Ask HN: Does the languages we speak affect the way we think?

Latin had no word equivalent to the English "yes". Latin had sic which is very close to the English this, which means to speak in the affirmative requires a relation that qualifies an affirmation.

As a result thinking in Latin is absolutely different than thinking in English which has yes/no questions that could not exist in Latin. When asked a yes/no question without receiving a yes or no answer English speakers immediately assume deception and that assumption is almost always correct. The exception is when the answering party fully fails to grasp the question, or the question's intent if the question is vague or itself deceptive. In Latin language answers without a yes or no were the default and even though there is not an option to apply a direct yes or no answer many times deception was none the less assumed regardless due to differing cultural norms, especially in elevated classes.

https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/1592/how-do-you-sa...

https://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/questions

That’s usually referred to as the Sapir-Whorf or Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. See “Linguistic relativity” on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity . Try the search bar located (non-obviously) at the bottom of HN pages to see what people here think about it.

Edit: Actually, there aren’t many submissions about the subject and I forgot that you can only view search results for comments in Date order and not Popularity order. (For the obvious reason that you can’t see the score of comments.) Googling gives results that may be satisfying:

  site:news.ycombinator.com Sapir whorf hypothesis

I would postulate a counterthesis that its not the language we speak that affects the way we think, but rather how much of that language we use and how much the (single) language is capable to express AND how much of different topics we read/hear (in that language). Just think of kids not so profound in their language - they think, they reason, but they can't argue about "to be or not to be...". But when they grow up, they more and more use and read other topics that utilize higher parts of the language, difficult sentences, etc.. -> so they LEARN and start to think differently on topics.

so, my postulation is:

the knowledge we gain shapes our thinking. Language itself is the transportation medium for the knowledge. Is the medium is small, so the knowledge described with the medium is also "small" or "not destinctive enough". We can use a "second" language then to make the knowledge more exact and mor destinct/tdefined.

But the knowledge can also be gained with other means - learning by doing, as exmaple. So, a language is not necessary to gain knowledge (numb and deaf and blind people also think, but are somehow limited in their expression ...)

so based on that, I postulate, it's a coincidence when a language shapes our thinking, but the cause and the "affecting part" is the real "knowledge-transfer" by the language. No matter if its sign language, pointing towards .. speaking piraha or russian or finnish-english.

Yes. Telling from personal experience of living in different cultures. Language you speak and think in not only contributes a lot to the way you think, but also to your personality itself, to character. People who spent few years+ living in different language often even sound differently, having different voice.