Many people are probably familiar with the fact that most browsers allow Javascript code to be entered in the address field. That’s the magic behind bookmarklets, which simply spare the user the hassle of manually typing long, convoluted and obfuscated Javascript statements. While it’s usually pointless to do so, there is one case in which…
Month: October 2010
Languages: the strange case of Pirahã and Aymara
In my last post, I wrote about the connections between language and thought, ie. linguistic relativity / determinism. In today’s highly globalized world, languages get mixed and evolve at a much faster pace than ever before. English, for instance, is no longer only divided into British, American, Canadian and Australian English; we could say that there…
Languages: linguistic relativity, words vs. thought
One of the most intriguing concepts in linguistics is the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or linguistic relativity principle. Simply put, it states that the language we speak can influence the way we think. Another common name for this theory is linguistic determinism. There are some subtleties in the usage of these different names (no pun intended),…