I sympathize with your idea of amplification of random differences, but will try to persuade you that “strong Sapir-Whorf”, even if false per se, might still contain a grain of merit.
Any language co-evolves with its culture—a sort of definite integral over their historical path up to now. The English language is not wholly determined by its grammar and vocabulary: if you randomly generate many grammatical and meaningful phrases in English, a lot of them will still sound “wrong” because they don’t correspond to multi-word frequency patterns of everyday English use. As a culture evolves, those multi-word frequencies change to reflect reality. That’s why I find it hard to talk about programming in Russian: I’m missing not just the technical terms, but also the grown connective tissue of commonplace word combinations specialized for programming that would make phrases sound natural and easy.
When you study many languages, like me, you find that every language has its own sweet spots. The experience of reading Pushkin in Russian seems to have no analogies in the whole English language and has resisted all attempts at translation. French postmodernist thought sounds great in French but (as a rule) turns to lousy and phony wordplay in other languages. And you never really get the point of Italian until you try singing in it, suddenly feeling the sounds come more naturally than in your language of birth, whatever it is.
Personally, I find the suggestion that English philosophy is more reasonable than continental… to contain more than a grain of truth. The reason for that may well be a complex interplay between geographical location, anthropology, history, art and feeding it all back into the language; pretty hard to disentangle, but the result is, like some “racist and bigoted” conclusions, quite obvious to see once you start looking.
When you study many languages, like me, you find that every language has its own sweet spots. The experience of reading Pushkin in Russian seems to have no analogies in the whole English language and has resisted all attempts at translation. French postmodernist thought sounds great in French but (as a rule) turns to lousy and phony wordplay in other languages. And you never really get the point of Italian until you try singing in it, suddenly feeling the sounds come more naturally than in your language of birth, whatever it is.
It sounds to me as though this effect can be explained by things being lost in translation, which can happen to any language and is not indicative of a deep fundamental difference between languages. The true test of this theory would be to translate some English poetry into Russian and see if it comes out sounding deeper, or to translate some English postmodernism into French and see if it comes out sounding more authentic. It is actually believable that if you translate an English song into Italian that it will be more aesthetically pleasing—different languages have different patterns of sound, and some patterns of sound fit song better than others. But one rarely sings one’s philosophy.
The true test of this theory would be to translate some English poetry into Russian and see if it comes out sounding deeper, or to translate some English postmodernism into French and see if it comes out sounding more authentic.
It’s great that you proposed an experiment. Still, the language might facilitate original expression in a certain form more than it facilitates translation. To control for that effect somewhat you could ask a good Russian poet or French philosopher to do the translation, and I can guess how that will turn out!
Can’t say about philosophy, but Russians with good knowledge of English or other languages often prefer good Russian translations of literary works to the originals, despite preferring the originals of technical texts etc. Maybe an artefact of the Soviet era when non-state-sanctioned writers often worked as translators, raising the average quality of translations at the cost of never publishing their own thing. For example, I didn’t much enjoy the original text of LOTR compared to the Russian translation by Muravjev/Kistyakovsky. The contrast is especially felt in the poetry: Russian has a much deeper store of rhymes, no one is forced to stick to “lie—die” or “land—hand” as Tolkien had to, and all inconsistencies of meter are also gone—I was actually amazed how many of them there are in the English version, making some verses almost unreadable.
It’s worth noting that some of Tolkien’s poems started as written in Quenya, a language that Tolkien designed specifically for poetry—he once said that he created the world of Middle-Earth just so that he could have somewhere that his language was spoken—and it’s not surprising if Tolkien’s English translations of Elvish and his other languages aren’t as good.
Nominull, your remarks about language here and above seem off (although my experience is narrower than cousin_it’s, since I’m only bilingual, German is coming slowly, with little motivation). Each language has its sound, influencing the way you can use it for different tasks. Of course, you can accurately communicate a deeply understood concept in any language, by describing it redundantly, but that doesn’t apply to the sum total of everyday use, in particular to viewing the language as a tool for refining your concepts.
I think it’s better in all cases simply to say that strong Sapir-Whorf is wrong, but that weaker versions have some utility as a means to understand how humans think and speak.
I sympathize with your idea of amplification of random differences, but will try to persuade you that “strong Sapir-Whorf”, even if false per se, might still contain a grain of merit.
Any language co-evolves with its culture—a sort of definite integral over their historical path up to now. The English language is not wholly determined by its grammar and vocabulary: if you randomly generate many grammatical and meaningful phrases in English, a lot of them will still sound “wrong” because they don’t correspond to multi-word frequency patterns of everyday English use. As a culture evolves, those multi-word frequencies change to reflect reality. That’s why I find it hard to talk about programming in Russian: I’m missing not just the technical terms, but also the grown connective tissue of commonplace word combinations specialized for programming that would make phrases sound natural and easy.
When you study many languages, like me, you find that every language has its own sweet spots. The experience of reading Pushkin in Russian seems to have no analogies in the whole English language and has resisted all attempts at translation. French postmodernist thought sounds great in French but (as a rule) turns to lousy and phony wordplay in other languages. And you never really get the point of Italian until you try singing in it, suddenly feeling the sounds come more naturally than in your language of birth, whatever it is.
Personally, I find the suggestion that English philosophy is more reasonable than continental… to contain more than a grain of truth. The reason for that may well be a complex interplay between geographical location, anthropology, history, art and feeding it all back into the language; pretty hard to disentangle, but the result is, like some “racist and bigoted” conclusions, quite obvious to see once you start looking.
It sounds to me as though this effect can be explained by things being lost in translation, which can happen to any language and is not indicative of a deep fundamental difference between languages. The true test of this theory would be to translate some English poetry into Russian and see if it comes out sounding deeper, or to translate some English postmodernism into French and see if it comes out sounding more authentic. It is actually believable that if you translate an English song into Italian that it will be more aesthetically pleasing—different languages have different patterns of sound, and some patterns of sound fit song better than others. But one rarely sings one’s philosophy.
It’s great that you proposed an experiment. Still, the language might facilitate original expression in a certain form more than it facilitates translation. To control for that effect somewhat you could ask a good Russian poet or French philosopher to do the translation, and I can guess how that will turn out!
Can’t say about philosophy, but Russians with good knowledge of English or other languages often prefer good Russian translations of literary works to the originals, despite preferring the originals of technical texts etc. Maybe an artefact of the Soviet era when non-state-sanctioned writers often worked as translators, raising the average quality of translations at the cost of never publishing their own thing. For example, I didn’t much enjoy the original text of LOTR compared to the Russian translation by Muravjev/Kistyakovsky. The contrast is especially felt in the poetry: Russian has a much deeper store of rhymes, no one is forced to stick to “lie—die” or “land—hand” as Tolkien had to, and all inconsistencies of meter are also gone—I was actually amazed how many of them there are in the English version, making some verses almost unreadable.
It’s worth noting that some of Tolkien’s poems started as written in Quenya, a language that Tolkien designed specifically for poetry—he once said that he created the world of Middle-Earth just so that he could have somewhere that his language was spoken—and it’s not surprising if Tolkien’s English translations of Elvish and his other languages aren’t as good.
Nominull, your remarks about language here and above seem off (although my experience is narrower than cousin_it’s, since I’m only bilingual, German is coming slowly, with little motivation). Each language has its sound, influencing the way you can use it for different tasks. Of course, you can accurately communicate a deeply understood concept in any language, by describing it redundantly, but that doesn’t apply to the sum total of everyday use, in particular to viewing the language as a tool for refining your concepts.
I think it’s better in all cases simply to say that strong Sapir-Whorf is wrong, but that weaker versions have some utility as a means to understand how humans think and speak.