tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post1330042343619842215..comments2024-03-15T20:52:26.967-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?"Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger114125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-67730141415493847792010-08-31T21:25:29.787-07:002010-08-31T21:25:29.787-07:00We all distort, my friend.We all distort, my friend.Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-26353142635344818482010-08-31T20:36:32.890-07:002010-08-31T20:36:32.890-07:00What did I "distort"?
So you DO admit t...<i>What did I "distort"?</i><br /><br />So you DO admit that you distort.kudzu bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00865247508134005274noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-27189649200390768872010-08-31T18:50:25.413-07:002010-08-31T18:50:25.413-07:00"I say Greek sounds the best, followed by Ita..."I say Greek sounds the best, followed by Italian(as long as it's not spoken too fast). Spanish could be fixed by taking out some O's and Polish would gain by taking some of those O's(placed inside the middle of words)."<br /><br />An Estonian once told me that Estonian was ranked with Italian as being the most beautiful language to the ear. I would include French. Not crazy for Spanish, although Castilian can be elegant to hear. Greek? Never thought about it, but it does sound neat with all those strong, rounded O and OUs.linguistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-29493762528662170012010-08-30T10:21:43.359-07:002010-08-30T10:21:43.359-07:00"-Why is it that you have to rely on distorti..."-Why is it that you have to rely on distorting what others talk about as a way to "one-up" them?"<br /><br />What did I "distort"?<br /><br />I copied and pasted the damn thing!Truthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-25194039433517553362010-08-30T06:37:00.785-07:002010-08-30T06:37:00.785-07:00A Frenchman once said, "The English do not ha...A Frenchman once said, "The English do not have the word <i>longueur</i>, but they have the thing in great abundance."<br /><br />(A <i>longueur</i> one of those awkward pauses in conversation.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-38264587328302772512010-08-30T04:12:37.615-07:002010-08-30T04:12:37.615-07:00'"On the other hand, when I tried studyin...'"On the other hand, when I tried studying the Navajo language, I found it extremely complex, so it's not a perfect correlation between language and average intelligence."<br /><br /><br />"Why is it than whenever you guys are bad at something, there's "not a perfect correlation" between it and intelligence?"'<br /><br />-Why is it that you have to rely on distorting what others talk about as a way to "one-up" them? Furthermore, how does one generalize from a single comment about one instance to an overarching phenomenon for the entire group of Sailer readers? If you can't have an honest discussion about things, then you are not really showing any brilliant insights, are you? For future references, that behavior works in verbal arguments better than written arguments, where people can go back and readily re-read what has actually been written, and ponder it over.Mikenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-72530117660735351652010-08-29T22:14:56.362-07:002010-08-29T22:14:56.362-07:00"On the other hand, when I tried studying the..."On the other hand, when I tried studying the Navajo language, I found it extremely complex, so it's not a perfect correlation between language and average intelligence."<br /><br /><br />Why is it than whenever you guys are bad at something, there's "not a perfect correlation" between it and intelligence?<br /><br />I've just always wonderedTruthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17286755693955361308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-79357618191602033572010-08-29T21:54:42.045-07:002010-08-29T21:54:42.045-07:00I've been making the argument for quite some t...I've been making the argument for quite some time that existentialism is philosophical garbage by pointing out how trivial and absurd it is in languages very unlike English, French, etc. Too much philosophy is naive wordplay--being, doing, essences, ...zxcvbnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-76176932361247009982010-08-29T21:53:29.695-07:002010-08-29T21:53:29.695-07:00None of the above is right. The concept necessari...None of the above is right. The concept necessarily comes first. Think about it. People don't create words and then try to come up with a new concept tn can represent. However, the concept can be represented by a single word or a phrase, and it's conceivable that such fact can affect the way the concept is handled mentally. Re intelligence, most all languages that have been studied extensively are big enough that it has intelligent speakers, no matter how low a percentage, and has therefore become capable of expressing intelligent thoughts. You'd have to study a given person's ideolect and compare it with his IQ, to find any real correlation.<br /><br />Re vous-tu and all, my opinion is that the language follows cultural trends, not so much viceversa.Baloohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08245765878554696634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-26809533411186202202010-08-29T20:55:41.748-07:002010-08-29T20:55:41.748-07:00This month in Jewish cinema...The Debt. In 1965, t...This month in Jewish cinema...The Debt. In 1965, three young Israeli Mossad agents on a secret mission capture and kill a notorious Nazi war criminal. Now, thirty years later, a man claiming to be the Nazi has surfaced in Ukraine and one of the former agents must go back undercover to seek out the truth. A Film Unfinished. A film about an unfinished film which portrays the people behind and before the camera in the Warsaw Ghetto, exposing the extent of the cinematic manipulation forever changing the way we look at historic images.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-47908448292185729922010-08-29T14:25:30.633-07:002010-08-29T14:25:30.633-07:00The natural way to think of this (for a complete a...The natural way to think of this (for a complete amateur in this area like me, at least) is in terms of what words you have. If your language has no word for compound-interest, or variance, or algorithm, then it ought to be hard to explain a lot of the world to you. But I think that's all wrong--the really important thing is having the concept behind the term. If you have the concept of what an algorithm is, and so do I, it won't take long to convey what I'm talking about, even if I have to make up a new word for it or use some circumlocution like "precise sequence of steps to carry out some computation" every time I want to use "algorithm." <br /><br />I've seen this a lot in Spanish, where I often start out lacking the specialist vocabulary of whatever's being discussed in a book or news article or conversation. It's not too hard for me to catch up, because I already have the concepts--I already know what a mortgage is, for example, so learning the word <i>hipoteca</i> doesn't require also learning a whole new concept. <br /><br />By contrast, if you start without that concept, even in your native language, you'll have a hard time understanding quite what's going on. There are many excellent explanations of complex financial derivatives, evolution, statistics, etc. in English. The barrier for most people understanding them isn't the language, it's getting the underlying concepts, which require some real time and work for most people to absorb.none of the abovenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-75961558557611823842010-08-29T10:08:47.640-07:002010-08-29T10:08:47.640-07:00Aboriginal tykes got it right, compared to a basic...<i>Aboriginal tykes got it right, compared to a basically random number of the white toddlers.</i><br /><br />I couldn't find a reference (Google conspiracy?) but I suspect that Aboriginal children develop faster than white kids.<br /><br />Or it could just be that the Abo kids walked to school and the white kids rode.<br /><br />I do believe that the sense of direction varies in people. Tell a woman you will meet her of the north west corner and she will ask you where that is. But on the strength of the evidence so far presented about Aborigines that they have a special sense of place, it is - not proved.<br /><br />It sounds like the quasi-mystical traits ascribed to American Indians - like the ability to walk soundlessly through the woods and a special sensitivity toward nature. Hollywood makes movies about Indian's ability to creep silently through the woods ( See "The Outlaw Josy Wells" or "The Stalking Moon").<br /><br />The number of media presentations about environmentally sensitive Indians is too great to enumerate. My favorite is the TV ad with Iron Eyes Cody crying at the mess made by white men. <br /><br />Of course Cody was a fake Indian and all of this environmental sensitivity is just tripe. Probably the biggest ecological disaster in human history was the "Pleistocene Blitzkrieg" where the Indians killed all the New World mega-fauna. Had their been no Indians, Columbus would have found horses, camels, Mammoths, Mastodons, giant cave bear, lions, and Saber Toothed Cats.<br /><br />I don't know much about Australian Aborigines but this whole innate sense of direction stuff smells. Aren't they famous for their walkabouts - pointless, directionless wanderings?<br /><br />AlbertosaurusAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20614666021577693662010-08-29T10:03:16.304-07:002010-08-29T10:03:16.304-07:00The Romance languages are more flowery than the Ge...The Romance languages are more flowery than the Germanic languages, of which English is one. English, relative to French or Italian, is a blunt language. This makes shit detection easier in English. Of course there are bullshit artists everywhere. But I think they have an easier time of it in France.ricpichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01321511130788764861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-87054692369208434592010-08-29T08:30:18.075-07:002010-08-29T08:30:18.075-07:00"Why is it unfashionable to think that differ...<i>"Why is it unfashionable to think that differences in languages result or reflect differences in thinking?"</i><br /><br />It's only unfashionable among linguists, and that is for the eminently reasonable reason that it has been poorly demonstrated if at all and the hypothesis that people think alike is the more parsimonious hypothesis. As the evidence changes, linguists will change their minds. It's not unfashionable amongst people at large (e.g. studenty Leftists who'll chew yer ear off about Newspeak). <br /><br /><i>The funnest language is Arabic. You have three letter roots related to a concept then you can make an endless number of words out of that. For example kataba means 'he wrote.' From the k-t-b root, you get.</i><br /><br />Hebrew's the same way (quite a few Jewish and Muslims folks talk online about how this is divinely beautiful [or if they're dumber, evidence of god]). It's really cute, but in the abstract seems rather inefficient, given that if you just made the roots and patterns with separate syllables, you could drop most of the pattern stuff out when you don't need it, which is what Arabic speakers basically do in writing anyway.<br /><br /><i>Its interesting to notice that most of the "hip" new words that come out in Ebonics are associated with crime, drugs, insults, and gaudy displays of wealth.</i><br /><br />Harpending and Cochran on this - http://the10000yearexplosion.com/human-cultural-diversity/ - <b>"Another prominent vehicle of male competition in ethnographies is bombast, rhetoric and verbal facility. Big men in New Guinea give speeches that go on for hours. There is a lot of competitive language one-upmanship in other Cad groups like rap or cockney rhyming slang. If there is a new word around and if you do not know about it while others do you lose status... This valley-girl talk phenomenon is widespread in humans but is especially intense in groups where male competition is prominent."</b>Mattnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-63725670813637800372010-08-29T06:03:07.525-07:002010-08-29T06:03:07.525-07:00Anonymous wrote:
"In Korean, confucianism pe...Anonymous wrote:<br /><br />"<i>In Korean, confucianism permeates the language and every time you talk to someone you must make a judgment about your relative social status and familiarity."</i><br /><br />Well, there are plenty of Indo-European languages which - even without Confucianism - operate on similar lines, though in my limited experience at least one of them (French) is now doing so less and less. With German, Italian and Spanish, as well as French, there are different words for "you" (when addressing a boss, high-ranking civil servant, slight acquaintance etc) versus "you" (when addressing a close relative or a close friend).<br /><br />But I've discovered an odd thing in recent months. When I'm involved in a French-only conversation with French people whom I've never met before, they're more and more inclined to address me as "<i>tu</i>" (informal) instead of "<i>vous</i>" (formal). <br /><br />Until a few years back, this usage among almost total strangers would've been considered insulting, an absolute no-no among the French: horribly pushy and vulgar. (Especially among Frenchwomen of my mother's generation or older - I'm 48 - who used to be so formal in their speech that they didn't dare address even their <i>husbands</i> by their given names!)V. Walternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-22641364519324088392010-08-29T05:12:53.841-07:002010-08-29T05:12:53.841-07:00"Why is it unfashionable to think that differ..."Why is it unfashionable to think that differences in languages result or reflect differences in thinking?"<br /><br />Because the theory - the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - was carefully examined over a long period of time and proved to have little explanatory or predictive power.Graham Ashernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-15406015822358306492010-08-29T01:37:55.066-07:002010-08-29T01:37:55.066-07:00One of the few studies I've read of language d...One of the few studies I've read of language differences with observabe real world effects: A comparison of work related accidents in factories in Finnland. Basically, factories in which Finnish was the working language had higher accident levels than those where Swedish was spoken. The authors speculate that something about location marking in the two languages could lead the situation.<br /><br />Two possible problems: small sample size of the Swedish factories (since Finnish is much more widely spoken in Finnland) and it's not clear if they controlled for alcohol consumption (ethnic Finns drink considerably more than Swedish nationals in Sweden - I'm not sure about the levels by Swedish speaking Finns).michael farrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10232229721381140090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-31715148523040576862010-08-28T23:18:20.699-07:002010-08-28T23:18:20.699-07:00"Because differences in thinking might reflec..."Because differences in thinking might reflect differences in the ability to think. And differences in the ability to think might mean that we are not all equal"<br /><br />Well linguistics would have to be a hbd enthusiast's least favorite field as it doesn't add to any evidence of measurable human differences in ability.<br /><br />Regardless of language, children learn to speak at about the same age. There's no evidence whatsoever that babies of one race are less able to learn the languages of other races. (the sample is incomplete since not many white or black babies are exposed to Navajo in infancy but all the evidence points to babies being equally able to learn whatever language is in their environment.<br /><br />Also, linguistic structures are not necessarily distributed along racial lines. In terms of grammar Mandarin has more in common with Yoruba than with Korean...michael farrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10232229721381140090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-22577325911315264472010-08-28T23:07:08.094-07:002010-08-28T23:07:08.094-07:00"The most important thing for humans to talk ..."The most important thing for humans to talk about...is who is doing what to who/me.<br />...it would seem that the ability to find agency is fundamentally encoded in our genes and built into our brains."<br /><br />I don't argue that agency is important, and all languages deal with it to some extent. What's odd about English (speakers) is that it/they don't seem to be able to turn it off.<br /><br />small examples:<br />English tends to coflate subject and agent and even subjects of passive sentences are assumed to have agency. This means that you can turn passive sentences around and make sentences like:<br />"Don't get ripped off...."<br />"Don't be a victim of..."<br />Those sentences don't make sense in some languages where the closest equivalent would be somthing like 'minimize your chance of being...' English can also re-agentify (if that's a word) passive constructions so<br />that "he was struck by lightning" can become "he got himself struck by lightning" where he actively sought out the state. Again cross linguistically that's a weird structure.<br /><br />Lots of languages distinguish between voluntary and involuntary actions/states. English tends to coflate the two and you have to rely on context to know whether <br />"she coughed" refers to a voluntary or involuntary action.michael farrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10232229721381140090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-16040801294395615442010-08-28T22:57:10.707-07:002010-08-28T22:57:10.707-07:00What about this useful part of language every iSte...What about this <a href="http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html_links.asp" rel="nofollow">useful</a> part of language every iSteve commenter should master ?<br /><br />It took me less than 48h to learn it.Bantamnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56449571218016022822010-08-28T21:35:55.731-07:002010-08-28T21:35:55.731-07:00Now I feel stupid. I made that last comment befor...Now I feel stupid. I made that last comment before I read the linked article. Then I went and read it and saw that the study I spoke of was actually mentioned in the article.<br /><br />Doh!Saint Louisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-37702958730949938312010-08-28T21:29:37.667-07:002010-08-28T21:29:37.667-07:00I read recently (it might have been a link from iS...I read recently (it might have been a link from iSteve; if so please forgive me) that there was a study done where they showed a picture of a bridge to German speakers and to Spanish speakers and asked them to describe it.<br /><br />In German, bridge is "die bruecke" (or brucke if you put an umlaut on the u) and is feminine. The German speakers almost all described the bridge with words like "beautiful" and "elegant."<br /><br />In Spanish, bridge is "el puente" and is masculine. The Spanish speakers tended to use words like "strong" and "sturdy" to describe it.<br /><br />All of this is to say that language definitely seems to shape how we think about things.<br /><br />I also read somewhere (but can't for the life of me remember where) that many Germans think English (and American) humor is often unfunny. Apparently the idea is that the word order of German sentences makes it more difficult to set up puns and punchlines. Thus Germans think English humor relies too heavily on these tactics and consequently English-speaking humorists fail to develop other types of jokes.Saint Louisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19645272652088722192010-08-28T21:13:27.670-07:002010-08-28T21:13:27.670-07:00"The only way the coordinate system can be br..."The only way the coordinate system can be broken is to pass out, be moved to an entirely unfamiliar location, and then come to at night. It's not like this happens to anyone very often. You don't just suddenly materialize in some place, wondering, "My God, I wonder which way is North??"<br /><br />I disagree, David. It happens to me a lot. Say I'm in a plane or reading in a car when many directional changes are made which I was not paying attention to at the time. <br />I can step out at 12:00 noon and be astonished that what "feels" to me to be north has the sun in it.<br />It can take me hours or days until my perception corrects itself that the sun is rising in what "seems" east.<br />Is this a female thing?Curvaceous, etc.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-41232064021191434202010-08-28T19:48:17.790-07:002010-08-28T19:48:17.790-07:00Now stand in the place where you work
Now face Wes...<i>Now stand in the place where you work<br />Now face West<br />Think about the place where you live<br />Wonder why you haven't before</i><br /><br />This song is a sly comment on one of the many ways living in cities has distorted are perspective. That's my take. Check out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4F9sHyyvqk" rel="nofollow">video</a>. It alternates between scenes of a boy in the city and an old woman in the country.<br /><br />Some of what we have lost in the move from primarily a rural society to an urban one, REM covered previously in their excellent 1985 album <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fables_of_the_Reconstruction" rel="nofollow">Fables of the Reconstruction</a>. Southerners tend to think about those things. Aborigines too, I imagine. City folks, not so much.travisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56974883250065625932010-08-28T19:35:37.963-07:002010-08-28T19:35:37.963-07:00James Kabala wrote:
"I am really intrigued by...James Kabala wrote:<br />"I am really intrigued by those who claim to have constant awareness of compass directions. If I interpret you correctly, David, you mean that you can do this without reference to the Sun, the North Star, a map, or any other external marker. "<br />=========================<br /><br />Maybe David's town has a lot of hills. My town does so you always know that north is where one of the rivers flows from, next to Mount ___ , and in most parts of town you are going down hill when you are going north, even if you don't glance up towards Mount ___ (it is really just a big hill but you can see it from a lot of places). I recently was in a strange city that is pretty much flat, and had to resort to using the sun.Melykinnoreply@blogger.com