From: "Hal E. Fulton" Date: 2003-07-12T06:12:22+09:00 Subject: Re: OSCON report ----- Original Message ----- From: "Guillaume Marcais" To: "ruby-talk ML" Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 4:02 PM Subject: Re: OSCON report > May I ask what the Sapir-Worf Hypothesis is? It's Whorf with an H. Not the Klingon guy. :) Edward Sapir was a linguist; Benjamin Whorf is often remembered as a linguist, though he was mostly an amateur or dilettante. Degrees in chemical engineering, IIRC. I found his ideas very interesting even when they were not necessarily correct. For example, he claimed that the "tenseless" Hopi language was far superior to English for talking about relativity and quantum mechanics. I'm not sure of the exact formulation of the hypothesis. My favorite quote of Whorf's is: "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about." I'm sure it's more formalized elsewhere. As stated here, it's too vague to disprove (almost too vague to agree or disagree with). Hal -- Hal Fulton hal9000@hypermetrics.com > Guillaume. > > On Fri, 2003-07-11 at 15:11, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote: > > Hi, > > > > In message "Re: OSCON report" > > on 03/07/12, Matt Lawrence writes: > > > > |On a related note, Are you familiar with the Sapir-Worf Hypothesis? > > > > David McCorkhil told me yesterday at the Japanese restaurant. > > I disagree with Worf, but very interesting concept. > > > > matz. > > > > >