5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/5-languages-that-could-change-the-way-you-see-the-world
I went to my neighbor’s house for something to eat yesterday.Think about this sentence. It’s pretty simple—English speakers would know precisely what it means. But what does it actually tell you—or, more to the point, what does it not tell you? It doesn’t specify facts like the subject’s gender or the neighbor’s, or what direction the speaker traveled, or the nature of the neighbors’ relationship, or whether the food was just a cookie or a complex curry. English doesn’t require speakers to give any of that information, but if the sentence were in French, say, the gender of every person involved would be specified.The way that different languages convey information has fascinated linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists for decades. In the 1940s, a chemical engineer called Benjamin Lee (...)
