TOPIC: LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
Blogging / Interactive reflection (BLOG) (20%)
- In this section you will write a 300-500 word reaction segment to each week’s material. You may talk about: (1) what you found interesting in the material covered that week and why, (2) what you found challenging, (3) how it ties to your research interests, (4) whether you’ve read related material, (5) whether it reminds you of real life situations, etc.
- (Or) You may submit a ‘linguistic artifact’ or interesting piece of linguistic evidence (this may be an image, a YouTube video, a news article on a language-related issue) that you feel relates to the classroom material as part of your weekly reflection. Along with this artifact, you are expected to provide a description on why you believe that artifact ties to discussed material.
Reflection pieces are to be left in the “comment section” below, including your full name and word count. Please make one entry [no duplicates]. The deadline for each weekly assignment is Saturday at 5:00pm of that week.
Topics in Sociolinguistics 
The topic of language and thought offers an interesting connection to consider when studying the limits of our cognition and how it relates to how we communicate. It was extremely interesting learning more about the Sapir-Whorf theory, and how many linguists have misinterpreted their interaction to the point where their differing theories have been melded into one. Even though I had learned the basic theory of “language limits thought”, I had never heard that they had never collaborated and had only been associates. Learning about the differences in Sapir and Whorf’s theories and seeing how they were simplified and changed by other linguists, to the point where the theories were completely misrepresented, has made me more conscious of making sure to verify with the source, and not just taking another’s word as law. Moreover, reading more in-depth about Whorf’s theory and the questions it asks was very interesting.
In the section of Ahearn’s chapter where they discuss the Whorfian effects on Language Structure, they brought up an intriguing point that I had inadvertently thought of before learning about Whorfian effects. Ahearn writes, “No linguistic anthropologist believes that the lack of a single word for a concept in a particular language prevents someone from being able to think of that concept.” (2016, p. 100) This same thought was something I had mentioned to a previous professor when we first learned about the theory. Ahaern’s book gives the examples of “dhan – unhusked rice that is still in the fields, chamal – harvested but still uncooked rice, bhat – cooked rice.” (Ahaern, 2016, p.100) A similar example I had thought of before was the German word Schadenfreude, which is defined as “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) This was a pretty obscure word to non-German speakers (however, I believe it has become more mainstream in recent years), but it illustrates what Ahaern mentions, that just because you don’t have a word in your lexicon, it does not mean that you will not be able to understand the feeling. All in all, reading more in-depth about Whorf and language relativity was quite interesting and enlightening. (352 words)
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As we had discussed in class this week, language and thought do go hand in hand, but it can greatly vary depending on the context of the situation. We saw the two clear examples of the woman that was assaulted and the woman that had lied about her family history. In both cases bad language in thought hurt someone. The woman that was assaulted gave wrong information and the wrong man was sent to jail. In the woman that had lied, Sophie, was presented in the wrong light which led her to end her life. I can agree that when communicating what’s in your brain it can be really hard. Specially in the cause of bilingual or multilingual people. In my case I’ve had the experience of thinking in both my languages and sometimes confusing myself in the process. As a native speaker of Spanish and English sometimes my subconscious doesn’t rather phantom what language I’m being spoken to. It has happened that I could watch a movie in either language and since I can understand it fully I don’t remember if I saw it in English or Spanish. I like to think language in thought is just like that. Then again the way I speak and present myself also influences a lot the way a think. Its like saying “if you smile at least 3 times a day you can actually boost your mood”. Well If I speak loudly and clearly I could get in a cheery mood and make everyone around me feel more hyped or interested. Language connects in weird ways with the brain which makes it really important to be aware. I wonder how people that do sign language make those type of connections in their brains.
I link here an article that describes what I think and agrees with things we discussed in class:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/hide-and-seek/201808/how-the-language-you-speak-influences-the-way-you-think
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Ernesto Calderon – Blog post:
Reading about the effects of language on thought has led me to believe that this could be one of the most interesting but at the same time controversial topics I’ve studied so far. I will agree with the premise that language could have the potential to predispose some ways in which I view the world, including some ways of thinking and generating concepts. I also agree that this theory is not by any means deterministic or universal, which means everyone is capable of challenging and choosing the way they think. This capability of choosing, in my opinion, is sometimes downplayed and I will argue that it could be an additional dimension as influential to the language, though and culture relationship.
In Ahearn’s chapter, we read about examples of how language might influence thought, studied by linguistic anthropologists in different cultures. From particularities such as time, space, colors and even the material of which objects are made of, studies have revealed that under certain cultural environments there are indeed some differences in the way language is used and some of the effects it might have on thought. There could be also some advantages gained by learning these cultural particularities under very specific scenarios such as color categorization and self-orientation, which could have some positive effects in the way we generate discourse or how we come to conclusions by thinking and generating concepts with ease. At the very least, I believe that this prove that the relation between language, thought and culture isn’t unidirectional, with one of these constructs coming first or being more important than the other. In this case, I can see linguistics anthropologists with admiration; by having done these studies they could have a better understanding of these dimensions, but even that decision and the way they could interpret and apply their conclusions is by choice and I believe this is where this topic could get controversial.
In Enfield’s article, we learn about the example of how an innocent man from Texas was chosen and blamed by a rape victim. This experience is used as an argument towards how language affects thought, in this case by highlighting the distortion of memory when verbalizing an event. However, in my opinion this conclusion is radical at best and it fails to account so many factors such as social reality and people’s biased choices in reaching conclusions.
Scenarios:
A) A cop tells a white American citizen, “please step away from the car and show me your ID and registration”
The citizen responds; With all due respect, I’m not obliged to, I haven’t done anything wrong.
The cop after giving it some thought says: Have a good day sir and chooses leaves.
B) A cop tells an African American citizen, “please step away from the car and show me your ID and registration”
The citizen responds; With all due respect, I’m not obliged to, I haven’t done anything wrong.
The cop after giving it some thought consider the language as defiance and offensive and chooses to forcibly arrest the citizen.
If language affects thought, why where there two different reactions to the same discourse and under the same situation. Just as the Texas student scenario, the cultural reality component and its effects are often discarded to reach to a conclusion by Choice based on an individual own belief. I would argue that in cases like this no matter how much compelling the evidence is in favor of the Texas student that got mistakenly blamed, if the outcome of the matter lies in the hands of people that already have chosen a certain outcome based on their ideologies acquired in their cultural environment, it’s close to certainty that no matter the language used wouldn’t alter that decision. This is one of the reasons why theories like this one, although fascinating in content, could touch on some of the most controversial aspects of our society because when we think about it when some people have the power of choosing the outcomes of sensitive matters by language use, then language it self becomes nothing shorter than a tool or weapon to reach a particular scenario that favors them.
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Loida Rivera – blog post:
Some physical anthropologists believe that humans (or at least, proto-humans), learned to sing before they learned to talk (or count). It may be feasible if we study the whistling communication system at La Gomera in the Canary Islands. I would like to know how Whorf would deal with a communication system so efficient and intelligible amongst the inhabitants of Gomera, that replaces spoken language. Would he be able to conclude that this mode of communication can also influence their perception of the real world? And how about cave paintings that some are nearly 60,000 years old? Did early humans have any proto-language or is it that imaging was their mode of perceiving their world in the paleolithic and the best way of communicating it to others? Possibly their European brethren would have been capable of understanding the same images. Discoveries in the island of Borneo revealed paintings remarkably similar to those in Europe, and perhaps, older. Yes, there is some kind of universal operating system in humans of which diversity is in the details. I insist that perception is not only circumscribed to language, but the whole system of brain-ware (with a significant dose of malware), software (language, art, science, math, etc.) and hardware (our bodies) unique in our species. But brain-ware must not be underestimated. Without brains, there are no perceptions or language, ergo, no society. For example, Irvine’s paper exposes memory degradation (more or less). It’s partly true since neuroscientists have done research that the brain is like a “film editor”. The hippocampus processes experiences like discrete cuts (akin to the frames in an 8 mm tape) and stored as memories. The hippo is most active when people shift from one event to the other, but remember, they are discrete pieces and there is no data on how these pieces are processed if they are personally involved. This also applies to language processing and any gap between the “frames” does not assure us that social interaction will follow the rules. And it’s a headache for judiciary authorities.
Another example of brain processing with malware are found in the brain cells of monkeys, that also exist in the human brain. Rhesus macaques are capable of responding and remembering the outcomes of situations encountered in an exercise of game theory, both the individual’s and the others. The most famous exercise is the prisoner’s dilemma (this is a popular model in economics, finance, military strategy and of course, in criminal processes). If both prisoners confess (“cooperation”), the penalty can be lower than in the case where both do not confess (“non-cooperation”). But if one of the two cheats like a stool pigeon, one gets the lower sentence (or gets scott free) and the other is kicked into the can for the whole sentence (maybe with revenge in mind!). Therefore, there are a set of neurons in a specified area of the brain and they fire more rapidly in a cooperation scene than in the cheating ones. Neuron activity matched the other monkeys’ choices in the previous rounds. The neurons also fire faster when the monkeys play in the same room than where they isolated. It seems that neurons respond and are sensitive to social situations. Of course, this has to be tested in humans through fMRIs results. And from the point view of criminal investigation, thank God for DNA!
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One of the topics in which I have continued to ponder upon is the way in which we categorize language, as presented in Enfield’s (2006) paper on Linguistic Relativity from Referential to Agency. Enfield begins by presenting a case by rape victim Michele Mallin from Texas Tech University. Mallin had falsely accused 26-year-old Timothy Cole. As stated in class, this is probably not the best case to begin a discussion on distortion on memory, due to the numerous factors which could be implicated. However, it does, in essence, bring up the problematic effect that language has when we put “experiences into words [it] can overshadow our exact recollection of the original experience” (Enfield 2006: pg 208). Although not as controversial as the rape victim I have seen this happen numerous time while hearing stories from friends in which I was involved. One of my best friends, which we will address as friend 1, is known to be the class clown and to tell many of his life occurrences which so happen to cause laughter. The problem with Friend 1 is that within the same story , again in which I was a participant, he would continuously modify it and exaggerate the events. These modifications were very small and in no way changed the plot of the story. However, there were not “exact recollections of the original experience” or even to the first time that he told the story in front of a group of friends. In many instances, I confronted him about the modifications that he had to the story. Friend 1 would deny making these changes and that the way that he told it was how it actually happened. To him, this is the way that it actually happened because he had repeated it so many times that it became a reality.
(305 words)
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After reading the “Language Thought and Culture” article by Laura M. Ahearn, I tried to connect it with some theories such as Chomsky’s innate ideology and also Skinner’s behaviorism ideology. A good way to maybe understand this article it was through the connection of theories for it to have understanding. It is still debatable the idea of whether our language is being modified by our pre-disposition to language structures or that language is being modified by our environment. I feel that is debatable since there is no sufficient data gathered in order to explicitly point out one of the theories but as the article states: What came first, the egg or the chicken?” We can surely take pieces of each theory and maybe make sense of them in order to understand the phenomenon of acquisition of language or how the same is being modified. I am a believer that language acquisition is through the exposure of the culture or exploration and definitely our repertoires will be different according to our experiences.
Some of the information that was provided in this article is not related to my field of study but I can surely connect that experience, culture and the atmosphere that someone is surrounded by plays with the impact on someone’s language. As a matter of fact, one of my philosophies is that experimentation is our channel to improve our language or learn one by steps. This is one of Lev Vygotsky’s theories since then. Moreover, this material reminds of how I had to struggle between the Spanish and English language, especially idiomatic expressions since they do not correlate in both idioms. This is one basic example on how does the cultural aspect connects with our language and how can it be modified. If it was not for this, then everyone would have the same life perspective and could communicate with ease. Another example from real life is how even gender wise people categorize colors in different ways. What maybe males categorize as one color, women categorize it with more details. As a matter of fact, this also goes with capacity of memorizing faces. In which women tend to memorize better qualities (physically) than males. There is a nice video regarding this aspect but it is not related to language perse. Even though is not related to language is a great example on how human’s brains work and how can they change according to our culture.
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While reading this paper and the past papers for this class I was reminded of a video I had seen that talked about language influencing thought. The video is a Ted Talk by Lera Boroditsky! The link is below!
This video was mindblowing to me because I had yet to take any linguistic courses that talked about the influence of language in thought.
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In the video Ler Brodosky talks about a study she did in regards to an aboriginal society in Australia called the Kuuk Thaayorre. She goes on to explain some interesting characteristis of their language and how these might influence the way they think.
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There are three words that characterized and make unique a person, those words are language, thought and culture. According to the Sapir- Whorf Hypothesis, which as it was developed in the text is a myth since they never worked together, this hypothesis stated that the way that we see the world (culture) is determined by our thought processes, but those processes can be limited by language. According to them, the language is the lens by which we perceive our reality and our thoughts. During this chapter, there was presented a figure in which language thought and culture all of these influences one and other.
During this chapter was presented the effects of language on thought with different perspectives: the language in general which in other words is how having a language may influence in our thinking, the second one is the linguistic structure that argued that things such as grammar influence on behavior and thinking and the last one, the language use which is the ways a particular habit of speaking influence the interpretation and though.
Taking into consideration the last one ( language use ) there was an example that the book explains how, even though some idiomatical expressions are used differently in many languages, people can be aware of those expressions, it means that language can not limit imagination or feelings. Considering the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis that claims that many or some thoughts of a person in his or her language cannot be understood by those who speak another language, and what was said in the previous paragraph we can consider the fact that this hypothesis is not totally accurate to all people, language, culture and thought.
In my personal opinion those theories are not an evidence of peoples reality since the personality of a human being is characterized by those factors one and other cannot limit the other one, because our thoughts go beyond our reality, many people think or reflect in situations of other people beliefs and because our language is different it does not mean that our thoughts are limited to our reality or the way our culture shapes us.
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I only briefly encountered brief statements about the relationship between language and thought. This perspective remained nameless until now, but the idea that thought preceded language and they were independent but mutually influential was present. From what I saw on the video on this webpage and the readings, the research of Boas, Sapir, and Whorf opened the way for the transition from a deterministic approach to the relationship of language, thought, and culture to a relativist one.
Beginning with who began indirectly pioneering the way for linguistic relativity, Franz Boas, I could see he was concerned with bringing native languages the same level of appreciation to “more civilized” European Languages. Seemingly, Boas held a social justice posture when studying cultures. Ahearn asserts, “An important part of Boas’s research agenda involved disproving racist assertions abut the existence of so-called “primitive” languages, races, and cultures” (2016, p. 88). At the time, intense feelings of nationalism permeated research and those countries dominating scientific study felt linguistic superiority over indigenous societies. Irvine and Gal evidence this line of thought by citing linguist F. Max Müller, a linguist form the 1850’s:
“I cannot leave this subject without expressing at least a strong hope that, by the influence
of the Missionaries, these brutal sounds will be in time abolished, at least among the
Kaffirs [Zulu and Xhosa], though it may be impossible to eradicate them in the degraded
Hottentot dialects [. . .]” (Irvine and Gal 2000, p.40).
This general disregard over the value of these languages has led to the loss of opportunities for linguistic research which apparently at the time was not a concern for the academic elite. Personally, I was shocked to read the mentality of this time and at the potential findings lost back then because of these attitudes.
However, thanks to Boas contributions, Edward Sapir developed his own views on the influence of language over thought and culture. Sapir proposed language influences our perceptions of our surroundings and in turn our thoughts. Eventually, Sapir’s student, Benjamin L. Whorf elaborated on the associations of language, thought, and culture of his predecessors. Although there were slight differences between Boas, Sapir, and Whorf’s assertions, others oversimplified their ideas, specifically Sapir and Whorf’s.
The misconception of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is not even real since Sapir and Whorf never collaborated, came from a great misunderstanding of what these anthropologists suggested. Researchers outside of anthropology misconstrued and dismissed the claims presented by Sapir and Whorf. This situation made me think about how easy it is to misrepresent ideas if one doe not actively seek out to fully understand and refer to reliable sources of information. I believe that this issue of a long chain of hearsay where the core information got diluted in the process. Ultimately what Sapir and Whorf argued for was to analyze culture and thought through the lens of language, which was not as deterministic as it was first believed by others to be. Sapir and Whorf’s beliefs paved the path of studying language from a different angle, considering individual perspective and interaction from a sociocultural and linguistic standpoint. (Word count: 516 words)
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“To categorize things is to group them together, treating them as effectively identical for some purpose by disregarding or discarding irrelevant differences” (Cohen & Lefebvre 2005, Levinson & Majid 2014). This definition of categorization summarizes the European view of Africa at the time of colonization. During this period, European scholars assumed that African groups were monolingual and they labeled them, according to the importance and role of the language they speak. These assumptions had an ulterior motive: to divide people into specific territories and language facilitated colonization. For this reason, they decided to ignore language differentiation and multilingualism. By ignoring these differences, they treated languages as something inherent to the nature of people and not as social constructions. With this questionable logic, they classified people into primitive or more civilized, attributing specific characteristic to them. Those characteristic were not necessarily connected to reality, but to their purposes of dominance.
The article shows how political issues helped to build a particular “image” of people through language. The case in Senegal with the Wolof, Sereer and Fula exemplifies this perfectly. There, European colonizers grouped people according to language and establish different relationship with each communities based on that. The case of Macedonia during the nineteenth century also shows how language differences can be ignored to give relevance to some other traits. In this period, Macedonian people had their own identity, but this was ignored, in order to classify them into Greek, Turkish or Bulgarian alike. As an oppressed people, the Macedonians had to learn the language and customs of another country, in order to survive that society.
In today’s society we still see how some people are forced to adopt customs and languages of countries that hold economic power. These people may suffer discrimination because of their appearance, way of acting and accents. While doing a German course in Berlin, I had the opportunity to meet several refugees who had arrived in that country fleeing the war. In the first semester we had a teacher who was not very kind to them. She constantly criticized their accent and wanted them to pronounce perfectly all the time. She always reminded them that if they were not able to speak German, they could not get a job and then, they would have to return to their countries. Her attitudes seemed hostile to me and I was saddened by the pressure and stress to which they were subjected. I think she felt that her country had been invaded for them, a feeling that some German people shared. By being immersed in that situation, I reflected on how the origin determines people’s lives, their opportunities, well-being and challenges to face. I’m glad to tell you that the story had a happy ending. The teacher was removed from her position and then we had a very kind teacher who accepted multilingualism and multiculturalism as an opportunity to learn, always encouraged them and let them know that most Germans accepted them as equals.
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Isis Fortys blog post:
In this week’s reflexion we tasked to write about language and thought using Ahern’s chapter and Enflied’s paper. Many linguists have talked about language and thougght to go hand in hand with eachother. One of the readings that really shocked me was the Enfield paper that talks about how our memory can distort what we say. One of the categories that te Whorfian’s have are the heuristic rationalizing. Where it is known to use essential concepts for deciding and acting. A quote shown in class was: “If language can imperceptibly constrain or channel our thoughts in ways like this, it raises a counterintuitive challenge to our sense of free will” (Enflield, 2015). As a bilingual speaker I do not think that we do not have free will but more that some things could fluence what we think. And something we did explain in class is that some thoughts need language because it is more abstract concepts. We also covered the chapter on language and thought
In Aherns chapter we get a more historical look on linguisitic relativity. Where we get to know that Whorf is Edward Sapir’s student. And get to know that his theory of language categorization produces an overall worldview was influenced by hs teacher that had a strong view that language and thought had a great relationship. Later on we are shown the Axiom perspective that posists a multiderenctiional relationship between: Language, Thought and Culture. You can see a diagram on page 6 on the chapter. In the paper and the chapter we see somw example on how cultures could also influence thought. Which we go back to the Enflied’s quote where basically challanges to think if we really do have free will. Which not only linguists ask but even philosophers ask. (300 words)
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This week’s readings on the connection between language and thought explore the idea that “language use in certain communities of practice can predispose people to think and act in particular ways” (Ahearn, 2016, p. 112). This idea has been strongly debated between scholars from various fields, who have been trying to determine whether it is language or thought that determines the other. It was interesting to me that, in their search for answers, scholars even “made-up” a hypothesis by “Sapir and Whorf [who] never coauthored anything” (Ahearn, 2016, p. 91). It’s curious how scholars’ ideas can be so misinterpreted misunderstood, and how these misconceptions can shape further research.
Another idea I found noteworthy was how language may hinder our free will (Enfield, 2015, p. 209). The general conclusion is that, while we may be predisposed to have (or ignore) certain thoughts or actions, we maintain the choice to challenge these. However, it would be interesting to figure out how much choice or agency we truly have, after considering “that all social-institutional reality, from monetary values to property rights to corporate identity, is built from language and cannot exist without it” (Enfield, 2015, p. 216). To what extent can we challenge and stray from these powerful predispositions? Perhaps this will be studied in the future.
Regarding possible connections to my research interest in bicultural ambivalence and its influence on identity, I was interested in seeing the role of culture in these studies. However, though it is mentioned that “Boas leaned toward believing more in a culture’s possible influence over language rather than the reverse, though he believed that language and culture could covary freely (Lucy 1992:16 as cited in Ahearn, 2016, p. 114), culture is mostly overlooked in both of the texts. The discussion question I sent in for class (Does linguistic relativity apply only when comparing two very different languages or would there also be a marked interpretative difference when comparing between similar dialects or variations of the same language — like Puerto Rican Spanish vs Venezuelan Spanish, to give an example?) stems from my interest in exploring culture as another factor that might predispose how people think and behave just as strongly as language and thought. As stated by Ahearn, “language, thought, and culture are so intimately interwoven that to study any one of these is to study the other two as well” (Ahearn, 2016, p. 116), and thus, it should be explored further.
Word count: 405
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The impact of language and thought is quite interesting, since the idea that the language you speak, listen, and understand the world with might be, in turn, shaping the way you view the world is a quite refreshing idea, in my opinion. Laura Ahearn raises some very interesting questions about this in chapter 5 of her book, Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. In the first page of the 5th chapter, Ahearn invites us to imagine two scenarios: one where we have completely different native language, while the other scenario asks the reader to imagine having no language at all. This prompts the reader to ask themselves a question they might not have considered before: how their native language might change their perception of the world. If I, as a Puerto Rican living in 2019, spoke French as my first language, perhaps I would not see things too differently. Both languages have varying levels of formality to them (tú vs. usted; tu vs. vous), most people speak using the informal tu, and reserve the formal usted/vous for communicating with people they respect, be it senior citizens, political and religious figures, or any authority figure they find requires that type of word use. But if we were to consider a highly different language, perhaps there would be some major differences. There exist languages who either don’t have words for a variety of colors, or simply do not have a similar numeric system – there are some aboriginal tribes still in existence today that do not have words for numbers, though they are capable of counting – (UCL, 2008). If my native language did not contain numbers, ways of counting time, verb tenses, or other linguistic devices we commonly use in English and Spanish, I believe my understanding of reality, of the world and the cosmos as a whole, would be vastly different, especially since my understanding of the world is so firmly rooted in scientific understanding. The contemporary understanding of Sapir-Whorf’s hypothesis regarding the relationship between language, thought, and culture is of special interest to myself, since I believe that language and culture development is symbiotic, that is to say that their evolution and growth are mutually beneficial; adding thought to that process is positively influential, since the constant growth of both language and culture are motivated by thought, and both culture and language motivate thought, thus completing a circle, upon which all three components affect each other simultaneously.
University College London – UCL. “Aboriginal Kids Can Count Without Numbers.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 August 2008. . (425 words)
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What resonated most for me In Language, Thought, & Culture, was Linguistic structures on pg. 100. When I was in high school I used to follow a tumblr blog that posted words in foreign languages to express a particular feeling that did not exist nor translate into the English Language. Among those words I could only remember these:
1. Mencolek (Indonesian) – is that thing some people do in which they tap someone on the opposite shoulder to get them to look in the wrong direction.
2. Shikata ga nai (Japanese)-referring to when something can no longer be helped; the feeling of “well what can I do.”
3. Greng-jai (Thai)- is that feeling of needing to ask someone for help but feeling bad for the imposition/burden
“Before searching for these, it is important to rule out one area that researchers believe does not have much influence on thought – the existence, or lack thereof, of a particular word in a given language. No linguistic anthropologist believes that the lack of a single word for a concept in a particular language prevents someone from being able to think of that concept (Ahearn, 2016).” Because I was younger I never thought about the linguistic connotations behind WHY these words could not be translated into English. Now that I read the chapter, I understand the fact that the lack of a particular word or vocabulary does not inherently alter a person’s capacity to understand the concept. Page 100 gives the example about the three distinct concepts for the variation of rice in Nepali. The fact Nepali has three distinct variations for a concept of rice does not limit a non-Nepali’s thought and understanding of what dhan means. We as linguists and speakers are aware there are culturally distinct vocabularies that do not reach an exact translation; and sometimes we might not be emotionally attached to it as for the ‘Shikata ga nai’ example; however it does not limit a non-native speaker’s ability to conceptualize meaning and thought from it.
In addition to the distinct terms for concepts of rice, we have the debunking of the 400+ “Eskimo” terms for snow; “Eskimo” also being a derogatory and incorrect term, considering the fact it is made up multiple languages and dialects of the people of the arctic. “Even if the fascination with “Eskimo” words for snow is interpreted in the most favorable light, the elaboration of words in a certain part of a language’s vocabulary demonstrates nothing about the thought processes of speakers of that language (Ahearn, 2016).” Meaning that in any case, culturally important situations, practices, etc have become so significant that as a result, speakers have developed specialized terms for such practices.
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