don't consider this a bad thing); some traditions would fade away and new practices created. Having said that, I do not mean all traditions are bad and deserve to be forgotten. If there is one thing that I learn from all those hours of studying history, it is that nothing stays the same, everything changes eventually, however slow the process. Hence, cultural changes are inevitable and necessary in order for a society to remain alive. And it is through this constant regeneration that humans created various cultures existing in different time and space. Moreoever, it doesn't matter which culture we are talking about here, it being a human construction it will always reflection aspects of our human natures. Our worst elements will always be present along with our best.

I like this bit, which kind of gets back to what Stormy was talking about in the first place.  All this change makes me think of the Argo paradox, though.  Jason and his crew set out in the Argo for their long sea voyage to find the Golden Fleece.  It's a very long voyage, though, so the Argo starts rotting partway through, and as they travel Jason frequently has to replace boards that have rotted.  By the time they actually reach their destination, Jason and his men have replaced every board on the Argo; not a scrap remains from the ship that left Greece.  So the question is, is this ship still the Argo?

Similarly -- and I'll use America here because it's the "culture" I'm most familiar with -- what exactly is the relationship between being an American in 1650 and being an American in 2009?  Yeah, we "constantly evolved and changed," all right -- we evolved and changed the pioneers right out of existence.  Did our society survive the changes?  What Jamestown settler would recognize this place as America?  I'm not decrying the changes here, I'd much rather have airplanes than cholera, but isn't this ship still the Argo only because we all still call it the Argo?

Itsuke wrote:

Therefore, culture and language are inseparable because every culture needs its language to transmit, maintain, and preserve it.

Oh, I see what you're saying.  No, I agree with you there.  I thought you were continuing the discussion from earlier about whether speaking a certain language changes the way the culture develops.  Your argument here is just that culture relies on language for its transmission, which makes sense.  The ancient Romans could all have spoken Martian and all of history might have happened the same way, only you'd learn Martian instead of Latin to become a historian of Rome.

Itsuke wrote:

However, you forgot one crucial point, when the 13 colonies were under British rule, the free and white population did not willingly considered themselves as Americans. They called themselves Englishmen.

You're drawing a false distinction.  The English settlers were English and they were American.  Their children were born here, lived here, worked here, died here, under the Union Jack.  But though they served the queen, and later the king, their culture was not the same as British-English culture.  How could it be, in such a hardscrabble and uncivilized land?  No, they belonged to the nation of England, but their culture was not British culture.  Derived from it, certainly, but shaped by the place they inhabited.  By 1776 American-English culture was outright incompatible with British-English culture.  That's why there was a revolution.  American culture didn't suddenly come into existence with the Constitution.  The Constitution reflected the values that were already here.

Itsuke wrote:

The founding principles of the United Stated remained in tact. Modern Americans continue to worship the concept of freedom of speech, rednecks continue to uphold their right to bear arms, etc. The Constitution remain a powerful political and cultural symbol. The founding fathers will always be respected and revered along side Hollywood stars. The America of 1776 and the America of 2009 may be very different places, but it is still America regardless. A living culture will always be a work in progress, to experience changes is only natural.

Yes, the values codified in the Constitution have helped preserve sort of a skeleton of a culture.  But do we understand those values the same way the Founders did?  At Lexington and Concord the right to bear arms meant the ability to protect yourself from an abusive king and his rapacious soldiers.  Today the right to bear arms means the right to recreational hunting and self-defense from criminals.  And a lot of people, maybe about half of us, wish there were no Second Amendment so we could outlaw guns entirely.  You said rednecks above.  Free speech?  We worship its concept but not its practice.  Everyone has some kind of speech they want to outlaw or regulate.  Hate speech.  Pornography. Flag-burning.  Campaign ads.  Free speech is a default that we edit when we sense some kind of overriding interest, which is all of them.  The Founding Fathers are respected and revered, and as with Jesus, every single one of us is completely convinced that if they were alive today they would stand behind the same political causes we do.  Oh, except for the people who don't respect and revere the Founding Fathers because they were rich white male elitists, many of them slaveholders, so to hell with them and their piece of paper.

I'm not sure America has any culture anymore.  Cultures, certainly, but not a culture.  And if there is some kind of overculture that stretches from sea to shining sea, then it has not only changed since 1650, and since 1776, but it has changed.  How much does a culture have to change before it's not the same culture?  How is it even possible for us to claim descent from the culture of '76 when such an overwhelming majority of us came from overseas well after the Revolution, bringing with us other cultures, gradually letting ourselves be assimilated into the great melting pot but not without flavoring it first, until we come down to today and most of the things we think of as American aren't American?  Again, I'm not decrying the changes.  (Well, okay, in the rant about free speech I was.)  I'm just saying -- well -- as Neil Gaiman put it, this is a bad country for gods.  The old ones are dying or dead, and those were brought here in the first place, and the new ones keep getting supplanted by newer ones.  So what are we really?

*sigh* I should be writing my paper, but posting here is so much more fun

You are right,  the ideas behind the Constitution did not come from a vacuum. Jefferson's famous opening line was the perfect expression of the Enlightenment ideals formed by the Old World, England was part of that old world (well, for the educated elites, the world they inhabited was quite cosmopolitan). Colonial America was not England. It was the fringe of European civilization, England was its center along with other European nations. But the American Colonists really thought of themselves as English subjects, and as Englishmen they were entitled to the Rights of Englishmen promised in the Magna Carta. Don't forget one of the biggest reasons why the Americans wanted independence was due to Britian's unwillingness to allow the colonists to be represented in Parliament.

Have you ever read Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn's small book To Begin the World Anew? He talked about with America’s dominant role in the current world, modern Americans did not know the Founders were just a group of provincial people living on the edge of European civilization. Colonial America was indeed a “small, unsure, preindustrial borderland world” (7). However, it was due to the Founders’ remoteness from the center that they were unrestrained by traditional rites that had dominated life in the royal courts of Europe. This prompted them to be different and creative. In their view, the British government and the rest of European powers had succumbed to corruption. The Founders were determined to set themselves apart from the Old World and create a new political world. When the United States was born, although it was not the first republic in exist in history, it was certianly the largest. The Founders themselves had no real guidebook on how to govern a democracy or how to create a coherent national identity. They also left behind a lot unsolve problems for subsequent generations to deal with. But I am with you here in which I don't think people should completely reject and trash the Founding Fathers because of their failures to think and act like 20th and 21th c. Americans. They lay the foundation for future generations to build on, the editorial space policy makers have with Constitution is one such example. Although the United States is still far from the perfect country many wish it to be, but the American people have come a long way since the days when only white male landowners could hold power.

When I mentioned the rednecks and Hollywood celebrities worship, I was trying to poke fun at American culture. I won't comment on the quality of American culture, but I don't think there has only been just one American culture. No doubt there has always been a mainstream, but it is always surrounded by numerous subcultures (or counter-cultures) and influenced by people other than native born white protestants. Take Hollywood for instance, it's one of the pillars of mainstream America culture, but the Jewish and gay elements within the industry is also very well documented~~ Our capitalistic society is also build and shaped by immigrants like Andrew Carnegie who was a Scot. It's an old story---America was built by immigrants, that's what made it great.

Anyhow, so how can we continue to claim descent from the Founders when contemporary America is no longer the one of 1776? I think we were pretty close to losing it all when W. Bush came to power by such disgracing fashion and got re-elected again four years later.

brian wrote:

Many people who study foreign languages claim that each language they study enables them to "see" the world in different ways. In fact some people study languages for that reason alone.

Actually, it does broaden my mind. It helps looking at something from a different perspective. I am pretty convinced that language determines the way of thinking, therefore knowing more than one language helps us seeing the world with smaller number of borders that every language creates.

Itsuke wrote:

However, you forgot one crucial point, when the 13 colonies were under British rule, the free and white population did not willingly considered themselves as Americans. They called themselves Englishmen. The American identity did not really form until they decided to fight the British and unexpectedly won the war. They realized a national identity is pending. After two centuries of progress, the America of today is no longer the America that consisted of only 13 states.

You touched the issue that bugs me lately - does that mean that American and British culture were one when they called themselves Englishmen? Is that still one culture somehow? I know that any culture is alienated from others but I wonder where is the line of its independence, when the part of culture becomes a culture itself. One language doesn't unit culture, as Asfalolh said, 2 different cultures may share the same language.

I hope I'm not rambling - I feel linguistic bareer lately.

satyreyes wrote:

How could it be, in such a hardscrabble and uncivilized land?  No, they belonged to the nation of England, but their culture was not British culture.  Derived from it, certainly, but shaped by the place they inhabited.

I'm confused. Does that mean that right after leaving England those people didn't have own culture? Does culture have to exist where it has its origin?

How much does a culture have to change before it's not the same culture?

Tough question. I suppose that the culture isn't the same culture anymore when members of this culture lose the identity it.