Science Forums 2

[JMJones0424]

I have no experimental data to support this theory, just personal observations.

I was trained as a Korean linguist at the Defense Language Institute in the Unites States. This is unimportant, except that it exposed me to a culture that I would likely never had encountered on my own.

I have noticed that besides the obvious differences in vocabulary and grammar between different languages, there is often a fundamental difference between how concepts are expressed. For instance, if I where to say that "I am going to the store" in Korean, it would be assumed that I was not coming back, where in English, it is obvious. in Korean, I would have to say that "I am going and returning from the store".

I have a hypothesis that language is necessarily abstract, and its learning of expression of abstract thoughts influences not only the expression of those thoughts, but how those thoughts themselves are created and expressed. The often quoted yet incorrect reference to thirty some odd names for snow by "eskimos" comes to mind.

I no longer consider myself a "linguist", as I never cared much for rote memorization, but I think the observations I have made in regards to a culture and its language have some merit. So, how does one's language affect not only one's ability to describe the world around them, but also how one perceives the world around them?