There's also other issue: English as native language offers huge advantage<p>Think of it:<p>If you're from non-english speaking country, then you'll be spending like 14 years at school learning english.<p>Additionally you'll have to put a lot of effort outside the classes and you'll still be at probably good / very good, but not native level.<p>So, in order to compete with engineers, scientists, etc from english-first countries you not only have to be as good as they are, but all of that while paying this "english-learning tax"<p>It is like a few thousands of hours of effort required to get decent results and now think about it how many other things you could spend that time on.<p>It is actually crazy when you think about this. Almost every person in majority of countries needs to pay that huge penalty that's required to enter science, business, international world.
I'm not a native English speaker. Growing up, I soon noticed that almost all of everything technical is in English.<p>And that's a good thing. All you have to do is learn English (easier said than done, but completely realistic and feasible for most), and you can talk to almost every nerd in the world about anything.
> In English, it is typical to give an “agentive” description, such as “Sofia broke the glass,” even if it was an accident. But in Spanish, the particle se is typically used, and this changes the focus of the sentence; the description of the same event in Spanish would often be formed as: “The glass broke itself.”<p>Meh. It depends. I don't think I would say "Se rompio el vaso" ("The glass broke itself") if I saw that Sofia broke it (I would say instead "Sofia rompio el vaso", just like in English). But if I don't know who broke the glass, then yeah I probably would say "Se rompio el vaso" (or just "The glass is broken", "El vaso está roto").<p>Edit: But, if I don't really want to point at Sofia while still saying that the glass is now broken, then I may use the "se" to lighten the matter. But I guess in English one can do the same thing ("Things get broken, people. Nothing to see here")
I skimmed and it seemed like a bit of a sapir-whorf hypothesis which I think has been supplanted by innate grammar? Eastern wisdom traditions have been studying the mind and consciousness for millenia.
We'd be having the same discussion if some other language emerged as the lingua franca. It's just easier to share knowledge if we're all speaking the same language regardless of that language or inherent grammatical bias. A globalized world will always coalesce around some primary language. It's not like english is necessarily special: it was just in the right place at the right time and generally works.<p>And there's nothing stopping you from using other languages. Go right ahead.
It's not only the language. The various parts of the world are culturally different enough that what seems normal in one place may not be normal in another. And when all you know is your culture, you get a biased definition of normality.
it's funny that this statement is brought forward as a problem in trying to assert awareness to closed thinking but the reason that this statement is a "problem" is carefully constructed to avoid any social, political or cultural dialog around discussing the "problem" in a closed mind fashion<p>research and documentation should strive to be the most convenient forms to be accessed and read by others; shifting to outdated romantic languages that tie gender to objects or to region-specialized character heavy ineffecient languages that already rely on english loan words to convey modern ideas doesn't seem like the answer either right? maybe some critique on how outdated other common languages are compared to emerging cultural concepts would provide a better point to how language should evolve instead of becoming frankensteined as a point of cultural prestige?<p>im down for switching to hangul if it were noted that e.g. conveying ideas and topics we commonly see in scientific research were able to be easier processed and understood, but that's not what the subtle "english bad" tone is trying to convey here
I really dislike the idea that people don't perceive differences in things that they give the same name to. Specifically, "Having a certain linguistic category can make the difference between seeing something or missing it" seems distinctly wrong to me. It seems fair to say that caring about things leads to separate linguistic characteristics, but it doesn't make sense to me to say that using the same word implies that you don't distinguish things.<p>Easy example for me would be looking at an aquarium. I'm likely to just say it contains a variety of fish. Someone that cares and has studied fish could tell you the accepted names of each. We would both be perceiving different types of fish, though. Such that if you showed me a gold fish and a tiger fish, I'd like describe it as two fish. But if you asked me if each were the same, I'd say no.<p>Same as if you showed me any of the ridiculously large number of blue crayons in a modern crayola pack. They are all just blue to me. Are they the same blue? Obviously not.
I am a meditator from India. When I read the theory of meditation in Hindi, it is much more deeply understood (hindi as more words for explaining concepts of mind and consciousness) than english. However, I also think if someone is into experiential learning practices about the mind (such as meditation), it doesn't matter once you are sufficiently developed in those practices.
> “If I ask you now, ‘How many senses are there?’ I suspect your answer is gonna be five,” Ameka says. But in the West African language Ewe, spoken by over 20 million people, including Ameka, at least nine senses are culturally recognized<p>There is already known to be more senses that five:<p>* sense of heat and cold<p>* sense of pain<p>* sense of balance<p>* sense of body awareness (touch your nose while your eyes are closed)
Except the multiple forests worth of books written in Indian and Chinese languages that the OP ignores.<p>Anyway, this is exactly the same mistake psychology made and how we got the acronym WEIRD. Stupid that we don't learn from history even within science.
The study of the mind is the study of intangibles. English is a good language for the material, tangible realm but a poor one for describing the intangible realm inhabited by the mind. For instance, the Pali concept of "dukkha" is difficult to translate into English effectively [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/dukkha.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/dukk...</a>
Funny I have seen a lot of really interesting psychology research out of China recently including ancient Chinese wisdom on how emotions are related to each other (cultivate sadness to quench anger) and on the relationship between schizotypy and bullying victimization in schools. Of course I have seen this because it got translated to English.
Agree languages form different brains. If you speak Mandarin, your brain is different: <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-you-speak-mandarin-your-brain-is-different-37993" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://theconversation.com/if-you-speak-mandarin-your-brain...</a>
See also: <i>How the brain processes German and Arabic</i> <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36347222">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36347222</a>
>Generalizations we make about the mind might, in fact, be wrong.<p>We know how it goes: all generalizations are abusive, but they are so appealing, which is all the more true for this current one.
This is just a re-statement of the disproven Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The hacks at Wired need to find something better to write about than pseudoscience.
on some what related:
Immigrant parents (first gen) mostly 'think'/their internal monologue in their own mother tongue/language. The kids mostly born in the US like the rest of the "English" native speakers have their internal thinking/monologue (brain speak if you will) is in English.<p>This adds to an interesting conversation, sharing nuances, inside jokes etc.