In 1956, the scientific world came across a new hypothesis. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis The thesis of this so-called theory was much simpler than elaborated and understood: words affect how we perceive the world. Each language has in itself a different logic and way of perceiving. To understand the world, we think and understand the world through words.

In fact, the source of language and its interaction with thought is a topic that mankind has pondered for a long time. since Plato The characteristics of thinking and the influence of words are discussed. It has been argued before that thought is inner speech, and what seems reasonable to us in inner speech becomes an idea. The Sapir-Whorf view states that language determines thinking.

Since we are not a linguist, let’s explain the theory with examples to make it clearer and more understandable:

Our first example is Ursula K. Le Guin’s expropriated come from work. In the work, those who follow the anarchist female leader named Odo speak a language called Pravic. In this society where there is no property right, possessive suffixes also does not exist. We can illustrate this in Turkish as follows: “This is my house.“They don’t say, “I’m in this house” they say. So that the house is not theirs, they say that it is they who live in the house.

Another example is: arrival movie. Based on the classic theme of aliens coming to our world one day, the film is actually inspired by the award-winning full-length Story of Your Life. In the movie, cracks and explosions don’t start once the aliens arrive; A much simpler question arises: with aliens. how to contact??

Does language affect how we see the world?

According to this hypothesis, people do not perceive the world as it is. native language they perceive what it offers them. They use different words in expressing objective truth due to the usage of words and their different contexts which differ from language to language. The most common examples of this are color perception and Eskimo languages is found. In other words, languages ​​do not convey the general truth, but the reflection of reality formed by the filter of consciousness. An example of this is when people from two different cultures, looking at the same sky, define the sky as light blue, the other as greenish and the other as blue.

living in Australia Guugu Ymithirr In a native tribe called right, left, front and back, which are very normal for us, there are no concepts. If a person looking east wants you to cross to the left, you must “Are you going to my north?” say. Now that our brains get confused in such a situation, we have to stop and try to find direction. If the Aborigines an inner compass has developed. They can find their north as easily as we can find our left. Because language and thought interact, people form sentences based on their internalized perception of direction (I am north), not alone (my left side).

There are also many examples in languages ​​that have gender words.

In many languages, in a way we are not used to in Turkish Objects also have a gender. European languages ​​are the clearest example of this. Let’s take the word “key”, which is a word in every language: key in German is male and the adjectives that describe it are usually adjectives such as hard, heavy. key in spanish is feminine and is described by adjectives such as cute and bright. Although we are talking about the same object, adjectives and key perception are different depending on the language. This difference in perception is also called “linguistic relativity”.

So, can we just go through femininity and masculinity to see this example? No. For example, family ties are much more important to us in Turkey, according to the work of Geert-Holfstede. Therefore uncle, aunt, aunt, uncle, even uncle fifty, visionary We have words like only in English uncle and aunt has. In fact, Aunt May was translated for years in Spider-Man translations as Aunt May because of our linguistic perception, but May is actually Peter Parker’s Aunt. Uncle Ben (Ben Parker) and Peter Parker are blood relatives.

Another example comes from societies with similar language structures and apparently more similar cultures. Event duration distances in languages ​​such as English or Swedish are defined by. Greek and Spanish, which have relatively similar cultures, define physical dimensions. So let’s say In Webtekno office We had a multinational party and our Spanish and English friends came too. Our Spanish friend a big party and our English friend a long party It means what we do.

Could this be the influence of culture?

If the above question is the first one you ask, it’s kinda to the right point It means you pressed your finger. This was the first question posed in the critique of the hypothesis. in science “You can’t talk about my hypothesis for once!” Since there was no debut or anything like that, experiments were conducted instead to isolate the influence of culture. One of the experiments on this topic, time perception is horizontal (like a number line, if we now say 0, negative numbers are past and positive numbers are past) experiment where people speaking languages ​​are asked to rank different pictures of Brad Pitt by age. Of course, the participants, who posted young photos of Brad Pitt on the left and old photos on the right, didn’t surprise the researchers. Similar work with Jet Li photos time perception is vertical When they’re done with people who speak Mandarin, they sort the photos together, with the oldest photo at the top. How did the Arabic speaking participants score? Yes, right to left, because for them the perception of the future is right to left.

When participants in the experiment learn different languages, their perception of time actually changes. Mandarine students are now able to master the concept of vertical timeline and can easily answer questions about this concept. arrival In the movie, the aliens construct sentences like circles in a loop, and when he can understand this, our protagonist’s perception of time also changes.

But can this hypothesis lead us to other questions?

Okay, we’ve touched on this discussion from past to present. In fact, even in this article we write in Turkish. think in Turkish We used a fiction. For example, after explaining the hypothesis at the beginning, we talked about Plato from the past and in 2017 we came to the movie Arrival. Let’s end the article by looking to the future, let it be a little thought experiment for us.

The perception of time in our language transfer by encryption is this possible? Let’s say we make an AI, that’s AI the time How will he understand? Artificial intelligence, to shape language and thinking in the future, human perception flows in algorithms Can it lead people with automatic ad campaigns?

Let’s also make a small watch list so that it is complete.

• arrival: An impressive science fiction film of which we give examples in the article.
• Gyakusatsu Kikan: It’s about the civil wars that a character named John Paul wages in poor countries with the manipulation of words and his rhetoric, and the heartless soldiers who try to stop them.
• ponty pool: Pontypool, a horror/zombie film, conveys the power of words to influence the mind like a zombie virus transmitted by words, even if it is a critique of the capitalist system. It’s The Man From Earth from the zombie movies.