Could you please ask about the specific examples of the Esperanto words? (I speak Esperanto.)
I think a similar example would be the adjective “Russian” in English, which translates to Russian as two different words: “русский” (related to Russian ethnicity or language) or “российский” (related to Russia as a country, i.e. including the minorities who live there).
(That would be “rus-a” vs “rus-land-a / rus-i-a” in Esperanto.)
I noticed this in a video where a guy explained that “I am Rus-land-ian, not Rus-ethnic-ian”, which could be expressed in English as “I am a citizen of Russian Federation, but I am not ethnically Russian”. On one hand, it can be translated without any loss of information; on the other hand, four words in Russian expanded to over a dozen words in English. More importantly, in 99% of situations the English speaker would not bother making the distinction, while a Russian speaker would be making it all the time.
Still seems to me that these things are rare, and more importantly, they don’t seem to have the impact one might naively predict based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. For example, one could naively predict that such language nuance would lead to less nationalism (because the country is less linguistically conflated with the dominant ethnicity), and yet, ethnic Russians don’t seem less nationalistic.
Similarly, English-speaking feminists spent a lot of effort changing the default “he”, through “he or she”, to the singular “they” (and some of them go even further). But there are languages, such as Hungarian, which never even had “he” and “she”, and have always used a gender-neutral pronoun. And yet, I don’t think that Hungarians are less sexist than their neighbors.
I don’t speak Esperanto myself, but took that meditation example from someone who speaks it. I don’t know how that actually boils down to Esperanto words.
Still seems to me that these things are rare, and more importantly, they don’t seem to have the impact one might naively predict based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Naive predictions often seem wrong in many domains.
For example, one could naively predict that such language nuance would lead to less nationalism (because the country is less linguistically conflated with the dominant ethnicity), and yet, ethnic Russians don’t seem less nationalistic.
The English are unlikely to say that the Irish are really English after all in the way that you have Russians say that the Ukranians are really Russian. The Russian idea that everyone who’s descending from a culture that had mass with Old Church Slavonic is Russian, is quite different than how other people in Europe think about the relevant concepts of identity.
The idea that Ukrainians are really Russians seems to make a lot more sense to Russian speakers than it does to most Europeans.
A Russian friend told me that when he speaks with other Russians, this involves a lot of references to Russian literature in a way that you wouldn’t do in English or German conversation. Reasoning by literature analogy is quite different from a lot of the way reasoning happens in English or German.
Could you please ask about the specific examples of the Esperanto words? (I speak Esperanto.)
I think a similar example would be the adjective “Russian” in English, which translates to Russian as two different words: “русский” (related to Russian ethnicity or language) or “российский” (related to Russia as a country, i.e. including the minorities who live there).
(That would be “rus-a” vs “rus-land-a / rus-i-a” in Esperanto.)
I noticed this in a video where a guy explained that “I am Rus-land-ian, not Rus-ethnic-ian”, which could be expressed in English as “I am a citizen of Russian Federation, but I am not ethnically Russian”. On one hand, it can be translated without any loss of information; on the other hand, four words in Russian expanded to over a dozen words in English. More importantly, in 99% of situations the English speaker would not bother making the distinction, while a Russian speaker would be making it all the time.
Still seems to me that these things are rare, and more importantly, they don’t seem to have the impact one might naively predict based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. For example, one could naively predict that such language nuance would lead to less nationalism (because the country is less linguistically conflated with the dominant ethnicity), and yet, ethnic Russians don’t seem less nationalistic.
Similarly, English-speaking feminists spent a lot of effort changing the default “he”, through “he or she”, to the singular “they” (and some of them go even further). But there are languages, such as Hungarian, which never even had “he” and “she”, and have always used a gender-neutral pronoun. And yet, I don’t think that Hungarians are less sexist than their neighbors.
I don’t speak Esperanto myself, but took that meditation example from someone who speaks it. I don’t know how that actually boils down to Esperanto words.
Naive predictions often seem wrong in many domains.
The English are unlikely to say that the Irish are really English after all in the way that you have Russians say that the Ukranians are really Russian. The Russian idea that everyone who’s descending from a culture that had mass with Old Church Slavonic is Russian, is quite different than how other people in Europe think about the relevant concepts of identity.
The idea that Ukrainians are really Russians seems to make a lot more sense to Russian speakers than it does to most Europeans.
A Russian friend told me that when he speaks with other Russians, this involves a lot of references to Russian literature in a way that you wouldn’t do in English or German conversation. Reasoning by literature analogy is quite different from a lot of the way reasoning happens in English or German.