linguistica Relativity
Part of the difficulity in relating language to the external world may arise from the fact that the way in which we see the world is to some degree depedent on the language we use.Since we perceive the obfects of our experience with the aid of language,it may be the case that learning about the world and learning about language are inseparable activities and thus is partly determined by our language.Malinwoski argued that primitive people have names only for thosethings that stand out for them from an otherwise undefferntiated world.from a confused mass of experience .they pick out by words those parts that are relevent to them.soome scholars have taken an extreme viewpoint.Sapir,for instance,stated that the world in which we live is to a large extentunconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.His views were elaborated by Whorf nd became known as "Sapir-Whorf" hypothsis.Whorf argued that we are unaware of the background character of our language,just as we are unaware of the prresence of air until we begin to chock.If we loook at other languages we come to realize that language doesnot voice ideas but it is the shaper of ideas and that we dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.So it is held that all obsevers are not led by the same picture of the universe,unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar or in some way can be calibrated..Whorf produces several kinds of evidenc.First,there is no division in reality corresponding to English nounsand verbs.In American Indian language Hopi all events of brief duration are represented by verbs.Secondly, Hopi has one word for insect,pilot and plane while Eskimo has four words for snow.We could add that Arabic have a large number of words for camel.thirdly,Whorf argued that the Hopi have no notion of time.The only distiction they make is between what is subjective and objective,the subjective including future and every thing that is mental.Moreover,this language makes no distinction between distance in time and distance in place.
Such an extreme interpretation is untenable,This means that there is a world that we must share irrespective of the language we use.Unless there is some recognisable non-linguistic world of experience it is difficult to see how we could either learn a language or use it with ouir neighboursconsistently.This proved by the fact that we can invetigate other languages and that we can translate.It may well be that we can nevertotally absorb or understand the world of other languages ,but we can obtain a very fair understandiing of them.Ther may be no exact equvilance but languages are never totally differena