Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

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Speakeasy
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby Speakeasy » Mon Dec 04, 2017 10:29 pm

When I read the initial post, I anticipated the unfortunate and inaccurate portrayal of the Anglosphere (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand) as being dominant and domineering, exporting its language and culture whilst being impervious to all outside influences. Poppycock, I say!

Anyone visiting the Anglosphere will readily notice the massive linguistic and cultural influences of the – literally -- hundred or so disparate, non-Anglo-Saxon, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, artistic, musical, political, and social groups.

A simple verification of the new words that have been added to the English language over the past three decades provides conclusive evidence that the Anglosphere possesses the self-confidence to absorb massive quantities of new words, without translation, directly into the language.

The Anglosphere is part of the Global Village, it is connected to the rest of the world via high-speed cultural and linguistic expressways and the traffic is multi-directional.
Last edited by Speakeasy on Tue Dec 05, 2017 12:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby dampingwire » Mon Dec 04, 2017 10:31 pm

rdearman wrote:This is why I don't believe a common language would necessarily kill a culture.


Maybe not if you mean a common language that is capable of expressing the superset of all nuance that current languages can express.

If you mean let's all speak English or Mandarin or Arabic then I think that you'd lose shades of meaning.

I've lost track of the number of times I've misunderstood some aspect of a Japanese sentence because I'm missing some cultural reference.

The same issues are probably there with Italian, but I just don't notice them "because they're obvious". My French isn't of a high enough level for me to have ever noticed anything. I've barely started with German but I bet they have a word for it :-)
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby rdearman » Mon Dec 04, 2017 10:38 pm

dampingwire wrote:
rdearman wrote:This is why I don't believe a common language would necessarily kill a culture.


Maybe not if you mean a common language that is capable of expressing the superset of all nuance that current languages can express.

If you mean let's all speak English or Mandarin or Arabic then I think that you'd lose shades of meaning.

I've lost track of the number of times I've misunderstood some aspect of a Japanese sentence because I'm missing some cultural reference.

The same issues are probably there with Italian, but I just don't notice them "because they're obvious". My French isn't of a high enough level for me to have ever noticed anything. I've barely started with German but I bet they have a word for it :-)

Can you please explain that in more detail? I am notvsure i understand your meaning.
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby Serpent » Mon Dec 04, 2017 11:25 pm

Also, I'd only describe cultural values as that if they're nearly universal in a specific population. Although it's also fascinating (and often sad) how certain topics are "extremely controversial" in one country and "how is that even a question???" in another (often with an equally heated debate about some minor aspects). No examples :P
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby ilmari » Tue Dec 05, 2017 5:07 am

Language is central to our experience of being human, and the languages we speak profoundly shape the way we think, the way we see the world, the way we live our lives. (Lera Boroditsky)

https://youtu.be/iGuuHwbuQOg
https://www.edge.org/conversation/lera_boroditsky-how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby dgc1970 » Tue Dec 05, 2017 6:18 am

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

:D
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Tue Dec 05, 2017 6:33 pm

dgc1970 wrote:The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensi bl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi TU understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

:D

Genius! :P
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby dampingwire » Tue Dec 05, 2017 11:54 pm

rdearman wrote:Can you please explain that in more detail? I am notvsure i understand your meaning.


I wondered what you meant by "a common language".

If you mean to use an existing language (say English) then you will lose certain nuances that various non-English cultures have. For example Japanese has "reki-jou" (a female history buff), "tsundoku" (buying books but not managing to get around to reading them), "hikikomori" (a youngster who stays indoors all the time and shuns the outside world ... although I guess "teenager" covers quite a lot of that :-)), "ba-ko-dou jin" (someone with a silly combover), "karoushi" (death through overwork, although - perhaps somewhat worryingly - this has started to appear in English dictionaries).

So I thought you might have meant to invent a new common language, say Klingon, but enhanced and extended to add all the above cultural references that Japanese needs, plus the German for "a face badly in need of a fist" (which I'm sure I've been told exists although I cannot find it right now and I'm somewhat surprised doesn't exist in more cultures) and "cavoli riscaldati" from Italian.
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby nooj » Wed Dec 06, 2017 12:01 am

Speakeasy wrote:When I read the initial post, I anticipated the unfortunate and inaccurate portrayal of the Anglosphere (U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand) as being dominant and domineering, exporting its language and culture whilst being impervious to all outside influences. Poppycock, I say!

Anyone visiting the Anglosphere will readily notice the massive linguistic and cultural influences of the – literally -- hundred or so disparate, non-Anglo-Saxon, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, artistic, musical, political, and social groups.

A simple verification of the new words that have been added to the English language over the past three decades provides conclusive evidence that the Anglosphere possesses the self-confidence to absorb massive quantities of new words, without translation, directly into the language.

The Anglosphere is part of the Global Village, it is connected to the rest of the world via high-speed cultural and linguistic expressways and the traffic is multi-directional.


I think the influence is shallow and often self serving. How much do you really know about your Korean immigrants? How about your Iranian immigrants? How much contribution do they really have in your mass media?
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Re: Language and Culture, are they inseparable?

Postby reineke » Wed Dec 06, 2017 4:53 pm

rdearman wrote:I had thought the linguistic relativity principle, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis had pretty much been disproven. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the idea that differences in the way languages encode cultural and cognitive categories affect the way people think, so that speakers of different languages think and behave differently because of it.

So in theory if we all have one common language we all think the same. Newspeak to George Orwell. Now I've recently spent some time thinking about this whole "your language determines your culture and beliefs" thing, and I believe it is a load of old bollocks. Most linguists seem to agree, although the jury is still out until there is some proof one way or another.

http://www.angelfire.com/journal/worldt ... whorf.html

In my own personally experience I know that although the USA and the UK have a common languages the cultural values are can be the same or wildly different depending on the topic. Gun control, or nationalised healthcare being examples.

So let's assume for a moment every language other than English dies in the next month and everyone in the world now speaks English, do you believe in this scenario we'd all think the same? REDACTED I don't think so, I believe your national culture and identity aren't related to languages. More to do with your surrounding economic or social influences. E.g. your neighbours are more important to your culture and values than languages.

So if there is only one language, English, or Gorbogokka from Taui-Centi 3, I believe your local "tribe" makes the culture, not the language. In fact the language would probably shift into separate languages as local slang morphed into dialects and then into new languages. For example New Zealanders or Scottish can be almost unintelligible to the average American.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/12/01/santa-struggles-kiwi-accent-viral-air-new-zealand-christmas-ad


"Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation." -Sapir (1958:69)

"We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds - and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. The agreement is, of course, an implicit and unstated one, but its terms are absolutely obligatory; we cannot talk at all except by subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the agreement decrees." -Whorf (1940:213-14)

What are some criticisms of the hypothesis?
While linguists generally agree that the weaker Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as linguistic relativism, can be shown to be true to some extent, there are criticisms of the stronger form of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as linguistic determinism.

Ask A Linguist
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/sapir.cfm

Does the Language I Speak Influence the Way I Think?

Is it true that the language I speak shapes my thoughts?

"People have been asking this question for hundreds of years. Linguists have been paying special attention to it since the 1940's, when a linguist named Benjamin Lee Whorf studied Hopi, a Native American language spoken in northeastern Arizona. Based on his studies, Whorf claimed that speakers of Hopi and speakers of English see the world differently because of differences in their language.

What we have learned is that the answer to this question is complicated. To some extent, it's a chicken-and-egg question: Are you unable to think about things you don't have words for, or do you lack words for them because you don't think about them? Part of the problem is that there is more involved than just language and thought; there is also culture. Your culture—the traditions, lifestyle, habits, and so on that you pick up from the people you live and interact with—shapes the way you think, and also shapes the way you talk."

https://www.linguisticsociety.org/conte ... ay-i-think


Why the French are arguing over a small dot
https://www.economist.com/blogs/economi ... explains-2
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