Topics Language

Question Students of foreign language often remark that to learn a new language is to acquire a new mode of thought. Do they mean to suggest that certain thoughts are only possible in certain languages? If so, I don't see how this can work! How can I, as an English speaker learning French, discover thoughts in French which I could not have expressed in English? I needed English to get there!

Accepted:
December 31, 2006

Comments

It is an empirical question to what extent one's capacity for thought depends upon one's ability to speak various languages. See the entry on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis on wikipedia.

Regarding your other remarks: (i) It's not obvious that you needed English to learn French, since native French speakers did not; (ii) Even if you did, it is not obvious that you learned to speak French entirely by learning how to translate French into English. That said, an argument of the form you mention figures prominently in Jerry Fodor's The Language of Thought, with English replaced by the language of thought. The (extremely radical) conclusion of the argument is that all concepts are innate. Suffice it to say that even Fodor no longer accepts the argument.